<p>Delhi and Chennai both released heat action plans for 2026 with the same headline features: misting stations, cool rooms, public-health advisories, and targeted outreach to outdoor workers. Both plans identify informal workers as a high-risk group. Neither plan has made a street vendor’s right to free drinking water enforceable. That gap is the defining failure of India’s approach to climate adaptation.</p>.<p>Delhi’s Heat Action Plan, coordinated by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority, covers misting at bus depots, cool rooms at hospitals, increased ORS supply, and time-band restrictions on outdoor work. It is among the more detailed plans any Indian city has produced. Against this is set one statistic: 89%. That is the share of street vendors in Delhi who had no access to free water while working, according to WIEGO’s 2026 policy brief, based on surveys of nearly 500 vendors across 17 markets. Not one of those markets had a functioning municipal water point. During the 2025 heatwave, 90% of vendors cut working hours and 96% reported a sharp fall in customers.</p>.<p>A vendor working ten hours on a 43° day does not need a misting station three blocks away. She needs water where she stands. Delhi’s plan acknowledges the problem and does not solve it.</p>.<p>Tamil Nadu went further. In October 2024, it declared heatwaves a state-specific disaster, enabling relief through the State Disaster Response Fund and ex gratia payments of Rs 4 lakh to families of the dead. It was a meaningful, institutional step. It also exposed how narrow that step is against the scale of the problem.</p>.<p>A 2025 study by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation covered 3,300 women across 15 districts in seven states; 70% of women in high heat-vulnerability districts reported fatigue, dizziness, dehydration, and gastrointestinal illness during peak summer months; 97% reported income losses between April and June, averaging more than Rs 1,500. Agriculture, construction, and informal service work account for roughly 70% of female employment.</p>.<p>Tamil Nadu’s classification compensates families after death. It does not address the wage loss, the skipped meal, or the child pulled from tuition because the household cannot absorb the shortfall.</p>.<p>Research by Saudamini Das and E Somanathan, published in Environmental Research Letters in 2024, tracked nearly 400 informal workers in two Delhi slums in summer 2019. Every 1° Celsius rise in wet-bulb temperature reduced net earnings by 19%. Workers averaging Rs 268 per day lost more than Rs 100 on heatwave days. Net earnings fell 40% during the study’s two heatwave periods.</p>.<p>These are workers on daily wages or piece rates with no paid leave and no way to recover income once a hot day passes. Each additional degree is a direct transfer out of household income.</p>.<p><strong>A policy shift</strong></p>.<p>India’s heat action plans are failing not because governments lack information but because they are built around public health metrics: hospitalisation, heatstroke deaths, rather than income protection. Three changes would close that gap.</p>.<p>First, states should establish heat allowances for informal workers tied to notified heatwave days. Kerala declared heatwaves a state-specific disaster in 2019 and mandated workplace safety measures for outdoor labourers during heat events. A declared heat event triggering enforceable employer obligations is the template. A wage top-up funded through the State Disaster Response Fund and triggered automatically when the India Meteorological Department issues a heat-wave alert would reach the highest-risk workers without requiring them to file claims.</p>.<p>Second, heatwave days should become labour-specific disaster events with binding wage-equivalence rules. Tamil Nadu already treats heat as a state disaster. The next step is attaching a labour protection condition: workers in outdoor informal employment who reduce hours during a declared heatwave should not lose income. This requires notifications under the Disaster Management Act.</p>.<p>Third, heat action plans should carry binding infrastructure targets with independent audits. Delhi and Chennai should commit to 100% coverage of free water and shaded rest points within 200 metres of registered vending zones, with quarterly public reporting. A target without a compliance mechanism is a recommendation. India’s informal workers do not need another recommendation.</p>.<p>India’s heat action plans are measured by cool rooms opened and misting stations installed. The right measure is whether a street vendor in Delhi can drink water without paying on a 44° afternoon, and whether a woman labourer who loses three working days to heat exhaustion has any income protection. On both counts, current plans fall short. The data is not in dispute. The policy response still is.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is an independent public policy researcher working on <br>political economy, climate governance, technology policy, and democratic <br>accountability)</em></p><p><em>(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)</em></p>
