As northern India reels under a brutal heat wave, it is workers who are facing the brunt of it. Delhi has reportedly breached the 50-degree Celsius mark, halfway to the boiling point of water. Following the death of a 40-year-old labourer due to extreme heat, the office of the Lieutenant Governor has intervened by issuing instructions for water provision, sprinkling water on roads and change in timings for construction workers considering the “unprecedented heat wave”.
For many who do hard physical labour in this heat, this is an emergency, not only on the immediate health front but also for their work and incomes. Our cities exacerbate the situation, due to high density and built environment, resulting in the “heat island effect”. In India, four out of five urban workers are informal, with minimal job security, irregular incomes, no social protection, unsafe worksites and vulnerability to economic fluctuations. This precarity, along with pre-existing socio-economic vulnerabilities, makes the majority of workers more susceptible to heat waves.
Heat Action Plans (HAPs) list preparatory, adaptive, and responsive measures for government departments to tackle the heat and its impacts. They are mandated to be drafted — not in an ad hoc manner — at the city, district, and state levels for effective implementation and as per the guidelines of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).
It is undeniable that HAPs have aided in reducing the casualties due to heatwaves, and this relatively new policy instrument has been increasingly recognised for its importance, but it misses the varied nature of impacts on different vulnerable groups, like workers in the informal economy in cities. As of now, a vast majority of the cities in India do not have HAPs. Most of the existing HAPs barely mention the workers. If they do, they refer only to “outdoor workers”, with no mention of related interventions specific to their nature of work. With their “disaster-emergency” perspective, the HAPs leave little room for medium to long-term actions. They are usually biased towards rural realities, without any links to urban planning and design of cities.
Working in extreme heat conditions impacts productivity and income for informal workers in indoor and outdoor activities. Domestic workers are confronted with constant exposure to hot stoves and excessive heat. Home-based workers continue to work and live in a “pressure cooker” environment in small and congested houses in urban slums. Construction workers encounter the relentless challenges of working in the blazing sun, compounded by unbearably hot makeshift shelters near the worksite. Street vendors face income loss as the perishable goods they sell spoil rapidly, combined with a decline in customer traffic and additional expenses on water and shade. Women workers, constituting a substantial number of informal workers, find an increase in their care activity, particularly because of food spoilage, which leads to frequent cooking and cleaning, as well as taking care of the young, sick, and vulnerable in the family.
Narratives of workers often also point to frequent heat-related illnesses — greater fatigue, dehydration, increased anxiety and higher chances of heat stroke. The lack of “basic infrastructure”, such as drinking water and a sunshade at working sites, worsens the risk of these ailments. Most informal workers are not protected under any health insurance and incur out-of-pocket expenses for medical treatment, which adds to their already shrinking income during the hot months. The cost of business goes up even as the income comes down — they are compelled to purchase protective gear, such as umbrellas and shade, and water, invest more in transport and absorb the costs of spoilage of goods.
There must be policy measures to mitigate the impact of heat waves on workers. First, it is essential to reimagine heat waves as not conventional disaster events, but as prolonged disasters, thereby moving from ad hoc, instruction-based response to linking HAPs with other long-term measures of urban planning and climate action plans (CAPs). This should then also translate into the NDMA working with other stakeholders in urban areas, like the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE).
Second, there must be mandatory inclusion of wide categories of informal workers in urban areas and clearer guidelines at the national level, that can help states broaden them and innovate as per their contexts.
Third, the general divisions of indoor-outdoor work and the nature of impacts need to be investigated further to frame holistic guidelines and interventions as, in many cases, indoor workers also face extreme heat.
Fourth, there is a clear need for the inclusion of worker communities and voices in the preparation of action plans. Representations from worker welfare boards and bodies similar to the Town Vending Committees (TVC) for street vendors need to be roped in for the drafting and execution of HAPs in cities.
Fifth, the impact of heat is not gender-neutral and has a harsher bearing on women workers’ lives — heat stress plans need to factor in these realities.
Sixth, recognise that heat waves mean losses — of income, health, and livelihoods — and welfare measures must compensate for these. Workers need system-wide protections, with state interventions and employers’ contributions, which include climate-resilient social protection systems and income protection, including compensation for loss of income.
Seventh, as we think about the reforms in labour laws and the Labour Codes that await implementation, it will be critical to rethink many of them from the perspective of informal workers and the impact of climate change on work.
Lastly, our cities, and society in general, have always been designed to invisiblise workers and their work — especially the ones in the informal economy. Our urban imagination needs to be reconfigured, not only to ensure water, shade, and rest–eat–leisure spaces to mitigate heat wave impacts, but also to find more ways of advancing workers’ rights in cities.
Sinha is Asia Strategic Lead, Urban Policies Program, WIEGO. Unni is an urban practitioner and researcher working with informal workers and urban communities
