India : At a cremation ground on the banks of the Ganges in Ballia, a district in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh, head priest Pappu Pandey counts the cost of extreme weather in the area.
As a vicious combination of extreme heat and punishing humidity blanketed the region before the arrival of the seasonal monsoon, the area filled with funeral pyres.
One of Mr Pandey’s jobs is to keep a count of the bodies. Deaths doubled to about 50 a day at the peak of the heatwave in mid-June – numbers he has not seen in 20 years, other than during the pandemic, he said.
Scientists estimate climate change has made periods of extreme heat 30 times more likely in India and the World Bank said the country could be one of the first places where heatwaves breach the human survivability threshold.
Reports of a sharp increase in deaths among the most vulnerable in society have raised concerns about how the authorities can prepare for such extreme conditions.
As well as the human cost, failure to tackle the challenge could pose a risk to India’s economy.
McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the labour lost due to extreme heat in sectors such as construction and agriculture could put up to 4.5 per cent of India’s gross domestic product at risk by 2030.
