Profile: Indian heatwave

Leading Indian newspapers and websites yesterday called for the government to take urgent action over the heatwave, which has seen temperatures soar to nearly 50C (122F) in parts of the south, east and north of the country this week.

Worst hit is the south-eastern state of Andhra Pradesh where 852 people have died with 266 dying in nearby Telangana. Another 24 have been killed by the heatwave in the eastern states of Orissa and West Bengal. The north has also been hit with deaths reported in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab.

More deaths are predicted over the next few days as the high temperatures are set to continue until the weekend. Any drop in temperatures then will be short-term as meteorologists are forecasting another hot spell to follow.

Rickshaw pullers, construction workers, poor farmers, beggars and the homeless are the most vulnerable, with little protection from the searing heat.

While people in the badly hit states have been warned to stay indoors, many claim not enough is being done by the government to alleviate their suffering.

“I have personally witnessed the death of a three-year-old very close to where I stay and that was because of severe heat,” said Alfred Innes who lives in the Telangana capital, Hyderabad.

“It’s very sad. The government isn’t doing much, but as individuals we are trying our best,” he added.

CALAMITY

IN KOLKATA, taxi drivers are threatening afternoon strikes while The Times of India demanded changes in working practices to protect workers.

“In rural areas the focus has to be on rescheduling work timing and reducing direct exposure to the sun,” said the paper. “Vulnerable groups should also limit outdoor activities. Building cool rooms close by to provide relief to outdoor workers will also help.”

The newspaper also called on the government to “ensure that local health services have the capacity to deliver assistance to the vulnerable groups, especially the old-aged and the chronically ill”.

Influential website FirstPost urged the government to declare the heatwave a “disaster” and “put in place both preventive and mitigatory steps”.

“Despite its predictable, periodic incidence and high levels of mortality, governments have done precious little to mitigate its impact on people because obviously they don’t care – it’s still not considered a natural calamity,” said FirstPost.

A warning system should be created to save lives, according to The Scroll website. It said: “India’s current heatwave is predicted to go on for a few days more, which would lead to hundreds of completely avoidable deaths simply because India’s governments do not have any systems in place to warn of heatwaves or fight heat illness.”

Two thirds of the country’s 1.2 billion population have no electricity and are forced to endure the heat without relief while even those lucky enough to have air conditioning or fans have often been unable to use them because power surges have been crippling the already strained supply.

Thousands of people in the cities are crowding into air conditioned shops and malls to try to escape the heat.

While the monsoon rains are expected to hit Kerala in the south in the next few days it will be weeks before they bring any relief to the dry plains of the worst hit areas. Meteorologists say they could suffer drought before the rains arrive.

HEATWAVES INCREASING

INDIA has been hit increasingly by severe heatwaves since the turn of the century with the death toll frequently passing the 1,000 mark.

Heatwaves are declared when the mercury reaches at least five degrees more than the average recorded on the same date over the last 30 years and climate experts predict the number of heatwaves in India will continue to increase because of global warming.

In the southern city of Hyderabad alone heatwaves are expected to rocket from five days to 40 days per year.

However, India will not be the only country to suffer, as man-made climate change has played a major part in a 60-fold increase in the likelihood of extreme temperatures, according to joint research by the Canadian government, the University of Victoria in British Columbia and the China Meteorological Administration.

This resulted in 2014 being the hottest year since records began and 2015 could be just as bad because of the added complication of the El Nino weather phenomenon, characterised by unusually warm surface water temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific, which triggers searing heat across Asia.

As a result of the arrival of El Nino in the Pacific in March, India Meteorological Department’s monsoon forecast predicts that rainfall is likely to be below average this year, which will badly affect the areas hit by the heatwave.

Experts have also revealed that the global average concentration of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that traps heat within the atmosphere, has now reached dangerous levels, reaching 400 parts per million for the first time in recorded history.

Despite this India, the third largest emitter of the gas in the world after China and the US, has resisted pressure to announce a peaking year, saying that the country’s growth comes first. Instead the government argues that developing nations must be allowed to grow and is pushing for a common but differentiated policy based on equity.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that net global emissions of carbon dioxide has to fall by 40-70 per cent over the next 35 years to stop a temperature rise of beyond two degrees, which is commonly seen as the threshold for irreversible climate change.