Heatwave: Is India ready to deal with extreme

temperatures?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65299807

In his best-selling 2020 novel, The Ministry for the Future, science fiction writer Kim Stanley
Robinson opens with a deadly heatwave in India which kills millions of people.

The sky blazes like an "atomic bomb", the heat from it is a "slap in the face", the eyes sting and
"everything was tan and beige and a brilliant, unbearable white". Water doesn't help because it
is "hot as a bath… worse than the air". People die "faster than ever".

Mr Robinson's dystopian tale about global heating might be a horror fantasy of sorts, but it is
also a chilling warning. Earlier this week, 12 people died from heatstroke and many others were
admitted to hospital after attending a government-sponsored event in an open ground under a
blazing sun in Navi Mumbai in India's Maharashtra state.

India is one of the countries most exposed and vulnerable to heat. Hot days and hot night
events have risen significantly, and are projected to increase between two and four-fold by
2050. Heatwaves are also predicted to arrive earlier, stay longer and become more frequent.

The weather office has predicted above-average temperatures and heat waves until the end of
May. Average temperatures in India have risen by around 0.7% between 1901 and 2018, partly
due to climate change. Heatwaves killed more than 22,000 people between 1992 and 2015,
according to official figures. Experts reckon the actual toll would be much higher. Yet, the
country really "hasn't understood the importance of heat and how heat can kill", says Dileep
Mavalankar, director of the Gujarat-based Indian Institute of Public Health. "This is partly
because we don't compile our mortality data properly."

Prof. Mavalankar should know. In May 2010, he found that the city of Ahmedabad had recorded
800 all-cause excess deaths - a measure of how many more people are dying than expected,
compared to the previous few years - during a sweltering week of record-breaking
temperatures. It was clear, he said, that heat was killing a lot of people. He said researchers
compared the total number of deaths in the city to the maximum temperature recorded on the
day, and laid down three colour coded alerts, with the red
warning triggering above 45C.

Prodded by these findings, Prof Mavalankar helped put

together India's first heat action plan for the city of
Ahmedabad. The plan kicked off in 2013 and advocated
simple solutions like staying indoors, drinking lots of water
before stepping out, and going to the hospital emergency if
one felt sick. By 2018, he says, deaths from all causes had
declined by a third in the hot, dry city.
Heatwave: Is India ready to deal with extreme
temperatures?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65299807

But the bad news is India's heat action plans don't seem to be working
very well. (It is unclear whether the authorities in Navi Mumbai had a
heat action plan in place when a million people reportedly were allowed
to gather under the open sky.) A new study of 37 heat action plans at
the city, district and state levels by Aditya Valiathan Pillai and Tamanna
Dalal of Centre for Policy Research, a think-tank, found a lot of
shortcomings.

For one, most of the plans were not "built for local context and have an
oversimplified view of the hazards". Only 10 of the 37 plans studied
seem to establish locally defined temperature thresholds, although it
was unclear whether they took factors like humidity into account while declaring a heatwave.
"We recommend nuancing and localising the heat hazard definition by including climate
projections," Mr Pillai told me. One way to do it is to have more automated weather stations at
village levels, according to Prof Mavalankar.

Second, the researchers found that nearly all the plans were poor at "identifying and targeting
vulnerable groups". Farm and construction workers who toil in the open, pregnant women, the
elderly, and children were most vulnerable to heat.

Some three-fourths of India's workers work in heat-exposed jobs like construction and mining.
"Workers are losing the ability to safely and efficiently work outside as the planet warms. It's
becoming too hot and humid for them to cool themselves enough when they generate a large
amount of body heat when conducting heavy labour," says climate researcher Luke Parsons of
Duke University, North Carolina.

Discussion Questions
1. What is the perfect weather temperature for you? How do you feel when you are in
moderate or extreme conditions?
2. What do you think of the temperatures here in Spain versus in India? Do you prefer to
leave Madrid in the summer due to the intense heat?
3. What is the hottest temperature or climate you’ve ever experienced?
4. How concerned do you feel about rising temperatures across the world? How could it
impact the future (families, careers, living conditions, etc.)?
5. The article mentions “heat action plans” that exist in India. How does Madrid (or Spain)
adapt to extreme heat?