How India’s heat crisis is reshaping work and well-being

In May 2024, at a small construction site near Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, a 25-year-old worker collapsed just hours into his shift. As per a report by The Times of India, he had been “working under the sun since morning when he suddenly fainted.” 

The worker was reportedly rushed to a hospital and was declared dead on arrival. 

The same week, temperatures in Chennai and its industrial suburbs touched 41–42 degrees Celsius, with local outlets flagging a spike in heat-related illness reports. Across India, too, news from states, including

Delhi, Gujarat, and Odisha, spoke about construction workers fainting mid-shift, farm labourers collapsing in fields, and factory staff suffering from dehydration in poorly ventilated units. 

A consolidated news analysis for March–June 2024 counted 733 heatstroke deaths across 17 Indian states.

Amidst these circumstances, India’s 2025 Lancet Countdown Data Sheet, released on October 29, is an urgent call for change. The report notes that in 2024 alone, India experienced an average of 19.8 heatwave days, of which 6.6 days were directly attributed to climate change. 

In fact, heat exposure led to 247 billion potential labour-hours lost in 2024 (419 hours per person), with agriculture (66%) and construction (20%) bearing most losses. 

The report also highlights the rising dengue suitability—from 0.86 in 1951–60 to 1.60 in 2015–24. 

The 2025 Lancet indicators show expanding environmental susceptibility for dengue in India, as health systems face overlapping burdens from heat, air pollution, and infectious disease risks. The India Data Sheet 2025 has estimated 1.72 million deaths in 2022, and valued the economic loss from outdoor air-pollution-related mortality at $339.4 billion (9.5% of India’s GDP). 

It also points out that over 18 million people in India live on land more than one metre above sea level, making them highly vulnerable to sea-level rise, coastal flooding, and saltwater intrusion into soil and drinking water sources.

Globally, the 2025 Lancet Countdown found that heat-related mortality has been up by 23% since the 1990s, averaging 5,46,000 deaths per year between 2012 and 2021. It warns that delayed climate action is costing millions of lives every year, and cutting fossil fuels and strengthening health systems could prevent many of these deaths.

These figures translate into daily realities on worksites and factory floors in India’s largely informal economy, where many workers still lack shade, cooling, and enforceable protections. 

A September 2025 assessment by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre argued that heat-stress deaths in Indian workplaces may be six times higher than official data suggests, with particular risks in garment and textile units. 

Furthermore, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has projected that India could lose almost 34 million full-time jobs by 2030 due to heat-stress-driven productivity losses.

Meanwhile, women workers bear disproportionate burdens. Evidence from Bengaluru non-profit Cividep showed the conditions and heat-related distress in the city’s garment sector. Also, global bodies like the International Rice Research Institute and Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research describe women farmers in Odisha shifting hours earlier and adopting coping practices to avoid peak heat. 

Models to learn from

Ahmedabad’s Heat Action Plan (HAP)—also India’s first—has been evaluated multiple times and has helped save more than a thousand lives a year and lowered deaths during severe heatwaves.

Several states and cities now run HAPs or equivalents, such as Delhi’s HAP 2024–25; Telangana’s Heatwave Action Plan and its statewide Cool Roof Policy 2023–28—demonstrating 2–5 degrees of indoor cooling from cool roofs in Indian pilots and programmes. 

India’s National Programme on Climate Change and Human Health, under the National Centre for Disease Control / Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, runs heat-illness and death surveillance, issues seasonal advisories, and funds state-level action planning.

Experts say all the data should serve as more than just a warning, but a health blueprint for the decade ahead. 

The Lancet Countdown 2025 urges countries like India to phase out fossil fuels, strengthen primary healthcare, and redesign cities for heat resilience, calling such measures “the most impactful health interventions of this century.”

As India prepares for another record summer, the question is how quickly health systems can rise to meet the heat—before it outpaces them.