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Frying pan, wetland, gas chamber: Is it time for you to leave Delhi?
Summary
- People in Delhi only get 60 days of good weather. Surprised? Yes, that’s true. Heatwaves, floods, air pollution and smog are testing the limits of human endurance in the National Capital Region.
New Delhi: It is peak summer and a north Indian town is baking in the sweltering heat, which is worsened by high humidity, beyond the level the human body can tolerate. Desperate for relief, the residents head for a nearby lake that night and submerge themselves in the water to cool down. That proves to be a bad idea as the water is warm, well above body temperature. By morning, nearly all the residents are dead, their lifeless bodies floating on the surface.
This apocalyptic incident portrayed above isn’t real. It is a fictional one and is the opening scene in the cli-fi (climate fiction) novel The Ministry for the Future, by author Kim Stanley Robinson. The book, published in 2020, narrates how ‘The Great Indian Heatwave’ pushed the world to stop dragging its feet and find a way out of the climate crisis.
But truth is stranger than fiction. The incident described above takes place after 2025, when air temperatures have crossed 38 degrees Celsius.
This summer, however, 38 degrees would have been considered balmy by millions across north and eastern India, as they often experienced temperatures that were at least 10 degrees higher. National capital Delhi recorded day temperatures nearing 50 degrees Celsius and experienced warm nights through May and June.
Public hospitals set up heat treatment wards, where patients reporting high fever were dunked in tubs filled with ice. Government health facilities reported 58 heatwave related deaths (till the third week of June). Delhi water minister Atishi Marlena sat on an indefinite fast, demanding more water from the Yamuna river from neighbouring Haryana.
Incredibly, after the heat wave in the capital, the pendulum swung to the other extreme. On the morning of 28 June, following a spell of heavy rainfall, parts of the city went under the water. A weather station in the heart of Delhi reported 3.6 times the entire month’s rain in just a few hours. A canopy of Terminal 1 of the Delhi airport collapsed, killing a cab driver. Ten more died in other parts of the city. Overnight, the city’s priorities shifted from managing the heat wave and quenching the thirst of its parched residents to unblocking sewers and draining the flood waters.
Seasons from Hell
The first half of 2024 has been an ordeal for the 21 million residents of Delhi and the larger National Capital Region (NCR, encompassing parts of neighbouring Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh), which is home to another 50 million. The second half of the year promises to be no better, with the Met department predicting excess rains in July. Indeed, the second half of India’s four-month-long (June-September) monsoon is expected to be wetter than the first. For Delhi NCR, that simply means there may be more flooding.
Unfortunately, things do not get better thereafter. After the frying pan and the flood will come the gas chamber. By the end of October, Delhi’s infamous winter smog will set in and the air will turn unbreathable. Every year, an estimated 12,000 deaths in Delhi can be attributed to air pollution. The mortality level is the highest in the country, and more than a third of the total deaths estimated for 10 Indian cities, according to a study published in Lancet Planetary Health, a journal, earlier this month.
“Delhi sees three seasons now: a heat wave, followed by floods, followed by smoke (pollution)…Some of my scientist friends have voted with their feet and left the city. Of course, it does not figure in my retirement plans," said Krishna AchutaRao, professor at the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences at IIT, Delhi.
To be sure, a few people clued into the changing ecology of Delhi have begun moving away. Himanshu Thakkar, a resident of north-west Delhi and a water sector expert, now spends less than four months in the city. “The crisis around air, water and temperature is interconnected ecologically, but we keep discussing them in silos, as and when they appear. We look at environment friendly policies as an obstacle to development and cities as avenues for income generation." His son, however, clings on. “As he was born in this city, he is unwilling to move."
High Definition Threshold
Delhi is forecast to become the world’s most populous urban conglomeration, overtaking Tokyo by 2028, according to the United Nations. What has happened so far this year may only be a trailer of what is to come. In less than a decade, the prerequisites of a healthy life—clean air, potable water and bearable temperatures—could be out of the reach of a large chunk of its residents.
Currently global average temperatures are about 1.2 degrees higher than the pre-industrial period (1850-1900). And over the past year average temperatures have already breached 1.5 degrees. The future will witness more intense rains and extended heat waves.
“Our research shows that in a 2-degree Celsius warmer world, maximum temperatures may not rise dramatically from current levels, but the duration and spread of heatwaves will increase. Which means heat waves could stretch up to 45-60 days without a break," AchutaRao adds.
One of the hurdles in recognising the magnitude of the problem before the Delhi NCR today is the slight dissociation from reality when it comes to recognising a heat wave. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has a strict definition for what constitutes a heat wave. In the plains, if the maximum day time temperature crosses 40 degrees, if it is at least 4.5 degrees higher than the normal temperature, and if these conditions are met on two consecutive days, a heatwave is declared.
This method, however, undercounts the actual number of heatwave days in a season. And here is the kicker; even going by this method, Delhi recorded 21 heatwave days in separate spells between April and June.
Additionally, the IMD does not yet consider ‘real feel’ temperature, an indicator that factors in humidity in addition to the air temperature. According to a recent report, a real feel temperature of 50 degrees Celsius or more was recorded on 10 of the 12 days between 15-26 June, but seven of them were not notified as heatwave days because the maximum air temperature did not meet the IMD’s definition.
The current definition fails to capture the real impact of heatwaves and prepare cities to deal with other facets such as warm nights and high humidity, says a report by the Delhi-based International Forum for Environment, Sustainability, and Technology (iForest).
