A red-hot sickle has been scything through the heart of India for the past few days. It’s an isothermal swathe of the country’s hottest areas stretching across northern Rajasthan, Haryana, south-central Uttar Pradesh, eastern Madhya Pradesh and Vidarbha. Nowhere is its effect more acutely felt than in Banda, where temperatures have been breaching the debilitating level of 48°C. The reason this small town in Bundelkhand is overtaking Rajasthan as the country’s hottest region is symptomatic of what’s ailing the rest of India too—poorly planned construction and unchecked greed exacerbating the effects of climate change. In Banda, a steep fall in green cover and over-mining along the Ken riverbed have eroded the natural tools that could have countered the effects of a sudden proliferation of concrete structures in a new industrial cluster being promoted on a rocky plateau.
A similar fate awaits many other urban centres. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a highly regarded scientific journal, shows that 18 medium-sized Indian cities, including Jalandhar, Mathura and Muzaffarnagar, are heating up much faster than their hinterlands. Heedless human action and a lack of effective mitigation are also turning our metros into sweltering hotspots, with heat trapped in concrete and asphalt keeping night-time temperatures dangerously high. On Thursday, the national capital recorded its warmest May night in 14 years.
The reasons are not unknown. A study last year estimated that air conditioners are now as culpable for warming Indian cities as cars, with both affecting temperatures directly by generating heat and indirectly by adding to greenhouse gases. Yet, there is little public discourse on alternative lifestyles and an appalling lack of administrative urgency in increasing green cover, building water bodies, providing public shelters, expanding mass transport and changing building norms.
We must treat extreme heat as a national emergency in a country that is clearly among the worst affected. Graded heat action plans must be mandatorily triggered, like Delhi’s court-mandated response to pollution. Parametric insurance, piloted by SEWA in Gujarat and proposed in Tamil Nadu, must be made widely available to daily wagers. Finally, much more needs to be invested in the local bodies responsible for urban planning. Our deficiency is revealed by a stark comparison: whereas almost two-thirds of Chinese government employees work at local levels, only a little over a tenth in India do so. Should we be surprised by the results?