Context

• In early April 2025, Delhi crossed a critical environmental threshold with temperatures soaring above 41°C.
• Nights offered little respite, signalling an emerging reality: extreme heat is no longer an anomaly but a fixture of life in Indian cities.
• As climate change accelerates, urban areas in India have become the epicentres of this increasing crisis.
• Among the most vulnerable to this shift are India’s millions of urban informal workers, individuals whose livelihoods are intimately tied to the outdoors and are thus most exposed to the lethal consequences of rising temperatures.

Informal Workers: The Invisible Backbone of Urban Economies

• Informal workers, construction labourers, street vendors, waste pickers, gig workers, and rickshaw pullers, play indispensable roles in the daily functioning of India’s urban economy.
• Yet, despite their essential services, these workers remain largely invisible in policy responses to climate-related heat stress.
• In 2024, the Reserve Bank of India acknowledged the growing economic threat posed by extreme heat, projecting a 4.5% loss to India’s GDP due to its effects on occupational health and productivity.
• However, this recognition has not translated into tangible protections or support mechanisms for informal workers.

Existing HAPs (Heat Action Plans)

• To address rising temperatures, many Indian cities have implemented Heat Action Plans (HAPs), inspired by early initiatives such as Ahmedabad’s.
• These plans are developed under the guidance of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and are intended to mitigate the effects of heatwaves.
• However, a review of HAPs across the country reveals significant gaps. Most plans remain superficial, underfunded, and lack effective coordination.

Shortcomings in India’s Heat Action Plans

• Exclusion of Informal Workers
  • Informal workers are either vaguely mentioned or entirely absent from these strategies.
  • Crucially, most HAPs fail to recognise heatwaves as manifestations of a chronic climate crisis, treating them instead as temporary disasters.
  • The NDMA’s 2019 guidelines provide only broad categories such as outdoor workers or vulnerable groups, failing to define protocols tailored to specific occupational risks.
• Fragmented Governance
  • Further compounding these issues is the fragmented nature of institutional governance.
  • The absence of inter-ministerial coordination, across Labour, Environment, Urban Affairs, and Health, means that protections for workers are inconsistent and poorly enforced.
  • Existing heat response plans are typically limited to summer months and fail to embed long-term strategies such as heat-resilient infrastructure, flexible work norms, or worker-oriented social protections.

The Way Forward to Fix These Shortcomings

• Learning from Global and Domestic Good Practices
  • Internationally, cities have adopted more robust and inclusive approaches to managing occupational heat stress.
  • For instance, California and Oregon in the U.S. mandate access to water, shade, and rest for outdoor workers.
  • France’s Plan Canicule requires adjustments to working conditions during heat alerts.
  • Qatar and Australia have restricted outdoor work during peak hours.
  • Even within India, promising models exist: Ahmedabad has introduced shaded rest areas and staggered work hours, while Odisha enforces a halt to outdoor labour during peak heat.
  • These examples highlight the feasibility and urgency of integrating worker-focused strategies into urban climate adaptation efforts.
  • They offer replicable models that could guide Indian cities toward more humane and sustainable responses.
• Towards a Worker-Centric Urban Heat Response
  • A reimagined approach to urban heat resilience must begin with the formal recognition of informal workers within national heat guidelines.
  • The NDMA’s framework needs to be revised to explicitly include diverse categories of informal labour, accompanied by practical, occupation-specific safety protocols.
  • These should include clear guidelines for work-hour limitations, rest breaks, access to water and shade, and emergency medical support.
  • Moreover, the development of HAPs must transition from a top-down approach to one grounded in participation.
  • Municipal bodies should actively engage worker collectives, unions, and civil society organisations in the design and implementation of heat response plans.
  • Community coordination groups can ensure that policies reflect lived realities and enjoy grassroots legitimacy.
• Infrastructure: Shahed Rest Zones
  • Cities must also guarantee the right to cool for informal workers.
  • This includes setting up shaded rest zones, hydration stations, and community cooling centres at markets, transport hubs, construction sites, and other work locations.
  • Such spaces must be accessible, inclusive, and co-managed by local communities.
  • To sustain these interventions, dedicated public budgets and innovative financing, through corporate social responsibility or city development funds, must be allocated.
  • Health insurance schemes need to expand to include heat-related illnesses, particularly for workers traditionally excluded from formal social protection.
  • Physical infrastructure must also evolve: cool roofs, shaded walkways, and passive ventilation should become the norm, not exceptions.
• Embedding Resilience into Urban Planning and Governance
  • True resilience lies in integrating climate adaptation into the DNA of city planning.
  • Heat resilience must be written into master plans, building byelaws, and infrastructure codes.
  • Cities should prioritise the development of urban forests, blue networks (e.g., water bodies), and shaded pedestrian corridors. Informal workspaces such as labour chowks, vendor markets, and recycling yards should be retrofitted using heat-resistant designs that promote thermal comfort.
• Inter-Ministerial Task Force
  • At the national level, an inter-ministerial task force should be created, bringing together key stakeholders across labour, urban development, climate, and disaster management sectors.
  • This body should produce a national road map that links worker protection with climate resilience and monitors its execution.
  • Additionally, each city and district should appoint a ‘heat officer’ with the authority and resources to coordinate cross-sectoral heat response strategies. 

Conclusion

• For India’s informal workers, the climate crisis is neither abstract nor future-bound, it is a daily, existential struggle.
• Rising temperatures translate into real human costs: illness, income loss, and even death. Addressing this crisis requires not just technical fixes, but a profound shift in how we govern, design, and finance our cities.
• A truly inclusive urban heat strategy must put workers at the centre, recognising their contributions and safeguarding their rights.
• The cost of continued inaction is measured not only in degrees but in human suffering, lost productivity, and an increasingly unliveable urban future.