Heat, Inequality, And The ‘Right To Cool’ – Analysis

May 28, 2026 
Observer Research Foundation
By Soma Sarkar

Urban heat has emerged as one of the most unequal climate risks in cities. India is currently experiencing a severe heatwave, with temperatures routinely crossing 44°C in multiple cities. During the unprecedented heatwave in late April 2026, India accounted for 95 of the world’s 100 hottest cities.

Although rising temperatures affect an entire city, spatial inequalities and diverse socioeconomic conditions stratify levels of exposure and vulnerability within the population. Informal settlements, areas with limited tree cover, and neighbourhoods characterised by poorly ventilated housing tend to experience more intense thermal stress. At the same time, the ability to seek refuge from heat is unequally distributed between those who can rely on private cooling infrastructure, such as air conditioning, and those who cannot. For the underprivileged, shared urban commons, such as parks, lakes, shaded areas, and community lands, have traditionally served as places of respite that provided informal cooling refuges. However, rapid urbanisation and urban densification have engulfed even these shared spaces, concretising land into built areas and intensifying urban heat island effects.

These inequalities become more apparent when viewed through the lens of labour. Low-income populations, particularly informal workers, such as street vendors, delivery workers, sanitation workers, and construction labourers, experience higher and more intense heat exposure because their livelihoods require prolonged outdoor presence. Though they sustain the everyday functioning of urban economies, urban planning often overlooks where they can find refuge. For many, avoiding outdoor work during peak heat hours can threaten their earnings and job security. Consequently, while heat advisories may encourage residents to stay indoors, large segments of the urban workforce have little choice but to continue toiling in hazardous conditions.

This scenario raises critical questions about urban justice: If access to cooling and climate protection is mediated by income and property ownership, what does that mean for the promise of an inclusive city? Do the people whose labour sustains urban economies have a right to shade, rest, and thermal refuge?

Spatial Inequalities in Heat Exposure and Refuge

The weakening of monsoonal cooling and extension of the high-heat period across South Asia by 2026 El Niño pose a greater risk to India. Indian cities have warmed at roughly 0.53°C per decade in night-time land surface temperature. Approximately 60 percent of the increased heating in Indian cities can be attributed to urbanisation and the increase in concrete surfaces, asphalt, metal roofs, and glass curtain walls. The indicators of ward-level heat exposure are informal settlement density, low green cover, minimal tree canopy, proximity to industrial land uses, and the predominance of thin metal or asbestos roofing, all of which correlate with income conditions. For example, Mumbai has a differential of 5.6°C between settlements separated by approximately 2 kilometres, with Dharavi having a mean land surface temperature of 35.9°C, compared with 30.3°C in Matunga. Approximately 37 percent of Mumbai’s households have tin roofs that trap radiant heat, with indoor temperatures exceeding 40°C during peaks. In Mumbai’s M/East Ward, heat worsens for the marginalised population exposed to the mountains of waste at the Deonar landfill. Similarly, slum surveys in Ahmedabad revealed that 85.5 percent of the sampled households experienced significantly higher heat than households in non-slum areas.

Beyond exposure, the capacity to seek refuge from heat is itself unequally distributed. Cooling technologies impose a dual inequality: their capital and operating costs exclude the urban poor on the one hand, and their condensers raise outdoor temperatures on the other. This scenario creates segregated atmospheres and externalises the thermal cost to vulnerable groups. This dual inequality is most evident in informal settlements in cities like Delhi, which co-exist alongside affluent neighbourhoods. Low-income households may spend up to 8 percent of their budget on cooling, which can lead to energy poverty.

This dual inequality is not confined to Indian cities. In Phoenix, Arizona, for example, Hispanic majority neighbourhoods are found to be 5°C hotter than the suburbs, with tree equity gaps persisting despite heat plans. Santiago, Chile, mirrors this in its peripheries, where migrant workers inhabit heat-vulnerable hillsides.

Heat and Informal Labour

In India, the informal sector employs more than 200 million workers, many of whom work in outdoor or semi-outdoor environments with no institutional protection against extreme heat. In 2024, India lost about 247 billion labour hours due to heat, resulting in economic losses worth US$194 billion. For daily wage workers, heat-related work stoppages mean immediate income loss, with no paid leave or social protection, forcing many to continue working under dangerous conditions. Women in high-heat-vulnerability areasexperience fatigue, dizziness, dehydration, and gastrointestinal illnesses, leading to income losses during the summer months of April to June.

Street vendors, construction labourers, sanitation workers, delivery riders, waste pickers, domestic workers, and agricultural labourers in peri-urban settings are among those most exposed. Their occupational heat exposure is not simply a function of outdoor temperature, but it is intensified by the thermal properties of the surfaces they work on or under (asphalt, concrete, metal), the absence of shade, limited access to drinking water and rest facilities, and the economic perils of voluntarily withdrawing from heat-exposed work. In this context, standard heat advisories such as “Avoid getting out in the sun, especially between 12:00 noon and 03:00 pm” and “Avoid strenuous activities when outside in the afternoon” are often impractical for informal and low-income workers, for whom compliance may directly translate into wage and livelihood losses.

This shows that the urban heat crisis is a structural emergency exposing deep faultlines in how Indian cities are planned, governed, and for whom. The policy response has remained largely technocratic, fragmented, and insufficiently attentive to the dimensions of labour justice and spatial equity. Cool roof programmes, heat action plans, and early warning systems are welcome and necessary, but they are insufficient so long as they do not address the underlying conditions that make large sections of the population chronically exposed to thermal heat.

From Fragmentation to Integration: A Just Urban Climate Agenda

The heat crisis reveals an urgent need to revisit urban governance through the twin lenses of the urban commons and climate justice. Parks, lakes, tree canopies, and shaded public squares are critical life-support infrastructures. Urban heat is deeply intertwined with the water crisis as green cover vanishes, impervious surfaces expand, groundwater tables decline, and urban flooding intensifies. It is also linked to air quality, as heat inversions trap pollutants and increase respiratory risks. Moreover, heat vulnerability increases with housing precarity, as those in informal settlements lack insulated walls, cross-ventilation, or access to reliable electricity for cooling. These are not disparate crises requiring targeted solutions but interlocking symptoms of a single, deeper failure of urban planning philosophy.

Indian cities must adopt an Integrated Urban Climate Resilience Framework that would treat heat mitigation, stormwater management, urban greening, air quality improvement, and housing resilience as interdependent goals. Cities like Medellín and Singapore have demonstrated that urban ecological infrastructure, when planned holistically, can simultaneously cool cities, manage floods, enhance biodiversity, and improve liveability for all residents. Parks, lakes, urban forests, and shaded public spaces must be formally recognised in urban master plans and municipal budgets as critical climate infrastructure, ring-fenced from encroachment and commercial development.

The city-level Heat Action Plans must be expanded and reoriented to centre the rights of outdoor workers, providing statutory protection, including mandatory rest breaks, access to shade and potable water at worksites, flexible timing provisions during peak heat hours, and health insurance coverage for heat-related illnesses. Governments must also provide income security against the time lost due to heat advisories that urge people to remain indoors at certain times of the day. The lives of those who build and sustain the city must have the ‘right to cool’ and not be treated as acceptable casualties of the heat.

About the author: Soma Sarkar is an Associate Fellow with the Urban Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.