Banda, India, has spent weeks under extreme heat, with temperatures peaking at 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit) and the town ranking among Asia’s hottest places. In May, it hit 48.2 C (118.8 F), one of several times this year it recorded the country’s highest temperature for the day. Banda was also the hottest spot on Earth seven times this year, most of them in April, according to climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera.
Who Pays for the Heat
The people at the bottom are the ones carrying the load. For many residents, just getting through the day is a struggle. Heat hangs over Banda at all hours, even in the middle of the night, while long stretches without electricity strip away what little relief a home might offer. Some families can’t even use basic fans when the power goes out. Residents cool themselves with water, ice packs and sleep outside when they can. That’s not comfort. That’s survival under pressure.
Munni Devi, 70, and her four sons start work loading and unloading vegetables when most of the town is asleep. It’s only 4 a.m., but the temperature is already 30 C (86 F). At Banda’s vegetable market, workers unload tomatoes, jackfruits and other vegetables and move them to smaller vehicles for delivery to neighborhood shops. Devi says the heat is getting more intense every year, and this year has been especially bad. She says she and her sons can’t afford to miss a day. “Everyone feels the heat, but because of our circumstances, we have to bear it,” she says. Her home’s unreliable power leaves little respite. Her grandchildren get sprayed down every day with a water hose for relief. “If there is no power, even the ceiling fans don’t work. Sometimes there is no power for hours,” she says.
What Relief Looks Like on the Ground
As the afternoon sun bakes Banda’s streets, residents who can afford to stay inside do so. Others keep working outside anyway. Some vegetable sellers and auto rickshaw drivers remain outdoors in hopes of attracting a little more business. The heat doesn’t pause for wages, and wages don’t pause for heat.
Shobharam Kashyap, 70, is making wooden birdhouses at a workshop in his home. He says he and other volunteers have installed over 15,000 birdhouses across the town to give birds respite from an increasingly harsh environment. His brightly painted birdhouses, many of them green because he says birds seem to prefer that color, have been mounted on trees and walls across Banda. He has also placed clay water bowls in and near his home so birds can drink or bathe. Kashyap says he is continuing traditional practices of caring for other animals. “Our culture has long encouraged feeding birds. Women visiting temples traditionally offer rice. Neither the priest nor the deity consumes it — the birds do,” he says.
That’s the kind of mutual aid people build when institutions lag behind the crisis. Small, practical, and immediate.
Hospitals Fill, Officials Count
Hotter days have brought more patients to the hospital in Banda, one of the bigger medical centers in the region. Those with heat maladies, ranging from fainting to heatstroke, tend to arrive in the afternoon and evening, filling corridors and wards. Patients sit shoulder-to-shoulder on benches. Relatives fan family members with sheets of paper. Hospital staff move between beds carrying intravenous fluids.
Dr. Abhishek Pranayami, the hospital’s head doctor, says the hospital sees a surge of patients every summer, “and the number of patients is increasing every year.” He says they are treating large numbers of people suffering from dehydration, diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain, illnesses that become more common as temperatures rise. Some patients recover within days. Others take longer. “Pressure is quite high on us and the staff,” he says.
Even after sunset, Banda stays hot. Young boys playing cricket keep their water bottles cool by wrapping them in torn clothes. At the town’s railway station, families gather late into the night, hoping the open platforms and occasional breeze will be more bearable than cramped homes that have absorbed heat all day. On one such night, dozens are sleeping in the station to avoid the heat. Children and adults lie on blankets spread across the stone platform with parked train cars a few feet away. Some use bags as pillows. A pile of flip-flops sits inches from bare feet. Another man stretches out on a bench with his head on a backpack. Nearby, several men and women try to sleep on blankets near the ticket kiosks under bright lights. Dogs lie between some of the people on the ground, also trying to get relief. Laborers whose homes are too small and hot to sleep in are sleeping on blankets outside the railway station’s entrance, trying to rest on the open, breezy roads and pavements near the station. For parents with little children, the hot night is too uncomfortable for sleep, so they wait in the station, huddled around a smartphone.
Abhiyant Tiwari, climate and health expert at New Delhi-based NRDC India, says, “Climate change is shifting the average. While Banda has always been known for hot summers, what is changing right now is the intensity, the duration and the number of people exposed to dangerous heat conditions.” He says high nighttime temperatures are especially worrying because they prevent people from recovering physically from the day’s heat.
The top government official in Banda says authorities have responded by opening cooling centers, distributing hundreds of thousands of oral rehydration kits and monitoring hospitals during heat warnings. Amit Aasery, the district magistrate of Banda, says officials are studying groundwater levels, soil moisture and vegetation loss while working to improve water supplies and public awareness. But he says there is only so much they can do. “What is happening here is a global phenomenon,” he says. “It is because of climate change. We are the recipient of this.”