A YEAR ago, in June 2014, there was a man who collected rubbish for recycling from the posh neighbourhood in Delhi where The Economist keeps its offices. Apparently in good health, the kure-wallah (rubbish trader) routinely gathered cardboard, old newspapers and other waste, piling it onto the back of a cycle-rickshaw. He worked by day, pedalling between houses even as temperatures in the shade, during the pre-monsoon months, routinely reached 44°C (111°F). In the middle of a notably hot day, as he cycled up an incline on a busy main road with his heavily laden cart, he collapsed and died. He was in his twenties. India is again in the grip of its annual heatwave.
In the two weeks ending May 27th, according to press reports, a total of over 1,100 people died as a result of intense and prolonged high temperatures. In Delhi road surfaces were shown melting. The elderly and the infirm, as ever, are most vulnerable, but anyone who labours in extreme conditions can succumb to heatstroke or other afflictions complicated by dehydration or exhaustion. In Andhra Pradesh, a southern state, over 850 people have reportedly died. Every year at least hundreds are said to die from the heat. This year seems especially bad. Why are heatwaves in India so deadly?
Scientists are increasingly willing to attribute extreme weather events to human influence
Reliable statistics are impossible to find and Indian press reports are not entirely trustworthy. In fact the true death toll is almost surely much higher than reported numbers. One point of comparison is a heatwave in 2003 that struck 16 countries of western Europe, notably France, which saw seven days with temperatures of more than 40°C. A study of average mortality rates in the years preceding the heatwave in those countries suggested higher temperatures there in 2003 had caused 70,000 premature deaths, again with the elderly the most vulnerable. India has more than four times the population of those European countries, and temperatures have been much higher than 40°C. In addition, many more jobs—from rubbish collection to street-sweeping, farming or construction—are done by human labour rather than machines. Poverty and substandard housing also exacerbate the effect of extreme temperatures. (Cold snaps in northern India also claim many lives.) India does have a much younger population than Europe, with a median age of just 26 years, and its people may be better schooled in ways to cope with heat, given India's higher average summer temperature. Yet it is reasonable to conclude that high heat will claim thousands of lives in India this summer.
As Indians grow richer its people should become somewhat better able to protect themselves from the heat. Yet the country's development will also create new problems. As India's economy grows it is becoming more urban. The phenomenon of "heat islands" is noticeable in India, as enormous cities store the day's heat in tarmac or buildings, and release additional heat into the air, from vehicles for example. At least anecdotally, cities appear to remain warmer at night than villages, so residents must endure sustained higher temperatures. Environmental changes may also complicate matters, thanks both to local factors (such as air pollution, deforestation or chronic water shortages) or global ones (climate change). Relief will eventually arrive in the form of the annual monsoon, which arrives—depending where you are in India—in June and July. Were climate change to meddle with the monsoon cycle, even a much-richer India would struggle to adapt.
