Bengaluru: India is living through a heatwave right now. On May 17, the India Meteorological Department announced that both daytime and night temperatures were “markedly above normal” – more than 5.1° Celsius above normal – in parts of central and northwestern India including Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat. Temperatures in Delhi are expected to touch 45° Celsius this week. These heatwave conditions – which can also turn into a severe heatwave in parts of Uttar Pradesh – will extend for almost a week, it warned.This is the second heatwave that has swept across India this summer. Many parts of India witnessed a heatwave in mid- to late-April, and there were reports of people losing their lives too. But with global warming that’s not surprising, some would argue: we are in a “super” El Niño year after all, and climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of heatwaves worldwide — including in India.However, governance failures and not being prepared to deal with these high heat risks, or mitigate them, are aggravating the impacts of heat. There are several reasons why. The Indian government does not recognise a heatwave as a national disaster. Heat deaths are still drastically undercounted. More easier and visible short-term actions such as putting up cooling stations are implemented and funded more over crucial long-term actions. And those long-term actions that are being implemented – such as tree planting – are often not targeted at the right people or places, and therefore do not reach the communities that are the most vulnerable to high heat risks. But there are ways out, scientists say.India: Hard-hit by heat A heatwave is defined as a period where local excess heat accumulates over a sequence of unusually hot days and nights, per the World Meteorological Organisation. According to the UN, the world witnessed around 4,89,000 heat-related deaths annually between 2000 and 2019, with 45% occurring in Asia.India announces a heatwave to occur if the maximum temperature at a station reaches at least 40°C or more in the plains, and at least 30°C or more in the hills, and if the temperature increase from normal levels is by more than 4.5°C (or when the actual maximum temperature is more than 45°C). India is among the countries hardest hit by heat. On account of India’s high population and heat wave area, a study in 2022 listed India’s population and economy as being the most exposed to heat risks between 2030 and 2100. According to one estimate, India lost an estimated 259 billion labour hours each year due to extreme heat and humidity between 2001 and 2020, a figure that amounts to an economic loss of around Rs 46 lakh crore. And yet, the union government still does not recognise a heatwave as a national disaster. As a result, there is a limit on the funding that states and departments can avail of to implement actions to tackle heat.A woman covers a child from the scorching heat during the summer season, in Mumbai, Maharashtra, Wednesday, May 13, 2026. Photo: PTI.Heat is not a national disasterCurrently, states can tap into two mitigation funds – the National Disaster Mitigation Fund and the State Disaster Mitigation Fund – to implement heat actions. But there are also two existing response funds to tackle notified national disasters (there are currently 12, including cold waves) in general: the National Disaster Response Fund and the State Disaster Response Fund. Currently, states can use only up to 10% of their SDRF allocation for disasters that they classify as local or state-specific. Funds under the NDRF are not available to them at all – because heat is not recognised as a national disaster.“For a state like Uttar Pradesh — with 75 districts, over 240 million people, and one of the highest aggregate heat-risk profiles in the country — a 10 per cent access ceiling on an already limited fund is not a safety net; it is a bureaucratic fiction,” wrote Ankit Mishra, a researcher who studies environment, climate change, public policy and governance at the Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute in Prayagraj, in a commentary on Down To Earth.But this could change – if the government pays heed to the 16th Finance Commission. In its report (released and tabled in Parliament on February 1 this year), the Commission recommended that heatwaves and lightning be added to the list of notified disasters at the national level:“Although States currently have the flexibility to use 10 per cent of SDRF allocations for State‑specific disasters, the rising severity, frequency, and impact of heat waves and lightning warrant their inclusion in the nationally notified list of disasters. Both heatwaves and lightning are severe events that have caused significant loss of life. Given their scale and the fact that they often exceed the coping capacity of affected communities, they merit inclusion in the list of notified disasters at the national level.” It noted that 11 states have already notified heatwaves as a state‑specific disaster, and that many states had “strongly advocated” to the Commission that heatwaves be included among the notified disasters under the national framework too, due to increasing instances. The last three Finance Commissions had refused to cave in to states’ demands to list heatwaves as a national disaster. Listing heatwaves as a disaster would show that the government is acknowledging the problem, said Abinash Mohanty, head of Climate Change and Sustainability at the advisory group IPE Global. Then, he says, funds will start flowing in. According to Tamanna Dalal, a researcher at Sustainable Futures Collective, a Delhi-based independent research organisation, the main reason why India should declare heatwaves as a national disaster is because this will build accountability.