In 2024, India saw at least 733 deaths and over 40,000 heat stroke cases in 17 states (HeatWatch, 2024). Indian cities are grappling with a silent yet deadly crisis: urban heat. The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect causes urban areas to experience significantly higher temperatures than their rural surroundings. Over the past two decades, Tier-1 cities like Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Hyderabad have faced increasing summer discomfort due to a combination of high air temperatures, rising land surface temperatures, and humidity, exacerbated by rapid urbanization and concretization. The daily minimums reached extraordinary levels across the country in 2024 according to the IMD, surpassing historical records in multiple locations. This situation poses serious risks to vulnerable groups, including the elderly, infants, pregnant women, slum residents, and outdoor workers (Center for Science and Environment, 2019). Urban heat significantly affects India’s economy, labor productivity, and public health. Between 2001 and 2020, the country lost an average of 259 billion labor hours annually due to extreme heat (Climate Policy Initiative, 2024).
Addressing urban heat requires a multi-pronged approach, combining urban planning, green infrastructure, and community engagement. Encouragingly, India has been exploring solutions over the past decade, beginning with Ahmedabad’s pioneering Heat Action Plan (HAP) in 2013. Today, the country has more than 100 HAPs implemented at state, district, and municipal levels, placing cities at the forefront of heat risk management (Center for Policy Research, 2023). By their nature, most of these HAPs include early-warning systems, traffic light color-coded temperature alerts, community outreach programs, capacity-building networks among government and health professionals for preparedness and reducing exposure and staggered or reduced timings for critical infrastructure and services (EOS, 2021). Further, three key guidelines were issued by the National Programme on Climate Change & Human Health (NPCCHH) and the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) aimed at reducing heat-related deaths: the 2021 National Action Plan on Heat-related Illnesses, the 2024 guidelines on emergency cooling, and autopsy findings for heat-related deaths.
However, while these progressive plans are a step in the right direction, they often fall short in implementation and public reception. Studies highlight their reactive nature, focusing on immediate solutions rather than forward-thinking, transformative adaptation strategies. This challenge reflects a broader issue rooted in India’s colonial legacy of disaster management. Historically, efforts focused on “improving” conditions for certain groups, often deciding which communities, livelihoods, and places were valued or neglected. Post-colonial governments continued this approach, emphasizing small, visible changes rather than addressing the underlying causes of disasters, which continues especially as most HAPs have leveraged international funding in their conceptualization. As a result, vulnerabilities have persisted and deepened, leading to repeated and more severe crises. Second, criticisms have been directed at the centralized, state-focused governance of climate action, as disaster management has historically involved significant contributions from non-state actors. Another perspective on this criticism highlights the lack of flexibility in determining who participates in enforcing these plans. For example, according to a report by HeatWatch, many healthcare professionals remained unaware of the many new protocols with respect to heat-related cases while their infrastructure in hospitals was inadequate to tackle rising heatstroke cases (Down to Earth, 2024). Third, there seems to be a lack of financial and other incentives to support the implementation of these plans. While over 23 states have adopted them, many have not achieved the level of completeness or effectiveness originally intended (IIHS, 2024).
The Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP), introduced in 2022, is the latest addition to India’s Climate Action Plans (CAPs). MCAP highlights a warming trend in the city over 47 years (1973–2020), with an observed increase of 0.25°C per decade during this period. Recognizing heat as a major threat, the plan envisions a climate-resilient city and outlines strategies such as enhancing green cover and biodiversity, decarbonizing the energy grid, implementing passive design strategies, constructing heat-resilient buildings, and developing a dedicated HAP for Mumbai (MCAP, 2024). A notable feature of MCAP is the Mumbai Climate Budget, which makes Mumbai one of only four Urban Local Bodies globally to establish a climate budget funded entirely through domestic resources. This provides a significant opportunity to address past criticisms of previous HAPs by leveraging its pioneering role to ensure effective implementation and buy-in, with more domestic and local autonomy.
However, currently MCAP is largely following a “business-as-usual” approach – focusing on in-situ upgrades to current urbanization patterns rather than proposing bold reconfigurations of land use and zoning that could introduce more green-blue spaces in the face of rapid densification. Further, interviews with ward officials and the city officials confirm that very few incentives exist to implement the goals of the ‘Heat Action’ component into their existing projects. This lack of incentives, coupled with the reluctance to challenge existing urbanization patterns, raises concerns about the long-term effectiveness of the MCAP. To truly address the growing threat of urban heat, it is essential to foster stronger institutional accountability, provide adequate financial and policy support, and engage communities in co-creating solutions that are equitable, ambitious, and resilient to future challenges, which the Mumbai Climate Action Plan is well poised to do given its positioning as one of the pilot studies for domestically financed action plans at a time when heat resilience as a whole is gaining momentum within the country. It is an opportunity to incorporate the criticisms levied on former HAPs and create an actionable plan for one of India’s most populous and most vulnerable cities.
The success of individual HAPs could pave the way for the establishment of a standardized National Heat Policy, which India has yet to develop. Although various government bodies have introduced sectoral heat policies, their net total has not created a comprehensive framework for heat resilience that can be adapted and replicated across cities nationwide. While there is a strong case for localized, context-specific plans—such as Thane’s sub-administrative HAPs, which operate at a neighborhood level—a nationwide policy could provide crucial support. It would help secure broader stakeholder buy-in, enforce regulations across sectors like building and infrastructure, and ensure alignment with individual city-level plans. Such a policy would not only strengthen compliance but also build a cohesive, multi-level strategy to combat the escalating threat of urban heat. Mumbai Climate Action Plan has a pioneering role to play in this conversation, and democratizing this effort to include voices of experts, locals and beneficiaries can help evangelize this critical effort.