Heat Wave took 2037 Indian lives in 2015: When will we change our development model?
On 5th August 2015, India’s Union Minister for Science & Technology and Ministry of Earth Sciences, informed to the Parliament startling figures of death due to heat wave this summer in India-2037 people have died
The details are in the following table. Worrisome is the fact that all India mean temperature has risen nearly around 0.60 C over the last 110 years.
Details of the Heat Wave/Sun Stroke related deaths in India: Summer 2015:
|
State |
Number of deaths |
| Andhra Pradesh | 1,369 |
| Telangana | 541 |
| Odisha | 67 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 22 |
| West Bengal | 13 |
| Gujarat | 10 |
| Madhya Pradesh | 10 |
| Delhi | 5 |
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (2014) highlights that mean surface temperature of the globe has risen by 0.850 ± 0.180 C.
Using daily maximum temperature data of 103 stations uniformly distributed over the country for the period 1961-2010 from Indian main land during the hot weather season (March to July), it was observed that many areas of the country (north, northwest, central and northeast Peninsula) have experienced more than eight (8) Heat Wave days on an average per season. The recent decade 2001-2010 happens to be the warmest decade for the country as well as for the globe.
The Union Minister informed that upon prediction of the heat wave conditions by the ESSO-IMD, various State Governments have a system of giving wide publicity of Dos and Don’ts through advertisements in Print and audio-visual media and opening up of drinking water camps at identified places in rural and urban areas to mitigate the impact of heat waves. The schedule of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme workers is adjusted to avoid exposure to extreme hot weather duration periods.
What however concerns one is that our policy makers don’t learn from all these devastating experiences. Our development models continue to be environmentally destructive. Our love for coal fuel power plants, indiscriminate and eco-insensitive urbanization, industrialization that kills forests and water sources in faster speeds than before is dooming the country.
We may keep saying we are nothing in comparison to USA and China in comparison to per capita GHG emissions but such deaths again prove that our development models have failed to integrate climate change adaptation and mitigation in them. In fact this figure is just what has been recorded and reported. The real figure and vulnerability is surely to be much more. Further, this does not take into could the thousands of livestock and wildlife that may have died and/or suffered to the intense heat and related water scarcity.
Time the government gives a serious thought to it and climate change is taken seriously.
It is very unfortunate that the Ministry of Environment is planning to dilute many environmental protection laws only to promote such ecologically destructive development projects. May reason prevail before it is too late! Or perhaps, it is already too late.
