The Indian capital is burning. Temperatures in Delhi have hit 45 degrees Celsius, and for the city’s poorest, there is no escape. UK charities working on the ground are warning that the heatwave is not a natural disaster but a man-made crisis. The absence of basic protections for slum dwellers, construction workers, and street vendors is turning a weather event into a matter of life and death.
This is not simply about the mercury rising. It is about the failure of systems that were meant to protect the most vulnerable. In Delhi’s sprawling informal settlements, homes are made of tin sheets and tarpaulin. There is no running water for many. Electricity supply is erratic, and when the power cuts hit, fans stop spinning. The heat does not relent at night. It suffocates.
UK charities, including ActionAid and Oxfam, have issued urgent calls for support. They point to the stark reality: those who can afford air conditioning retreat indoors, while the city’s poor must choose between earning a day’s wage and risking heatstroke. Labourers in construction continue to haul bricks under a scorching sun because stopping means no pay. Street vendors hawk water bottles, but the profit margins are so thin that they cannot afford to stop working. The same logic that drives wage stagnation in Manchester drives survival in Delhi.
The comparison is not idle. The thread that connects the two cities is the erosion of the social safety net. In Delhi, there are no mandatory cool-down breaks, no shaded rest areas, no free public water distribution points that function. The government’s heat action plan exists on paper, but charities report that in the slums, no one has seen a cooling centre. The warning systems are not reaching those who need them. Illiteracy and lack of access to mobile phones mean that alerts go unheeded.
This is a crisis of inequality, not of climate. Yes, the world is warming, but the pain is distributed along class lines. The rich seal themselves off. The poor fry. It is the same story that plays out in London during a heatwave, where the elderly in council flats cook in their own homes because there is no budget for insulation. But here, the stakes are higher. The heat kills directly. Dehydration and heatstroke claim lives. Delhi’s hospitals report a surge in admissions, but many cannot afford the ambulance.
UK charities are calling for an emergency response: funding for water tankers, for temporary shelters, for health outreach. But they also see this as a symptom of a deeper rot. The deregulation of labour markets, the casualisation of work, the refusal to treat cooling as a public good. The same neoliberal dogma that has left British workers without sick pay or protections is now leaving Indian workers to die in the heat.
The tragedy is that these deaths are preventable. A few rupees worth of oral rehydration salts, a shaded break, a fan that stays on. But those things require political will. They require seeing the poor as worthy of investment.
I have reported on strikes in Liverpool and factory closures in Sunderland. I know what it looks like when a system decides some people are expendable. This is that, with the temperature turned up. The charities are right to warn. The question is whether anyone is listening.
