Can India adapt to extreme heat? | FT Film

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The productivity and success of the company really does rely on the wellbeing of the workforce.

You work, you earn, and you eat. If you do not work, you won't eat.

It's facing us in the eye. The students have to be made aware. They have to have an opinion now.

Yes.

We need to realise that for 2050 there's only a 50 per cent probability that we're all going to survive.

It's good that this time we will have a strong representation at COP.

25 people will be travelling from Teri [The Energy and Resources Institute]. Teri has basically been assigned...

So I'm Suruchi Bhadwal, and I've been working with Teri for the last 22 years, in the field of climate change. The difference between the heatwave this year versus what we've been hearing over the last two decades, earlier it was just pocketed events in some part of the country or the other. But this year was unique because two-thirds of the country was under heatwave conditions with consistently higher temperatures than the normals of those regions, for a greater number of days.

We are a developing country, urbanising at a very rapid pace. Most of the cities and the way they are growing in an unplanned way is leading to the urban heat island effect, where we are trapping hot air within certain areas.

There might be a situation where there'll be a three-degree rise in temperatures. Are you concerned?

Yes, definitely.

You know, I love wandering about in class and interacting with my students, but I found myself tiring so easily.

I'm not necessarily an unhealthy person who would, you know, faint due to other reasons. So it became clear to me that my exposure to that temperature was the trigger for, you know, me fainting.

We being the age we are, we've gone through the times when there was hail, thunder, lightning, rain, temperature freezing or very, very hot, and we went to school. So for us to comprehend why schools should shut down just because the temperatures touched 40 degrees... I am totally against this policy. The kids need to be resilient. I'm all for it.

- I tried to go to open marketplaces. But at the moment, you can't really go to those places because it's so hot.

Extreme all year, extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme rain, those are the factors that get unpredictable all year.

That, basically, do not allow them to use any structure. Now, these blue sheets are not allowed because they are fixed. You need shade, you need shade. It not only protects the vendor, this also provides shade to consumers. And the problem is that we don't have enough green resources.

Productivity's basically going down, and it's affecting the economy and our incomes and the well-to-do-ness of our people. Who's accountable? Where is the accountability in the system?

My name's Anant Ahuja. I work at Shahi Exports. And I run the organisational development team, which is responsible for programmes on worker wellbeing, environmental sustainability compliance, among a few other areas. We run over 50 factories across nine states in India. And these employ over 100,000 full-time workers.

The productivity and success of the company really does rely on the wellbeing of the workforce.

We've taken a range of different measures to address the challenges caused by heat stress. We have high-volume, low-speed fans, which essentially push down cool air. We've installed LED lights at the needle point. When Shahi converted to LED lights a few years go, the temperature on the shop floor reduced by 2.4 degrees Celsius. So through all these different measures there's ways we can actually make sure it's cooler inside than outside by a few degrees.

NREGA is an extraordinary programme because it guarantees employment in a country the size of India, providing basic infrastructure in the village, so all the things that could sustain a rural community. NREGA gives you a choice to go to work at any time of the year. But what is the lean time of year for work? It is the heat season.

So you have the highest number of people turning up for work at the hottest time of the year. It is unbearable. It's impossible, almost, to hold your instruments. And often the government does actually reduce the work norms during those months. And it does change timings. So they're not looking at it from the point of view of workers. They're not giving that self-management the opportunity that it should have.

They all made a very strong demand that let us determine our working hours. I think, actually, if we were to pay more attention to the people most affected, which is the poor, who are workers, who are farmers who produce everything that we have today, I think we will perhaps find better solutions for all of us, as an economy, and for the globe, certainly.

There have been cases of deaths that have been reported, with regard to heat strokes, dehydration, cardiac arrests, and respiratory problems. And most of these people who are basically working outdoors.

We do have cases, we have people who have succumbed to that, actually, in Delhi itself. Heatwave...

People are not aware about dehydration, rehydration, the basic do's or don'ts.

We actually have 70 per cent of our electricity requirement coming from renewable sources. Climate change is definitely a factor in our decision-making process. There needs to be more urgency around this. There also needs to be more research and understanding around how businesses can adapt to these changing conditions. Once they have a better understanding, I believe that can drive action.

Most of the emissions out there and the concentrations out there are because of the developed countries, and therefore, the negotiations, basically, on how the developing countries can get assistance from the developed countries, with regard to climate finance and appropriate technology to be able to adapt to the consequences of the changing climate.

I mean, it's there and it's facing us in the eye. These are real issues.

I mean, workers have to survive. They are most vulnerable, so they have a critique. They had a critique far before we did. We have only come to that critique because suddenly we find that the entire Earth that we are living on is under threat.

We are arrogant of our development, of our science, of our discoveries and innovations. Ultimately, this is going to hit back.

Two-thirds of your country is in floods every year. And therefore, we all need to do something about it.

And we have to make sense.

Students have to be made aware. They have to have an opinion now.

At the end of the day, we are the ones who have to face the brunt of it.

I should be the one taking the steps to stop climate change rather than depending on some old politician who probably would be dead in 2050, as well.

They are not precious dolls. They'd better learn what reality is.

Yes.

COP26, many countries came together and gave really motivational speeches that we'll be... we claim to have net-zero emissions by 2050, 2060, 2070, et cetera. Why are these goals such long-term goals? The world leaders of today will not take any responsibility for what happens in 2050 or 2060.

We should have a COP conference in millions of places around the Earth, not amongst the policymakers but amongst the people most affected.

The bills are being paid by us. The costs are on us. And the bureaucrats and the decision-makers are still not accountable to the overall issue that we're talking about.

Thank you all so very much.

You need countries and bureaucrats and policymakers to come forward, and regulation and litigation. There is no second Earth on which we can basically, you know, migrate. You get your act together or be ready for mass extinctions. If we continue the same way and the patterns, I think it's a question of survival for the human race as well.