A towering inferno of bad policies

April was never this hot. As temperatures soared to 45°C and above and people huffed and puffed, it didn’t help to learn from weather update apps that 45 felt like 49. Social media feeds sizzled with deep crimson heat maps. On 24 April, @WeatherMonitors released a list — the 100 hottest cities in the world that day were all in India.

Amidst a hellscape for those labouring outdoors, public hospitals like Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi informed the public that heat stroke units for ‘rapid, intensive care to combat high mortality rates, including specialised cooling tubs, 200 kg ice-making machines and portable ice packs’ were available.

A summer action plan unveiled by the Delhi government advised parents to ensure that children wear ‘thin, cotton clothes’. Schools introduced a ‘water bell’ to remind kids to drink water. Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia advised people to carry an onion in their pocket to beat the heat. Like he did. Scindia, who apparently never rode in AC cars or sat in AC offices. Social media posts with the multiple AC units in his office circled in red mocked the minister’s claims.

Who or what is to blame for the escalating fury of the Indian summer? Even as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation turns the dial towards extreme heat, the more inconvenient truth is becoming harder — if not impossible — to ignore. India is witnessing a hybrid disaster — the convergence of global warming and a domestic policy that has systematically dismantled the natural cooling systems of our land, water and forests.

What we call ‘heat stress’ is as much a result of man’s greed mas- querading as ‘development’ as it is a meteorological event. In the summer of 2024 and through the current cycles of 2026, the frequent breaching of the 48°C mark in north India and Bundelkhand is biologically lethal. The impact of this manmade inferno is harshest on the very people who build the structures that displace nature.

For millions of construction workers and street vendors, heat is a physical assault that translates into massive economic loss. Realistic data suggests that India could lose up to 5.8 per cent of its working hours by 2030 due to heat stress, equivalent to 34 million full-time jobs. In cities like Banda in Uttar Pradesh, roadside workers are trapped in ‘urban heat islands’ where asphalt and concrete radiate heat long after the sun has set, keeping local temperatures 5-7°C higher than the surrounding rural areas.

Policy failures in labour protection mean that mandated work-breaks or the provision of cooling shelters remain largely theoretical. As these workers suffer from heat exhaustion and chronic kidney disease — also called ‘sugarcane nephropathy’ in agricultural belts — the lack of localised cooling infrastructure reflects a policy blind spot that views labour as infinitely expendable.

This oversight extends into the rural heartlands, where the agrarian economy reels under a double blow. Agriculture is suffering from thermal shock, where sudden spikes in temperature during the ‘milking stage’ of wheat cause the grain to shrivel. In recent years, this has led to yield losses of nearly 15-25 per cent in heat-sensitive pockets. Yet government policies often continue to favour water-intensive crops in parched zones, ignoring the urgent need for indigenous, heat-resilient cropping patterns.

The impact on flora and fauna is reaching a tipping point. The ‘One Health’ approach that ‘aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals and ecosystems’ is compromised as forests are fragmented for mining and highways, stripping away the natural canopy that regulates local humidity. The decline in the fisheries and agricultural sectors is a testament to the irresponsibility of policies that view development and environment as adversaries.

In Chhatarpur, the proximity of development projects to the Panna Tiger Reserve has led to a documented increase in human-wildlife conflict.

As natural water holes dry up — a direct result of destroying catchment areas for stone mining — wildlife is forced to migrate toward human settlements. Data from forest departments show that during peak summer months, instances of leopards and bears entering village peripheries in search of water increase by nearly 40 per cent.

These are not natural disasters — they are the direct outcomes of a policy failure that prioritises short-term infrastructure gains over long-term ecological stability.

Policymakers must realise that forests cleared for concrete expansion were never just clusters of trees — they were the guardians of a micro-climate that shielded crops from thermal shock and preserved the vital moisture of the soil. Every acre of forest lost in a plateau region like Bundelkhand results in a permanent loss of groundwater recharge capacity, further exacerbating the thirst of the land.

Rectifying manmade contributions to climate change requires a fundamental shift in how we perceive progress. We must acknowledge that every hill flattened for stone mining in Banda and every riverbed stripped of its sand in the Ken basin is a cooling agent lost forever.

Unless ‘green engineering’ is prioritised in infrastructure and environmental regulations upheld with integrity, the economic toll of extreme heat — measured in lost labour productivity, crop failure and public health crises — far outweighs any perceived financial gains from these projects.

As we analyse the ground realities, the primary policy challenge lies in acknowledging that ‘heat stress’ is a consequence of systemic human error. The most glaring contradiction in our current policy framework is the negligence and institutionalised haste inherent in environmental clearance processes for massive infrastructure projects.

When we sanction the indiscriminate clearing of forests for mega-dams, highways and mining, we are effectively dismantling the natural carbon sinks and cooling agents that serve as our only defence against blistering heat.

The failure of our current Heat Action Plans lies in their narrow focus on human mortality in urban centres, largely ignoring the biological distress of the soil and wildlife. Government intervention must integrate soil moisture conservation as a mandatory part of climate-smart agriculture (CSA), providing financial incentives for mulching and organic manure that keep the earth cool.

‘One Health’ must become the gold standard for district-level governance, breaking the administrative silos between veterinary, agricultural and forest departments to monitor the health of the entire ecosystem as a single unit. Policy must pivot toward radical accountability where every infrastructure project is judged by its impact on the region’s heat absorption capacity.

Policy choices must privilege the protection of primary forests and the rigorous enforcement of Eco-Sensitive Zones. The transition to district-level Heat Action Plans must evolve towards a holistic ‘One Health’ framework that treats soil, water and wildlife as an interconnected ecosystem. In the agriculture sector, this would necessitate the deployment of local agro-meteorological stations that go beyond temperature readings to provide irrigation protocols that shield crops from thermal shock.

Forest management must adopt ecological water budgeting, utilising satellite data to identify parched hotspots where solar-powered reservoirs can prevent desperate migration of wildlife.

Instead of interlinking rivers at untenable cost, we must protect ancient water bodies like the Chandel-era tanks of Bundelkhand as decentralised cooling systems.

When natural cycles like El Niño combine with man’s disregard for nature — as seen in sundry ‘development’ misadventures — you get the kind of extreme weather phenomena we are witnessing now and are perhaps doomed to encounter with ever-increasing frequency. Can we break out of this loop? The portents are ominous.