India’s lack of long-term measures to tackle heat can lead to high casualties: Report

The study was based on nine cities that are projected to face the highest increases in dangerous heat index values

Historically, the month of March was mostly blessed by pleasant spring-time weather across India. In March 2025, however, fans are whirling at full speed, air conditioners are being serviced, and people are avoiding stepping out in the afternoon.

In major cities across the country, temperatures have crossed the 30°C mark, and keep rising everyday. As the season gradually crosses over into summer, a question that arises is how well equipped Indian cities are to deal with extreme heat? Not much, according to a new report by Sustainable Futures Collaborative.

The report picked nine cities — Bengaluru, Delhi, Faridabad, Gwalior, Kota, Ludhiana, Meerut, Mumbai, and Surat — which are projected to face the highest increases in dangerous heat index values relative to their average temperatures, based on climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6).

All nine cities have more than a million inhabitants, and combined, host 11% of India’s population. According to the report, all nine cities have short-term measures to deal with extreme heat, but lag behind in long-term strategies, which can lead to a higher mortality rate due to heat.

The disproportionate effect of heat

“Indian cities are more vulnerable due to the urban heat island effect, where heat is trapped and is exacerbated by climate stresses,” says Aditya Valiathan Pillai, Visiting Fellow, Sustainable Futures Collaborative, and an author of the report.

“These urban heat islands intersect with places where people with relatively lower incomes live. These regions are densely populated, usually slums,” he says, adding that one of the ways to reduce the temperatures in these regions is to provide access to cooling, open spaces, and shade. 

The report points out that all nine cities’ best responses to heat are short-term emergency measures: access to drinking water, changing work schedules, and boosting hospital capacity before or during a heat wave. However, the report could not independently verify how well these measures are implemented.

There’s a reason behind this short-sightedness. The measures are derived from emergency directives from higher levels of government, including national and state disaster-management and health authorities, issued before or during a heat wave. 

“Short-term measures are for saving lives. Long-term planning is to primarily save livelihoods,” says Abhiyant Tiwari, lead of climate resilience and health at NRDC India.

According to the report, short-term actions are temporary in nature and inexpensive, and the money is readily available from local, state and national sources — mostly disaster and health funds.

But for long-term measures — like making household or occupational cooling available to the most heat-exposed, developing insurance cover for lost work, expanding fire management services for heat waves, and electricity grid retrofits to improve transmission reliability — more dedicated resources are required, found the report.

“Many of the long-term risk reduction measures we focus on will take several years to mature. They must be implemented now, with urgency, to have a chance of preventing significant increases in mortality and economic damage in the coming decades. At its core, this calls for the re-imagination of how India’s cities expand and develop,” says Pillai. 

Short on long-term response

The report recommends some institutional changes like strengthening heat action plans in local governments, drawing on state disaster funds and giving adequate authority to heat officers for implementation of measures.

It also recommends creating highly targeted active cooling programmes, spreading more awareness among government officials to accelerate heat responses, and establishing trained disaster management support staff capacity at the district level.

“The cornerstone to India’s policy response on heat, Heat Action Plans (HAPs), remain weak in driving action on ground, but now is the time to strengthen and embed them in the Indian state- to serve as a critical tool to identify at-risk areas and populations and drive long-term resilience efforts before the crisis deepens,” says Tamanna Dalal, Research Associate, Sustainable Futures Collaborative.

For the report, the authors spoke to 88 people across city, district, and state government officials across the nine cities. However, most parts of south, east and northeast India weren’t surveyed.

The report is not representative of the different agro-climatic regions of India, and looked at heat actions through a top-down approach, while that is not always the case, according to Tiwari. 

“It missed key stakeholders, like NGOs, who drive actions from the ground. Both long and short term solutions have to be local. Macro-level top-down mandate or advisory will not cover everything,” he says to CarbonCopy.

“But such studies are important, and help in pushing awareness, climate agenda and sensitising communities about heat resilience. It’s important that this is communicated across society, and not just government stakeholders,” says Tiwari.

Ultimately, it boils down to how many people have less dangerous lives in a climate impacted world, according to Pillai. “That’s where financing comes in. It should have impacts on the ground,” he says. 

“The Global South has to find resources internally to reduce the scale of long-term damage. We don’t have the luxury of waiting till global climate finance promises are delivered. Heat is a problem now, not a future problem,” says Pillai to CarbonCopy.

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Shaswata Kundu Chaudhuri

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