<p>Delhi and Chennai both released heat action plans for 2026 with the same headline features: misting stations, cool rooms, public-health advisories, and targeted outreach to outdoor workers. Both plans identify informal workers as a high-risk group. Neither plan has made a street vendor’s right to free drinking water enforceable. That gap is the defining failure of India’s approach to climate adaptation.</p>.<p>Delhi’s Heat Action Plan, coordinated by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority, covers misting at bus depots, cool rooms at hospitals, increased ORS supply, and time-band restrictions on outdoor work. It is among the more detailed plans any Indian city has produced. Against this is set one statistic: 89%. That is the share of street vendors in Delhi who had no access to free water while working, according to WIEGO’s 2026 policy brief, based on surveys of nearly 500 vendors across 17 markets. Not one of those markets had a functioning municipal water point. During the 2025 heatwave, 90% of vendors cut working hours and 96% reported a sharp fall in customers.</p>.<p>A vendor working ten hours on a 43° day does not need a misting station three blocks away. She needs water where she stands. Delhi’s plan acknowledges the problem and does not solve it.</p>.<p>Tamil Nadu went further. In October 2024, it declared heatwaves a state-specific disaster, enabling relief through the State Disaster Response Fund and ex gratia payments of Rs 4 lakh to families of the dead. It was a meaningful, institutional step. It also exposed how narrow that step is against the scale of the problem.</p>.<p>A 2025 study by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation covered 3,300 women across 15 districts in seven states; 70% of women in high heat-vulnerability districts reported fatigue, dizziness, dehydration, and gastrointestinal illness during peak summer months; 97% reported income losses between April and June, averaging more than Rs 1,500. Agriculture, construction, and informal service work account for roughly 70% of female employment.</p>.<p>Tamil Nadu’s classification compensates families after death. It does not address the wage loss, the skipped meal, or the child pulled from tuition because the household cannot absorb the shortfall.</p>.<p>Research by Saudamini Das and E Somanathan, published in Environmental Research Letters in 2024, tracked nearly 400 informal workers in two Delhi slums in summer 2019. Every 1° Celsius rise in wet-bulb temperature reduced net earnings by 19%. Workers averaging Rs 268 per day lost more than Rs 100 on heatwave days. Net earnings fell 40% during the study’s two heatwave periods.</p>.<p>These are workers on daily wages or piece rates with no paid leave and no way to recover income once a hot day passes. Each additional degree is a direct transfer out of household income.</p>.<p><strong>A policy shift</strong></p>.<p>India’s heat action plans are failing not because governments lack information but because they are built around public health metrics: hospitalisation, heatstroke deaths, rather than income protection. Three changes would close that gap.</p>.<p>First, states should establish heat allowances for informal workers tied to notified heatwave days. Kerala declared heatwaves a state-specific disaster in 2019 and mandated workplace safety measures for outdoor labourers during heat events. A declared heat event triggering enforceable employer obligations is the template. A wage top-up funded through the State Disaster Response Fund and triggered automatically when the India Meteorological Department issues a heat-wave alert would reach the highest-risk workers without requiring them to file claims.</p>.<p>Second, heatwave days should become labour-specific disaster events with binding wage-equivalence rules. Tamil Nadu already treats heat as a state disaster. The next step is attaching a labour protection condition: workers in outdoor informal employment who reduce hours during a declared heatwave should not lose income. This requires notifications under the Disaster Management Act.</p>.<p>Third, heat action plans should carry binding infrastructure targets with independent audits. Delhi and Chennai should commit to 100% coverage of free water and shaded rest points within 200 metres of registered vending zones, with quarterly public reporting. A target without a compliance mechanism is a recommendation. India’s informal workers do not need another recommendation.</p>.<p>India’s heat action plans are measured by cool rooms opened and misting stations installed. The right measure is whether a street vendor in Delhi can drink water without paying on a 44° afternoon, and whether a woman labourer who loses three working days to heat exhaustion has any income protection. On both counts, current plans fall short. The data is not in dispute. The policy response still is.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is an independent public policy researcher working on <br>political economy, climate governance, technology policy, and democratic <br>accountability)</em></p><p><em>(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)</em></p>