The Heat Wave in India is an Emergency. And Its Only Going to Get Worse in the Future

India is extremely hot right now. Recently, it was reported that 50 of the world’s hottest cities in the world were in India. The media calls it a “heat wave.” This is only going to continue and get worse, says Amita Baviskar, Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University.

“We're going to see many, many more deaths of workers on building sites… We're talking about huge levels of distress, including fatalities, including people dying. And I think people are already struggling. My imagination fails me, but I can see that there will be violence around water because water is going to become more scarce,” she said in a podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia.

Baviskar paints a grim picture of the situation now and in the future. She says it is getting hotter not only in the plains of north India but also in the mountains. She points to the ‘urban heat island effect’— “our buildings, the fact that they trap heat and they release that heat in a way that adds to the solar radiation that we are experiencing as a part of summer. The fact that we have a lot of traffic, a lot of motorized vehicles that are releasing exhaust fumes.”

She says to untangle this problem and change things it would require a consensus—“It would be not only the government, it would also have to be the media, you know, civic, civil society, NGOs. Everybody would have to come on board and say we need to do this.” She adds, “this is what is a classic, you know, binding crisis. A binding crisis is one that affects everybody, irrespective of class and caste and region and gender and religion.”