“It will build an accountability mechanism, a signal that heat is now a national disaster and people at the top care about it. This is currently lacking,” she said.Undercounting deaths, not listing heat as a causeBut will the Union government concede? It has not so far because that will mean earmarking a lot of money for heat impacts and actions, including paying Rs 4 lakh as compensation to every person who dies due to heat-related health issues, according to Mishra in DTE. But there’s ambiguity here too – because we drastically undercount heat-related mortality.The Ministry of Earth Sciences submitted to the Parliament in August last year that between 2018 and 2022, heat killed 3,798 people across India. According to the Indian Express, the National Crime Records Bureau reported 20,615 heatstroke deaths between 2000 and 2020. These figures suggest that heat kills around 1,000 deaths – or less – annually. An analysis of district-wise data by scientists at UC Berkeley however suggests that a single day of heatwave across India leads to an estimated 3,400 excess deaths nationally, while a single five-day heatwave leads to approximately 30,000 excess deaths across both rural and urban districts (based on certain assumptions).Clearly, India’s heat mortality figures are a huge underestimate. Many scientists have voiced this concern too. One reason why heat deaths are undercounted is that heat is not often listed as a cause of death: physicians often record only the immediate medical cause on death certificates, without acknowledging the role of heat as the underlying trigger. According to what Srinath Reddy, founder of the Public Health Foundation of India told the AFP, “incomplete reporting, delayed reporting and misclassification of deaths,” is a concern.Not knowing how many deaths occur due to heat means that India cannot prioritize actions to tackle this disaster.A farmer pours water from a tube well to beat the heat at a paddy field, in Morigaon district, Assam, Tuesday, May 12, 2026. Photo: PTI.Short-term actions dominate Currently, most of the actions being taken to tackle the issue of heat across the country are short-term ones (such as installing cooling centres, or conducting awareness sessions about heatwaves, or distributing ORS during heatwaves). This is because short-term actions are more ‘visible’, easier to finance and implement, and because existing government mandates enable more short-term actions than long-term ones, said Dalal.In March last year, Dalal and her colleagues assessed how extreme heat policies are being implemented across nine cities (New Delhi, Ludhiana, Meerut, Faridabad, Gwalior, Kota, Surat, Mumbai and Bengaluru) in India. They spoke to 88 government officials spanning around six departments including health and disaster management. They found that while all cities reported implementing short-term measures to prevent deaths due to heatwaves, long-term actions were lacking. This was due to a mix of several problems, their report said: “weakly institutionalised heat action plans, limited public support for long-term measures, and an interconnected set of institutional constraints”. These constraints included coordination failures and competing priorities between government departments, a staff crunch, and inadequate finance.“Short term actions are important, they save lives,” said Dalal. “But why are they not taking long term actions? Land was one of the biggest issues…people do not want to give land. For eg., it is difficult for an urban planning department to convince a developer to have setbacks between buildings [mandatory open space required between a building’s outer walls and the property lines or neighbouring structures] on land which could have been used for the building itself.”There was also “very little imagination” of what long term actions would look like, Dalal said; people only knew about trees. Moreover, their study findings reflected what political scientists have noted for several years now – that politicians, voters and implementers all have “myopic vision”, she added: “Politicians are here for just five years. They want visible actions that people can vote on.” Misplaced heat actionsThe long term actions that are being implemented suffer a major drawback: they are not well-targeted. Tree planting is the best example of this, said Dalal.“All departments across India have a greening target which they have to meet every year. Wherever they find land, they plant whatever trees they have without any sort of heat perspective. Are they planting trees in areas that have lesser green cover? Are they planting trees which have a higher canopy which can give more shade?”Dalal gave the example of a tree planting drive in Vasant Kunj, a rich locality in Delhi, under the Ek Ped Ma Ke Naam scheme last year.“This is the richest of the rich areas, touted to be so green that it is 2 Degrees Celsius cooler than the rest of Delhi. This [planting trees in an area that already has tree cover] is a non-targeted heat action.” Studies including two recent ones from India show how important it is to plant specific species of trees, and plant them wisely – in areas that really need green cover. Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar analysed tree cover in 138 Indian cities and found that trees alone are not enough; cities need smarter and more climate-responsive planning to ensure that tree cover delivers maximum cooling benefits. “The question is not whether cities should be green. They should be,” said Angana Borah, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications on May 4. “The question is what kind of green, where and how much. In dry cities, vegetation can provide strong cooling benefits. In humid and compact neighbourhoods, planners also need to think about airflow and moisture build-up.”Meanwhile, scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur combined heat and air pollution indices for Delhi and found that central Delhi – home to a lot of green cover due to Central Ridge and other treed areas – was cooler and less polluted compared to other parts of Delhi like Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad. Source: Kuttippurath and Patel, 2026.It is “imperative for city planners to consider not only the extent of green cover, but also its geographical distribution and specific plant types when drafting strategies to mitigate air pollution and urban heat”, their study published in March noted.Of course, existing green cover also has to be maintained, climate scientist Jayanarayanan Kuttippurath, associate professor at IIT Kharagpur and lead author of the study, told The Wire. “Retaining existing tree cover is important,” he told The Wire. “Green cover in urban areas needs to be kept aside, and we need to plan our cities better. Expansion of cities must be regulated.”Governments appear to be struggling to retain existing green cover. In Nashik, the municipal corporation cut down several old-growth trees in March to widen roads for the Simhastha Kumbh Mela in 2027; the plan was to cut around 584 trees. However, the National Green Tribunal has stayed the tree felling till June 19 after a city resident filed a petition regarding this. In Delhi, the government transplanted more than 2,400 trees for the Central Vista project in 2022. About a month ago, it admitted in Parliament that of the 3,600 trees transplanted, around 43% (1,545) had perished. Ensuring mandatesExperts agree that some good changes have come about over the years in heat policy and governance: there are more Heat Action Plans across the country now, and awareness about them has increased too, they say.Disaster management authorities went from not even knowing about what Heat Action Plans are (in around 2022) and if their cities or districts or states had one, to awareness about these plans and why they are important, said Dalal. “A number floated around in government meetings and workshops is that there will be around 300 heat Action Plans across India at the end of this year…There has been consistent effort on the HAP side.”However, HAPs are not mandatory. Currently, they have no legal backing, said Dalal: “So departments are not mandated or accountable to do the things listed in it. That is why top-down pushes are required for implementation.”According to Mohanty, at least 69 districts, 23 states and 30 cities have Heat Action Plans. But these Plans will have to be envisioned differently — as a “bankable investment opportunity”, according to Mohanty. “We need to make it a project that addresses jobs, growth and sustainability,” he told The Wire.We need to also rethink how we build our cities and homes, and sustainable housing and building materials need to be mandated because currently they are only a voluntary part of our building codes, he added. Governments need to do moreThe bottomline: governments need to do more to implement heat actions and responses – especially in the long term. This also means that several departments have to talk to each other more efficiently because heat is a multi-sectoral issue, Dalal said:“Heat is one of the things which speaks for almost all climate actions. It is so multi-sectoral. Unless all of these work in tandem, there is not going to be a heat resilience strategy. The labour department would be able to do something about work settings, labour settings, but cannot do anything about how public spaces are built. You’d need the PWD on board, and other departments.”Political will at all levels is crucial because heat is not a national, state or concurrent subject, Mohanty said. “So ownership needs to be pinpointed. And there needs to be accountability within the government structure for heat. A Climate Risk Commission, like a Finance Commission, could ensure mandated, tailored actions,” said Mohanty.In March this year, a team of scientists studied mobile phone location data across several countries including India and found that people were making behavioural changes on heatwave days: they spent more time at home, and did not venture outside. Its noted that governments need to do more to protect people from heat.“Alongside early warning systems, public messaging and longer-term measures such as urban greening to reduce temperatures, governments need to do far more to help people stay cool when extreme temperatures hit,” Shiv Yücel, the lead author of the study, wrote in an article for The Conversation on May 14.Cooling actions are important and they need to go further than just opening cooling zones, like the Delhi administration did this year, said Dalal. Among the recommendations listed in the SFC’s 2025 report is creating a highly-targeted active cooling programme that provides subsidies to high-risk urban populations to buy energy-efficient Air Conditioning systems. “These subsidies will be more effective if deployed nationally but must be targeted at Indian cities with the highest heat risk, determined by the vulnerability assessment of its HAP,” the report noted.