Sunil Rastogi, an auto-rickshaw driver in New Delhi, normally works 12-hour days to make ends meet and save for the heart surgery he needs. But in summer, as temperatures climb above 40°C, he faces a dilemma. Should he work fewer hours, bringing home less for his family and delaying his surgery, or press ahead and risk worsening his fragile health?
“I feel tired as it is,” Rastogi said recently. “This heat makes me even more tired.”
For millions of workers like Rastogi — wage labourers, construction workers, street vendors and delivery drivers — the scorching summer in New Delhi forces a bitter trade-off between health and income. They keep the machinery of the city running, and they are among the most susceptible to its harshest conditions.
On the hottest days, the surface temperature can reach 60°C, according to the Centre for Science and Environment, a New Delhi-based think tank. That is when tarmac starts to soften, and barefoot workers risk blistering their feet.
Rastogi, 54, said he had to choose his health during the summer heat. He works only about five hours each day, seven fewer than usual, to avoid the sweltering midday sun. That may mean putting off his surgery, but it lowers the short-term risk of a health emergency that could force him to stop working.
“I have two children,” Rastogi said. “I have responsibilities.”
Others work through the stifling heat, which can still undermine their earnings. Nitin Verma, 58, runs a street-side flower stall. When the weather is pleasant, he said, he can earn as much as Rs 3000 a day. But on many summer days, he is unable to recoup even the Rs 100 he spends on tea and drinking water. He carefully tends to his flowers, plucking wilted petals and removing rotten stems. “Then I just sit around,” he said. Customers rarely come.
Over the decades, summers in India have grown longer and hotter. This year, severe heatwaves hit vast swaths of the country in April and May, with temperatures exceeding 43°C.
Although the capital territory that includes New Delhi suffers in summer, the distribution of heat is uneven. Certain pockets, often those where the most vulnerable communities live, are more exposed to heat because of shrinking forest cover, heavy traffic and haphazard construction, according to a recent report by the Centre for Science and Environment. With night temperatures also rising, the window during which the human body can cool down enough for relief is narrowing.
Officials enacted some relief measures for workers this year. Each of Delhi’s 13 districts has been given a mobile relief van stocked with supplies like cold water, hats and oral rehydration salts, officials said. They have also set up tented rest areas as “cooling zones.”
Journalists visited some of the cooling zones and relief vans, but it took a few phone calls to track them down. When they called an emergency helpline for assistance, the operator had no information on how to locate them and directed them to the district magistrates’ offices.
Eventually, they found a cooling zone near Jama Masjid, one of old Delhi’s famous mosques. Eight air coolers were running, and about a third of the 75 seats in the tented area were occupied.
Krishna Rani, 45, a security guard at a neighbourhood school, said she was grateful for the resting area, which she had used every evening before her hour-long bus ride home. Rani, who has four children and is her family’s sole breadwinner, said working less was not an option. “I can’t let heat deter me,” she said. “I have to earn for my children’s sake.”
A mobile relief van was located about 14 km away, in a neighbourhood in South Delhi. It was equipped with a small fridge, a water dispenser, sachets of rehydration salts and a drum that could hold up to 500 litres of water. People stood in line as volunteers handed out water. They were also handing out caps emblazoned with a Hindi slogan that loosely translated to, “Beat the heat, with the Delhi government in the lead.”
Because the relief vans park in different places each day, some Delhi residents said they could be difficult to find. The cooling zones are easier to spot, but stopping to rest could mean sacrificing valuable time on the job.
The New York Times