NDMA's progressive advisory will protect informal workers from the scorching heat

Indian Express

4 hours ago

Written by Aravind Unni, Shalini Sinha
In the past two years, we have witnessed the devastating impact of heatwaves on urban workers. The most affected workers are in the informal sector — without adequate labour regulations or social protection. They have found little mention in the Heat Action Plans (HAPs). This invisibility is now, hopefully, set to change.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has issued a landmark and progressive advisory to protect informal workers from the impact of heatwaves in Indian cities. It advocates integrating informal workers into HAPs through an actionable framework. This includes standard measures such as adjusting work hours, ensuring access to shade, hydration, and protection. More importantly, it calls for broader social security measures, including health insurance, income protection, and long-term inclusive urban planning.
This marks a significant step towards the positive recognition of informal workers and their needs within the broader climate adaptation agenda our cities must embrace. As a central body, NDMA guides framing HAPs at the state and city levels in India. If implemented, the advisory could bring much needed relief to over 15 crore urban informal workers.
The advisory
The NDMA's advisory is pathbreaking on many grounds. For the first time, informal workers — who comprise over 80 per cent of India's urban workforce — are formally recognised at the national level as a distinct, vulnerable group. This marks a shift from broad definitions of vulnerability, to a specific identification of worker categories: Street vendors, sanitation workers, construction labourers, domestic workers, rickshaw pullers, and platform workers. Importantly, the advisory mandates their integration into city- and state-level HAPs. It calls for budget allocations, worker-specific risk assessments, and the inclusion of unions and collectives in the planning process. It recommends a dedicated section for informal workers in HAPs, ensuring that their concerns are institutionalised and resourced.
Crucially, the advisory is also gender-sensitive. It acknowledges the specific vulnerabilities of women workers — not only the reproductive health impacts exacerbated by extreme heat, but also safety and mobility concerns. It proposes for the first time safe transport options, better lighting, and attention to women-dominated 'indoor' work sectors such as domestic and home-based work. This makes it one of the most gender-responsive climate advisories issued in India to date.
It recognises the role of worker organisations, welfare boards, employers, community groups, and RWAs as key actors in city-level heat responses. It advocates for participatory governance by calling for the representation of informal workers in Urban Local Body (ULB) committees and encourages collaboration between ULBs, unions, and worker boards. This reflects a shift from bureaucratic implementation to worker-led climate adaptation. By doing so, it moves heat response from a top-down, charity-oriented model to a rights-based one.
The advisory also breaks from the limited view of heatwaves as one-off disasters; instead, it proposes year-round preparedness, action, and evaluation. Finally, it charts a vision for post-heatwave resilience — calling for impact assessments based on local data and long-term protection mechanisms, including climate-resilient infrastructure in informal work zones. By embedding heat resilience within a broader urban equity and social protection agenda, the advisory becomes a landmark intervention in India's climate governance for the urban informal workforce.
The future
As the age-old argument goes — especially in India — the key lies in implementation. Guidelines are only the first step. Translating them into effective city-level Heat Action Plans that deliver real relief to workers will require a combination of both conventional and radical approaches across labour, gender, urban planning, and governance.
From a conventional standpoint, implementation will require budget allocations and a strong policy push. Existing legal frameworks can be leveraged creatively. For instance, the Street Vendors Act can be used to design climate-resilient vending zones. Similarly, worker welfare boards can provide heat protection kits, including hats and gloves, to construction workers and compensate them for income losses.
From an unconventional perspective, decentralised participation and co-execution are vital. Community engagement can bring in local knowledge, resources, and accountability — transforming HAPs from technical documents into people's campaigns for resilient cities. Moving beyond cooling shelters and water kiosks, this approach imagines heat action as a democratic process. It's time for the NDMA, the MoEFCC, the MoHUA, and the MoLE to move beyond silos. Fragmented responses will no longer suffice. With strong political backing, we need institutional collaboration that reflects the lived realities of workers with respect to climate risks.
Urban development, too, needs a paradigm shift. City design must embrace shade, green open spaces, water bodies, and heat-resistant building materials, answering to the need for an Indian variant of urbanisation. This change should ripple across sectors — housing, transport, and livelihoods — making cities more liveable and inclusive. Labour regulations, climate resilience, and just transitions must be integrated into planning and policy, quickly and effectively.
If ever there was a moment to reimagine India's urban governance, it is now. Heatwaves, in their most decentralised and invisible forms, demand equally decentralised, efficient delivery. New partnerships — public and private, grassroots movements and scientific institutions, worker groups and climate activists — must come together to ensure that this welcome first step translates into real change.
NDMA has done its part by pushing the discourse beyond seeing heatwaves as temporary crises. We must now integrate this perspective into long-term climate adaptation strategies, and it should reflect in our NDC 3.0 and NAPs. Only that will truly protect workers in cities — sustainably and justly.
Aravind Unni is an urban practitioner and researcher, working with informal workers and urban communities. Shalini Sinha is Asia Strategic Lead, Urban Policies Program, WIEGO