Defining a new threshold to notify heat waves based on both humidity and night-time temperatures is therefore critical to capture the reality on the ground. Robinson’s cli-fi novel may have been off the mark with the temperature it cited, but it did emphasize the dangers of sustained heat and humidity on life as we know it. The human body’s normal internal temperature is around 37 degrees. When the external temperature rises, the body cools down by sweating. But high humidity interferes with this process. At night when temperatures drop, the body normally recuperates and repairs itself. But warm nights extend the physiological stress into the next day. Prolonged exposure eventually leads to heat stroke as internal organs fail, leading to death in some cases.
A Populated Desert
Delhi has a distinct geographical disadvantage given that it is a semi-arid area situated at the heart of an intensive land-use ecosystem, Chandra Bhushan, environmental expert and founder-CEO of iForest, told Mint.
The overexploited lands in the 150 km radius around Delhi spans densely populated satellite towns (including Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Noida and Gurgaon) and intensive ground-water based farming spread across western Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab. Besides, there are several industrial hubs in the neighbourhood, such as Dharuhera, Bhiwadi and Manesar. These exert a pressure on the city’s resources impacting its water availability and air quality (when farm fires in the early winter months add to the city’s pollution load).
The load from its neighbourhood accentuates Delhi’s own problems, where a concrete jungle contributes to both intense heat as well as flooding amid short bursts of intense rainfall.
The concrete absorbs heat during the day and radiates it through the night, creating the dreaded heat island effect. To put that in context, Churu, a desert town in Rajasthan, cools faster at night than Delhi.
Being a melting pot of adverse environmental factors, the city leaves its residents with about 60-80 days of liveable conditions in a year (between February and April). The rest of the year is very hostile, Bhushan pointed out.
“Despite being the seat of power, Delhi has not acted on its ability to bring NCR state governments together to find a solution. Meanwhile, water TDS (total dissolved solids) levels in central Delhi (Connaught Place) now resemble sea water. In future, people and businesses may move out of Delhi due to significant productivity losses," he added.
Bhushan believes Delhi can learn from compact European cities, which are better designed and have a great public transport system. “Do not build a skyscraper the moment you spot a vacant piece of land. And create new tier-2 and tier-3 cities (beyond the NCR), which can take the load off the capital."
Not Enough
To be sure, Delhi has taken multiple steps over the past two decades to improve its air quality—though most of these were following the orders of the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal. These include mandating the use of CNG as a fuel for public transport, setting emission norms for thermal power plants in the vicinity, shutting down power plants within the city, and phasing out old vehicles. Yet, every year, the authorities fall back on a Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) when the air turns poisonous—using water sprinklers and vacuum cleaners to suppress and remove pollutants, limiting use of personal vehicles, and restricting dust-generating construction activities and open burning of solid waste and biomass.
Are these long-term steps cleaning the air? As per the World Air Quality Report 2023 (published by IQAir, a global air quality information platform), Delhi’s average PM 2.5 concentration (population weighted), at 92.7 micrograms per cubic metre, was the worst among major cities globally.
PM 2.5 is defined as fine particulate matter that can penetrate the lungs and enter the human body through the bloodstream, affecting major organs. Exposure to PM 2.5 causes cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and can lead to stroke, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
In comparison, Beijing, China’s capital, seems to have done a better job with a PM 2.5 reading of 34.1. But even that level is not good enough. The World Health Organization recommends cities have an annual average PM 2.5 target of 5 micrograms per cubic metre.
Delhi’s annual PM 2.5 reading of 102.1 (non-population weighted) in 2023 was not only 20 times the recommended level but two to three times that of other major Indian cities such as Bengaluru (28.6), Chennai (28), Hyderabad (39.9), Mumbai (43.8) and Kolkata (47.8).
The IQAir report noted that northern India and Delhi struggle with smoke from crop burning, vehicle emissions, coal, waste, and biomass burning for heat and cooking. Annual crop stubble fires add to Delhi experiencing emergency-level air-quality days in winter.
Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai did not respond to queries from Mint on the deteriorating quality of life for residents.
Remedial Options
While part of the environmental crisis Delhi is facing is due to global climate factors beyond its control, the city is paying the price for its own mistakes. Unplanned growth and construction in low lying areas have contributed to repeated flooding, as they have in other cities as well. Buildings have glass facades, which trap heat, as these designs were blindly copied from the West (and its temperate climate), instead of following designs that help reduce energy usage.
Delhi uses about 900 million gallons of water every day, of which 80% goes back to the sewers. “About 600 million gallons could be treated for reuse. Installing aerated devices in water taps can reduce household level water flows by 60%," Manu Bhatnagar, urban planner and principal director at Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, Delhi, told Mint.
Similarly, expanding the green belt on its western flank, from where the hot desert winds enter the city, can insulate it, besides rearranging the isohyets (lines of equal rainfall). Areas along the Yamuna river receive about 700 mm rainfall annually. As one moves towards the west, rainfall reduces to 400 mm. Planting trees along the western corridor can bring in more rainfall, which, travelling on soft ground towards the Yamuna, will recharge the groundwater.
According to the India State Forest report, Delhi’s green cover increased from a tenth of its geographical area to an impressive 23% by 2021. “But green cover is not indicative of how dense tree canopies are. Things are changing fast on the ground. About 1,100 trees were butchered recently in Delhi’s ridge area without any authorization. In the Najafgarh jheel area, trees are being cut for a road widening project," Bhatnagar adds. The more things change, it appears, the more they stay the same, or in this case, deteriorate.
Kim Robinson dedicated ‘Ministry of Future’ to Frederic Jameson, a philosopher and literary critic who once famously wrote that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism." On the first count, Delhi isn’t leaving much to the imagination on where it’s headed. The end.
