Lost Vagabond

In South Asia, heat weaves already claim more than 200,000 lives annually. According to a recent study, as temperature rises, the death toll might exceed 400,000 by 2045. India is at high risk. The study further reveals that over 200,000 deaths are currently attributed to severe temperatures, and this figure may nearly quadruple over the next twenty years. With deaths increasing and governments lacking strategies to protect laborers from dying, vulnerable workers across South Asia are demanding their governments provide heat wave protections.

Ashok Kumar, forty-two, a migrant worker from India’s Bihar state, has been running a barber shop on a footpath with no roof in India’s national capital, New Delhi, where temperatures exceed to 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit). With no shaded resting area, Kumar spends nine hours a day in a scorching heat to support his family. “Where shall I go? I have to feed my family. The government cannot install air conditioning at the roadside for us. We are dying under the blazing sun. We have no options. If we stop work, our families will die hungry,” Kumar told me. [...]

While knowing risk factors, many migrant laborers are unable to do much more than cover their heads with wet towels. “We saw how the laborer Paswan collapsed and died in India’s Nuh grain market. I can’t forget. I am working in the same market and at the same temperature. Covering my head with a wet towel gives relief. But no guarantee of life,” says Narayan Kumar, forty, a migrant worker. [...]