On Saturday, the India Meteorological Department predicted an unusually hot day for Mumbai. The mercury soared to 37 degrees, about 3.4 degree higher than the average temperature for early March. At 3 pm, Suvarna Bandagale sat on a cement block on a footpath to catch some respite from the scorching afternoon heat. As she wiped sweat off her face, she watched pigeons flutter inside the municipality’s empty Diamond Garden in the Chembur neighbourhood. “It is always locked in afternoon,” Bandagale complained. “There is no shade anywhere to sit and relax.”
Bandagale, a domestic worker from Mankhurd in north east Mumbai, works from 11 am till 3 pm, the hottest hours of the day. When she finishes work, she looks for a place to rest before beginning her 5-km walk back home. As a brutal summer approaches, Bandagale does not have many convenient option at which to take a break.
This year, even before the onset of peak summer, Mumbai is experiencing high temperatures. On March 9 and March 10, the meteorological department predicted, the year’s second heatwave would hit the city and nearby parts of coastal Maharashtra. Temperatures are likely to exceed 38 degrees – 5 degrees higher than average.
Keeping parks open to allow residents to sit in the shade is an easy, long-acknowledged response to heatwaves, noted Abhiyant Tiwari, an expert on climate resilience and health at the not-for-profit Natural Resources Defense Council. When temperatures rise, tree-filled parks could act as cooling stations.
But for now, the Mumbai municipal corporation keeps parks and gardens and parks open only between 5 am to 1 pm and 3 pm to 10 pm on weekdays. On weekends, they are supposed to stay open through the day, although Diamond Garden – officially known as Narayan Gajanan park – was shut on Saturday.
Keeping parks open in the afternoon would offer enormous relief to street vendors and gig workers whose livelihoods require them to be out in the afternoons, said Tiwari. “For them there must be access to cooling stations like parks, or religious places, or shelter homes that transition into cooling stations during summers,” he said.
These places, he suggest, should also provide drinking water.
Across India in 2024, there were 48,001 suspected cases of heatstroke cases. There were 268 suspected deaths, of which 159 have so far been confirmed, according to a Right to Information query filed by Scroll with the National Centre for Disease Control.
This marked rise from 19,388 cases of heatstroke in 2023 and 4,481 cases in 2022. In 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic at the time, only 65 heatstroke cases were recorded.
Keeping parks open to reduce heat-related illnesses is among the measures followed by Ahmedabad, which in 2013 was the first Indian city to frame a heat action plan. This decision and a slew of other measures have worked. A study in 2018 suggested that an estimated 2,380 deaths had been avoided after the plan was implemented.
But in Mumbai, bureaucratic procedures have kept the 1,000-plus parks, gardens and playgrounds grounds shut in afternoon when they are required the most.
Dr Mayuresh Saswade, Maharashtra’s nodal officer for implementing the state’s heat action plan, said that he had at several meetings advised the authorities in all districts to keep their parks open during the summer.
In February, he held two training sessions for officials on measures to implement during heatwaves. “It is up to the districts and municipal corporations to implement the guidelines,” he told Scroll.
But when Scroll contacted Dr Daksha Shah, the executive health officer in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, she said she was not aware of this recommendation. “I will have to discuss with the garden superintendent if that is feasible,” she said.
Mumbai’s garden superintendent Jeetendra Pardeshi told Scroll that it would be possible to keep parks and gardens open in the afternoon if the health department writes to them. “We keep them shut in afternoon to undertake maintenance work,” Pardeshi said. “In some wards, locals ask for gardens to be shut to prevent anti-social activities.”
Dileep Mavalankar, who led India’s first heat action plan in Ahmedabad, said that for the Mumbai municipality to keep parks open, it would have to allocate more funds for guards and for maintenance.
“But that there is no discussion on it shows the lack of seriousness of public health hazard of heat,” he said.
Why a heatwave is specially dangerous for Mumbai
Heat-related illness can cause dizziness, nausea, headaches, extreme dehydration, a change in the heart rate and even death.
In Mumbai and other coastal areas where the air is humid and hot during the summer, heat-related illnesses and deaths could occur even at lower temperatures, Mavalankar said.
“When temperatures are high, a body sweats which helps in cooling it down,” he said. “But high humidity does not allow our body to sweat. The body temperature remains high making it prone to heat-related illness.”
Mumbai’s humidity ranges between 70% to 80%, which means that “even at 35 or 38 degrees, it may feel like 45 degrees Celsius”, Mavalankar said.
