The mercury hit 45 degrees Celsius in Delhi yesterday, and for the city’s most vulnerable, that number is not a statistic but a death sentence. In the slums of Narela and Sangam Vihar, where metal roofs concentrate heat like lenses, residents have been queuing for hours for water that may not come. The crisis has prompted the UK-led Climate Resilience Fund to release emergency supplies, but the gesture feels alarmingly insufficient against the scale of the heatwave.
Let us be clear. The human body at 45°C with high humidity enters a state of physiological siege. Blood vessels dilate, the heart races to pump blood to the skin, and sweating becomes futile if there is no water to replace lost fluid. The result is heat stroke, organ failure, and death. In Delhi’s informal settlements, where every room is an oven, the casualty count is climbing. At least three fatalities were reported on Tuesday alone. The real number, as always, will be higher.
The Climate Resilience Fund, established with £1.2 billion from the UK government, was designed precisely for moments like this. It now funnelling water tankers, oral rehydration salts, and mobile cooling units into the hardest-hit districts. But here is the uncomfortable truth. This is not a crisis of sudden onset. It is a slow collapse we have been tracking for decades. Delhi’s annual temperature has risen by 0.5°C per decade since 1990. The number of heatwave days has tripled. The aquifers are draining at 20 metres per year. The only surprise is that anyone is surprised.
A woman I spoke with at a distribution point in Jahangirpuri told me she had walked four kilometres for two litres of water. She was carrying her infant son, whose face was blotched with heat rash. She did not want to talk about politics. She wanted to know if the water would come again tomorrow. I could not answer.
The UK fund’s intervention is welcome, but it treats symptoms not causes. The cause is the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, now at 420 parts per million, a concentration not seen since the Pliocene epoch when sea levels were 25 metres higher. The cause is the fossil fuel infrastructure that still supplies 80 percent of India’s energy. The cause is a global economic system that has externalised the cost of survival onto the poor.
There are solutions, of course. White roofs reflect heat. Urban forests can lower ambient temperatures by 2-3°C. Smart water grids can reduce leakage from 40 percent to under 10 percent. These are not magic. They are engineering. They require political will and capital. The question is whether we will deploy them fast enough to save the lives we are currently losing.
Tomorrow will be hotter. That is not a metaphor. The India Meteorological Department predicts another day above 44°C. The UK fund will keep distributing water. The poor will keep queuing. And the planet will keep warming until we decide that some things are more important than profit. I report from Delhi, where the air smells of dust and frustration, and the news is never good.
