In the scorching heat on a busy street in Calcutta last month, commuters took refuge in a glass-walled bus shelter, where two air conditioners churned around the stifling air. The people inside were visibly sweating and dabbing their foreheads in sauna-like temperatures that were barely cooler than outside.
Local authorities initially planned to install as many as 300 of the refrigerated huts in a bid to improve protection against the heat season that typically runs from April until the monsoon hits the subcontinent in June. Currently, only a handful are in use, and some have been stripped of their air conditioners, leaving users hot.
“It’s not working,” said Firhad Hakim, mayor of the city of 15 million in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, on a sweltering afternoon as temperatures topped 40 degrees. “You feel suffocated.”
Efforts in Calcutta and across India to improve resilience to extreme heat have often been equally ill-conceived, despite a death toll estimated at more than 24,000 since 1992. Inconsistent or incomplete planning, a lack of funding and the inability to make timely preparations to protect a population of 1.4 billion people leaves communities vulnerable as periods of extreme temperatures become more frequent and longer, affecting more of the country.
Kolkata, with its hot, humid climate and proximity to the Bay of Bengal, is particularly vulnerable to extreme temperatures and rainfall, and is ranked by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as one of the global locations most at risk.
According to the IPCC, a 2 degree Celsius increase in average global temperatures could mean the city would experience the equivalent of 2015’s record heatwaves every year. High humidity can increase the impact because it limits the human body’s ability to regulate temperature.
Yet the city – one of India’s largest urban centers – still lacks a formal strategy to deal with heat waves.
Several regions in India will experience as many as 11 heatwave days this month, compared to three in a normal year, while maximum temperatures have already reached 47.2 degrees Celsius in the east of the country in recent weeks, the Indian Meteorological Department said. These extremes occur during national elections, where high temperatures are cited as factors for lower turnout.
At SSKM Hospital, one of Kolkata’s busiest, the waiting area last month was teeming with people sheltering under colorful umbrellas and crowding a coin-operated water dispenser to refill empty bottles. A weary line snaked back from a government-run kiosk selling a subsidized lunch of rice, lentils, boiled potato and eggs served on foil plates.
“High temperatures can cause heat stroke, rashes, cramps and dehydration,” said Niladri Sarkar, a professor of medicine at the hospital. “Some of these can become fatal if not attended to in time, especially for people with pre-existing conditions.”
Extreme heat has an outsized impact on poorer residents, who are often malnourished, lack access to clean drinking water and have jobs that require outdoor work, he said.
According to Calcutta Mayor Firhad Hakim, local authorities are currently focused on ensuring adequate water supply and have put paramedics on standby to tackle heat-related illnesses. | Bloomberg
Elsewhere in the city, tea sellers sat under simmering coal ovens, construction workers labored under a sweltering midday sun and voters taking part in rallies for the ongoing national elections placed handkerchiefs over their faces in an effort to keep cool. The state government of Kolkata in April advised some schools to close for an early summer vacation to avoid the heat.
Since 2013, states, counties and cities are estimated to have developed more than 100 heat action plans designed to improve their ability to mitigate the impacts of extreme temperatures. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government set guidelines eight years ago to speed up the rollout of the policy, and a January meeting of the National Disaster Management Authority pledged to do more to strengthen preparedness.
The lack of such planning in Calcutta has also meant that trends that have made the city more sensitive have not been addressed.
An air-conditioned bus shelter with a broken glass window in Kolkata on April 23 | Bloomberg
Nearly a third of the city’s green cover has been lost in the decade to 2021, according to a study by the Indian government. Other cities, including Mumbai and Bengaluru, have faced similar problems. Combined with a decline in local water bodies and a boom in the construction sector, an urban heat island effect is emerging, said Saira Shah Halim, a parliamentary candidate in the Kolkata Dakshin constituency in the south of the city. “What we see today is the result of this destruction,” she said.
Hakim, the city’s mayor, disputes the idea that Kolkata’s preparations have lagged, arguing that recent extreme weather has left local authorities in disarray. “Such kind of heat wave is new for us, we are not used to it,” he said. “We are currently locked down with elections. Once the elections are over, we will work with experts on a heat action plan.”
Local authorities are currently ensuring adequate water supplies and have put paramedics on standby to tackle heat-related illnesses, Hakim said.
According to Nairwita Bandyopadhyay, a Calcutta-based climatologist and geographer, the focus on crisis management rather than better preparedness is at the root of the country’s shortcomings. “Unfortunately, the approach is to wait and watch until the hazard turns into a disaster,” she said.
Even cities and states that already have heat action plans are struggling to make progress in implementing recommendations, New Delhi-based think tank Center for Policy Research said last year in a report that reviewed 37 of the documents.
Most policies do not adequately reflect local conditions, often lack detail on how action should be financed and generally do not provide a source of legal authority, the report said.
As many as nine people have already died this year due to extreme heat, according to the meteorological department, although this figure likely significantly underestimates the actual total. That follows about 110 fatalities during severe heat waves in April and June last year, the World Meteorological Organization said last month.
Yet tackling extreme heat has failed to become a “political lightning rod that can spur governments into action,” said Aditya Valiathan Pillai, one of the authors of the CPR study and now a fellow at New Delhi-based Sustainable Futures Collaborative.
Construction workers during an evening shift in Calcutta on May 2 | Bloomberg
Modi’s government has often taken steps to limit criticism of its policies, and there is also the issue of unreliable data. “When deaths occur, you can’t be sure if it was directly caused by heat, or if heat exacerbated an existing condition,” Pillai said.
Data from the Ministry of Health showed that 33 people died due to heat waves in 2022, while the National Crime Records Bureau – another body that keeps track of mortality statistics – reported 730 fatalities due to heat stroke.
The discrepancies raise questions about the Indian government’s claim that its policies helped reduce heat-related deaths from 2,040 in 2015 to four in 2020, after national bureaucrats took on more responsibility for disaster risk management.
Local officials in Kolkata are now exploring possible solutions and are considering the addition of more trees, vertical gardens on building walls and the use of porous concrete, all of which could help combat urban heat.
India’s elections are also an opportunity to raise issues around poor preparations, said Halim, a candidate for the Communist Party of India (Marxist), whose supporters carry bright red flags at campaign events scheduled for the early morning and after sunset to escape the extreme temperatures. .
“I’ll call it,” she said. ‘It has become a very, very challenging campaign. The heat is just unbearable.”