This year’s Mumbai heatwaves have occurred earlier than when summer usually sets in, around April. Early heatwaves are more dangerous, said Tiwari from the Natural Resources Defense Council, because residents are just transitioning from winter to summer. "Physiologically they are adapting,” he said. “If there is sudden spike in temperature, it gets difficult to cool down the body.”
In addition, say experts, this weekend’s heatwave closely follows soon after one that occurred at the end of February. At that time, temperatures rose to 38.7 degrees. The gap between heatwaves is getting shorter and the high temperatures are lasting longer, experts say.
Domestic worker Draupadi Dayanand Gholak, aged 47, knows what it is like to bear the brunt of rising temperatures. During the summer, she has regular spells of dizziness. One day last year, she collapsed in the sun.
Gholak works from 10 am till 5 pm in ten homes. sweeping, mopping and washing utensils. Each day, Gholak spends over an hour walking to the various houses in which she works. “The longest is an 18-minute walk,” she said. “I carry water. Even so it is draining to walk in the afternoon sun.”
Her route takes her past one park, but it is shut in the afternoon.
Learnings from Ahmedabad
Dr Tejas Shah, the nodal officer for Ahmedabad’s heat action plan, told Scroll that the city has over the last decade developed streamlined protocols to follow whenever the India Meteorological Department declares a heatwave.
“We have an early warning system,” Shah said. “The IMD alerts us five days in advance.” Departments such transport, power, agriculture, railways, metro, health, urban development and the municipal corporations are immediately involved in the plan.
About seven lakh commuters uses Ahmedabad’s buses every work day. Bus stations are stocked with free oral rehydration solution, or ORS. Two lakh students in the city’s municipal schools receive free ORS, while 2.10 lakh rickshaw drivers get free ORS and water.
“We provide free ORS to nomadic population too,” Shah said.
The city has designated parks, parks, public buildings and malls as cooling centres to provide respite to residents in the afternoon. It keep its 293 parks open from 6 am till 11 pm to provide shady spots. For those without access to electricity or who live in poorly ventilated homes, there are temporary night shelters.
“We did not have to write letter to any department,” Shah said. “Various departments took action on their own to tackle the heat.”
The health department has put up 120 signboards to display information about heatstroke and preventing it. “Continuous bombardment of information is a must,” Shah said. “We use radio channels, social media, and buses and metro to reach out to people.”
Ahmedabad has seen noticeable changes. Data on all-cause mortality for 2010 shows that in May, the hottest month of the year, there were 39% more deaths than average monthly mortality rate. But in May 2016, after the plan went into effect, this fell to 22% more deaths. It dropped to 5% more deaths in May 2024.
“Small measures from the authorities can go a long way and yield huge impact,” Shah said.
Ahmedabad holds weekly meetings of all departments to discuss the heat action plan. This is missing in Mumbai. Mavalankar, a former director of the Indian Institute of Public Health, said Mumbai’s health department is shying from analysing all-cause mortality every day to understand if there is higher number of deaths between March to May.
Dr Daksha Shah, executive health officer in Mumbai, said the city issues a generic advisory during a heatwave. "We ask people to hydrate themselves, avoid going out in the sun during noon,” she said.
Saswade, Maharashtra’s nodal officer for the heat plan, acknowledged that the state’s heat-action plan does not involve all departments. "We don’t have a mechanism that begins to work immediately when a heatwave is declared,” he said. “We inform all district epidemiology officers and they are tasked to undertake mitigation measures.”
Preparing for summer
This year, the India Meteorological Department has predicted that both maximum and minimum temperatures in the summer will be above normal. Mumbai has already recorded an unusually warm January.
Sunil Yadav, who does field work for a bank, is out through the day visiting homes to verify addresses and pick up documents. At lunchtime, he looks for a spot of shade in which to sit and eat his food. “There is a lack of green spaces,” he said. “In a park I could eat under a tree but I struggle to find one that is open.”
Over the last two years, Yadav said, Mumbai’s clean open spaces have been shrinking due to larges-cale construction projects.
He usually has his lunch by the side of the road or on crowded railway platforms. On Saturday, he found a bench on a ground in Chembur and was eating under a tree. “The heat is getting worse, and it is only the beginning of summer,” Yadav said.
Next to him sat Debassy Joseph, aged 57. A worker in a garment store, Joseph said he takes an hour-long break in the afternoon. “Gardens are shut,” he said. “Only poor people need them during afternoon. But we are deprived of it.”
