India is being roasted but this ‘roasting’ is unlikely to elicit laughter. Summer temperatures are rising all over the country — India experienced its hottest March in 122 years and Calcutta
is baking at close to 40 degree Celsius in April — bringing with it serious threats to public health as well as disruptions to lives and livelihoods. Students are finding it difficult to concentrate on their examination papers with the heat and masks — that other accoutrement made necessary by a pandemic — being the principal villains. Medical advice on heat strokes is now common;
outdoor workers’ productivity and, consequently, earnings are being adversely affected and there is fear that economies would eventually be singed. Extreme heat, studies say, could make the American economy poorer by $500 billion by 2050. None of this is, of course, new. Existing data suggest that heat waves have been rising in India at an exponential rate. Climate change — global lethargy has made it almost impossible to contain it — is not the only culprit. Change in land use patterns, the decimation of the green cover, the propensity to build infrastructure — roads, buildings and so on — with material that trap heat are some of the other factors that are turning habitations into boiling cauldrons.

The fickleness of the worsening weather may evade effective intervention. The best hope, therefore, lies in mitigatory tactic. India must find ways to stop the criminal transgressions on its fragile
environment by pursuing a template of anti-ecological growth. There must be shifts in policy: for instance, urban infrastructure must shun glass and concrete and re-embrace traditional cooling
material. But none of this will happen unless there is greater public pressure on the State complicit in the imminent Armageddon.