India's rite of summer: Death from
the heat By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - It's a familiar story that
unfolds across the Indian subcontinent every
summer: soaring temperatures, power outages, water
shortages, frayed tempers and protests. And a
mounting death toll, often blamed on the heat
wave. This year has been no different; so far,
summer has been a scorcher in India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh.
Temperatures touched new highs
across India. Ganganagar, in the western state of
Rajasthan, which borders Pakistan, recorded the
highest temperature this season - 48 degrees
Celsius. The mercury touched 44.5 degrees in
Delhi, 5 degrees above normal. While the plains
sizzled at 46 degrees, the hill stations have
also
suffered. Shimla, which
nestles in the Himalayas and is a major draw for
tourists escaping the heat and dust of the plains,
has seen temperatures touch 29 this year, 7
degrees above normal for this season.
Since April, some 50 people have died in
the searing heat wave, most of them (25) in the
northern state of Uttar Pradesh. While showers in
northern India have given some respite, the heat
wave has moved to the Telengana region of the
southern state of Andhra Pradesh. More than 140
people have died in the heat wave in Pakistan's
Punjab province, with temperatures there hovering
around 49. The temperature in cities such as
Multan and Jacobabad has touched 52 (nearly 126 on
the old Fahrenheit scale) this year.
In
India, the death toll from the heat wave this year
is lower than in previous years. In May 1998, more
than 2,000 people died in the eastern state of
Orissa alone because of a severe heat wave. In
2002, some 1,030 people were killed in a single
week. In 2003, the toll was 2,300. The heat wave
and "Nature's Fury" are blamed for the death and
discomfort. But far hotter places, such as El
Azizia in Libya, where temperatures are known to
shoot over 60, do not report a similar large-scale
death toll.
So why does India suffer this
annual ritual of discomfort and death every
summer? The answer lies in poor infrastructure. It
is not the heat wave per se that is killing
people, but poverty, poor infrastructure and an
unresponsive government machinery. People are
dying because they lack the means to protect
themselves from the searing heat. Most of those
who die of sunstroke during India's scorching
summers are the poor. Eighty percent of the
victims are from families that fall below the
poverty line. Many of them are homeless; a
majority daily wage-earners.
When the
death toll following the heat wave begins to
mount, ministers and officials issue directives
advising people to stay indoors and drink plenty
of water. Sensible advice, it seems. But this is
advice that many Indians are unable to follow -
millions in this country do not have a roof over
their head. Or they cannot afford the luxury of
staying indoors to escape the heat for even a day,
as that would mean loss of wages. Most of those
who die of sunstroke are construction workers,
agricultural laborers and rickshaw-pullers. Hence
poverty is the underlying reason for their deaths;
the heat wave is only the immediate cause.
If taking shelter from the heat is
impossible for the homeless, drinking water to
prevent dehydration is beyond the reach of many
Indians, and increasingly, switching on fans and
air-conditioners to cool off is restricted to a
few hours in the cities.
For more than a
month, Delhi has been struggling to cope with a
severe power and water crisis. Middle-class
neighborhoods are reeling under scheduled power
cuts of about four hours a day and random power
failures that sometimes run into another five to
six hours. While the better-off can still hope for
some relief by switching on generators to run
their air-conditioners, most Delhiites have been
left with no option but to suffer the sweltering
heat. The situation with regard to water is no
better. In several areas, water trickles from taps
sometimes for only a few hours, and often for
about 45 minutes and in the middle of the night.
Most Delhiites wait in lines for hours for water
that arrives in tankers.
The response of
civic authorities in Delhi to the power crisis has
been simply to crack down on demand by ordering
offices to switch off their air-conditioners by
6:30pm and shops to down their shutters by 7:30pm.
The government announced that industrial areas
would go without power between 6:30pm and
midnight. When protests broke out, the government
backtracked. It was only a suggestion to deal with
the crisis, officials explained. Officials
like to blame the annual power crisis in Delhi and
other cities on the sharp spurt in consumer demand
for electricity during the long summer months.
There is some truth to their allegations. The
demand for electricity has skyrocketed as more and
more Indians turn to air-conditioners and fans to
beat the heat. But everyone knows that the reasons
for the power crisis are really about inadequate
supply, inadequate power generation, transmission
losses and power thefts.
Officials point
out that generating capacity has grown manifold,
from 1,362 megawatts in 1947 to 123,014MW in 2005.
The most significant increase was in the 1995-2004
period, when more than 20,000MW of capacity was
installed. But even these additions are not enough
to meet the demands of a growing population. In
the past 10 years, demand for power has increased
by 12%, whereas power generation has increased by
just 5.5%. Northern India faces a total shortfall
of 6,000-7,000MW. Delhi loses more than 40% of its
electricity to theft.
This is the scenario
in relatively privileged, pampered Delhi. The
situation in other parts of the country is far
worse. In small towns and rural India, people are
having to make do with about two hours of
electricity a day. In Maharashtra, India's most
industrialized state, the power crisis is
worrying. In what was once a power-surplus state,
rural areas now suffer 12-14 hours of power cuts
every day. Industrial hubs such as Nagpur, Pune
and Nashik face power cuts of four to six hours
every day, seriously impacting on the functioning
of small-scale industries.
India has big
ambitions to become a significant global player.
For such cities as Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore,
which are striving to project an image of
world-class standards, the decrepit state of
infrastructure is a big embarrassment. Government
officials often brush aside the power and water
shortages as teething problems of a growing
economy. Business leaders see things rather
differently.
"It is so embarrassing to
have overseas clients visiting our office and
experiencing about four power cuts during a
one-hour meeting," Azim Premji, chairman of the
Bangalore-based software giant Wipro, complained
to the media two years ago. "Here we talk about
world-class software and development centers, and
we cannot control the power situation."
Clearly, India lacks the infrastructure to
support its ambitions. India might like to call
Bangalore its Silicon Valley, but a comparison of
California with Karnataka, the state of which
Bangalore is the capital, brings out the vast
difference in the infrastructure of the two
states. Karnataka, which has a population of 53
million, has 6,000MW of power-generation capacity
- 1,200MW less than what it needs. California has
10 times the electric capacity for its 35 million
people.
The response of civic authorities
to demands for improving infrastructure range from
outright denials of the problem to helpless
hand-wringing. There are few signs that the
countrywide power crisis will end soon. A recent
study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and
Industry in India paints a worrying picture of the
power scenario. Forty-seven power plants - 10 in
northern India, 16 in the west, eight in the
south, 11 in the east and two in the northeastern
regions - that were to expand capacity are running
far behind schedule.
Meanwhile, the
average Indian will have to look up to the skies
and hope for respite when the monsoons arrive. But
with the rains will come another set of problems -
collapsing buildings, flooded streets, overflowing
sewage pipes, poor drainage - laying bare once
again the country's creaking infrastructure.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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