The Daily Fix: Is India prepared to deal with a scorching summer?

The Big Story: Burn notice

Summer is here. There might still be a few days left in March, but temperatures across much of North and Central India are already at alarming highs. Skymet, a private weather forecaster, reports that parts of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are already seeing temperatures over the 40-degree mark. Accuweather has predicted that almost all of India will see temperatures at or above 38°C in the coming week, except for the coasts and the Himalayan districts.

That does not bode well for a country that has suffered a high number of casualties due to heatwaves over the past few years. The National Disaster Management Authority’s official records count 2,422 deaths due to heat in 2015, although it claims the number came down the following year after preparing an action plan that was sent to states ahead of the 2016 summer.

However, researchers point out that even that headline number is most likely to be an underestimate, since the government has very specific criteria for what counts as a “heat wave death” and even those are frequently underreported. What is incontrovertible is the fact that heat waves are only going to get worse, as the earth continues to warm. And India’s poorest will face the brunt of it.

The National Disaster Management Authority has been more active this year, circulating the guidelines that were sent to cities in 2016 and holding workshops to prepare states for the coming summer. But the signs are still ominous. The Indian Meteorological Department has predicted a hotter-than-usual summer, with temperatures expected to be above average in every meteorological subdivision in the country.

Despite the authority’s guidelines, it is for local administrations to actually deal with them. The focus might have to be on Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, which regularly suffer from the worst conditions and see the highest casualty count. But local bodies across the country need to be getting their act together in time for what will likely be a record summer. It does not bode well that Skymet’s forecast for the following season, the monsoon, suggests India will get less rain than usual.

The Big Scroll:

• One chart that shows the rising number of heat wave deaths since 1992.
• Heat waves in India are more deadly than you think ‒ and they are likely to get deadlier.
• Heat waves in India claim more lives than the government statistics reveal, writes Supriya Sharma.
  
• A repeat of the 2015 Andhra-Telangana heat wave that killed 2,500 people is 10 times more likely now, writes Joydeep Gupta.

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Punditry

1. Jessica Seddon in Mint says the removing of caps on contributions from corporate houses to political parties will benefit the incumbent, but also open up the “only visible chance for a wild card new entry” into Indian politics.
2. Our miserable record in fostering a sustainable ecosystem for songwriters that is also fair needs to change, writes Achille Forler in the Hindu, saying the Ilaiyaraaja-SP Balasubrahmanyam controversy is the perfect example of this.
3. “Delhi has been utterly unprepared for Beijing’s widening strategic influence in its neighbourhood,” writes C Raja Mohan in the Indian Express.
4. Sarika Malhotra in the Hindustan Times tells stories of people caught up in the Aadhaar web.

Giggles

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Malini Nair says farewell to Delhi’s iconic Regal Cinema, which also played host to Delhi’s very first LGBTQ protest.

“Regal was sought after for big blockbuster releases and red carpet premiers. The cinema’s first brush with controversy came in 1978, with the film Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Regal was among the first theatres in the country which agreed to screen the film, controversial for its scantily clad ‘tribal’ heroine, Zeenat Aman. As per filmi legend, the cinema actually conducted a havan to propitiate the gods of the box office for the film’s success.

‘Remarkably, Regal was the only cinema that agreed to host art house films in the 1970s and 1980s, at a special morning show,’ recalled Salam. ‘Every Shyam Benegal film had a showing here, from Ankur to Manthan.’

The cinema’s decline set in sometime during the 1990s. Connaught Place was no longer the only fancy shopping district in the city. Crowds began to drift elsewhere. Regal failed to keep in touch with changing technology and market practices.”