Heat Collective

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Overview

India's heatwaves are intensifying, with Uttar Pradesh and Bihar facing significant risk. Varanasi and Patna are especially vulnerable given summer temperatures exceeding 40°C, dense urban populations, and heavy reliance on outdoor and informal work. In response, Varanasi has a dedicated Heat Action Plan covering heat-risk mapping, public-health measures, and interventions for vulnerable communities. Patna has developed a Model Heat Action Plan through the district administration, BSDMA, UNDP, and technical partners, using hyper-granular heat-risk and vulnerability assessments.

Despite these plans, translating policy into sustained, on-the-ground protection remains difficult. Advisories, drinking water access, and temporary cooling or shading offer only partial relief, failing to address the prolonged exposure faced by street vendors, rickshaw and e-rickshaw pullers, construction workers, and sanitation workers.

These groups share common vulnerabilities: income dependent on daily physical labour, limited ability to reduce work during extreme heat, and heat exposure that threatens both health and earnings. With weak financial and social protection, healthcare costs and lost workdays deepen already precarious livelihoods.

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Key Objectives

Generate primary evidence on health, livelihood, and economic burdens of heat stress among informal workers in Varanasi and Patna.
Map urban heat risk by integrating heat mapping with city-level climate data across geography, infrastructure, and communities.
Design occupation-specific resilience measures (heat-shields) for vendors, rickshaw pullers, construction, and sanitation workers.
Address the double burden on informal-sector women balancing heat exposure with unpaid care work, via gender-responsive research.
Build youth leadership through participatory, culture-based methods for sustained community action.
Strengthen policy by helping city administrations close gaps in Heatwave Action Plans and ensure on-ground implementation.

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Generating Evidence for Action

The Climate Agenda is mobilising university youth to conduct primary surveys on extreme heat's impact on street vendors, rickshaw pullers, sanitation workers, and daily-wage labourers in Varanasi and Patna, capturing effects on health, income, work, and coping needs.

This will be combined with secondary data, heat vulnerability maps, health records, and urban infrastructure datasets, analysed with Azim Premji University to build a Heatwave Risk Index mapping risk by location, community, and time of day.

Findings will inform Varanasi's Heat Action Plan and guide similar stakeholder engagement in Patna, while also shaping scalable, community-level heat preparedness measures in both cities.

Early Preparedness and Community Coping Strategies

The project places communities at the centre of heat preparedness by documenting how vulnerable workers currently anticipate, experience, and cope with extreme heat. The research will identify existing coping practices, gaps in access to essential resources and services, and the types of support communities consider most practical and effective. These insights will help strengthen early preparedness, improve risk communication, and inform more responsive and community-centred heat action measures.

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Impact

Primary research across Varanasi and Patna documented heat risks among street vendors, rickshaw pullers, and daily-wage workers, generating comparative evidence to strengthen city Heat Action Plans.
950+ university youth were trained in field-based climate research, building a growing network of young advocates through direct community engagement.
Mic Meeting, Ghat Story Boards and Open Mics (150+ participants) translated heat data into public storytelling, engaging residents while spotlighting gaps in water, cooling, and resilient infrastructure.

For more information about the campaign, its activities, publications, and ongoing work.