From ASHAs to Factory Workers: Why India’s Heat Crisis Demands Worker-Centred Climate Policy

"We stand for 10 hours without a break, dripping in sweat. They know this, but still, nothing — no buttermilk, no lime juice, not even water with salt."

For nearly four years, Lata (name changed), a textile worker in Tamil Nadu, has worked in a factory where there are no windows, fans or cooling equipment of any kind. When the machines start radiating heat, the factory floor becomes a furnace. Workers like Lata stand for 10-12 hours a day without rest or any protection from heat, often skipping breaks to meet production targets. Once home, overcome by exhaustion, Lata turns on her coping routine: she pours down a large bottle of water over her head and collapses onto the floor.

Thousands of kilometers away in Jhajjar, Haryana Anita Bhagalpuri, an Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) facilitator faces a different but equally punishing reality. Her work requires her to move from one house to another, often under the blazing sun. Summer brings an added burden: a rise in diseases like malaria and dengue leads to more surveys and field visits, and increased workload for ASHAs. As an incentive-based worker, taking a break often means losing income. 

Anita and Lata are two women, embedded in vastly different sectors, yet united by a common reality: they are among those who have contributed the least to global emissions but are forced to bear some of the most debilitating impacts of a warming world.

Heat does not exist in isolation for Lata or Anita. It compounds many structural injustices. Lata's workplace lacks basic ventilation, drinking water, or flexibility in breaks. Anita  operates within a system marked by irregular and inadequate honoraria, lack of formal recognition, and minimal workplace infrastructure. HeatWatch's survey with 86 ASHA workers in Haryana found that only 37.2% have access to drinking water, and a third lack even basic workplace facilities. Meanwhile, 80% of ASHAs face increased expenses in food, water, electricity, and heat-related medical costs in summer.

In garment factories, the story is no different. HeatWatch's research with 115 garment factory workers found that 78% skip breaks to meet targets, and 79.1% report fixed break times that make it nearly impossible to pause at other times of exhaustion. In such conditions, extreme heat is not just a weather event but a condition of employment. This is why its impact cannot be measured or curtailed by setting temperature thresholds alone. The toll of relentless production targets and long working hours in compounding heat stress has long been ignored in policy. Heat stress, in these contexts, is as much about work structures as it is about rising temperatures.

These stories are part of a much larger and deeply alarming trend. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year on record, with the past ten years all ranking in the top ten. India is bearing the brunt of this in ways we are only beginning to measure. HeatWatch recorded at least 733 heatstroke deaths in 2024, and that is only mortality. The toll on long-term health, the quiet accumulation of illness and exhaustion never makes it into official records. India also has the world's largest population at high and medium risk due to inadequate access to cooling, according to the Chilling Prospects. And even where cooling exists, who gets it is shaped by gender, caste, and class. The long-term economic stakes are equally stark, with India poised to lose the equivalent of 35 million full-time jobs by 2030.  CEEW's district-level analysis of heat risk also reminds us that hazard, exposure, and vulnerability do not fall evenly. Clearly, the time to act was yesterday.

However, there have been some recent, important policy shifts. The 16th Finance Commission has formally recommended including heatwaves in India's list of notified disasters, which may empower governments to legally enforce work stoppages, rest breaks, and safety norms. But policy responses remain fragmented. Climate ministries overlook workers, and labour ministries do not integrate climate risk. The National Action Plans, NDCs, and City Climate Action Plans prioritise energy and agriculture while lacking enforceable measures on heat for formal or informal workers. In response, many workers continue to demand formal recognition, fair wages, social security, and basic infrastructure — demands that become ever more urgent as temperatures rise.

The way forward is not complicated. It bears acknowledging that extreme heat is not just a climate challenge; it is a labour issue, a housing issue, a land issue all at once. Communities most impacted must lead the drafting of heat policy, not be consulted as an afterthought when decisions have already been made. Research must go beyond temperature thresholds and reckon seriously with what heat actually does to people over time: their health, their income, their sense of self. Siloed climate action that ignores workers is not climate action at all.

Written by Apekshita Varshney and Vasundhara Jhobta from HeatWatch.