New Delhi – Heat exposure cost India 247 billion potential labour hours in 2024, a record and a 124 per cent increase on the 1990s average. The associated productivity loss is estimated at around 100 billion dollars.
More than 450 million workers face hazardous occupational heat exposure each year, across agriculture, construction, street vending, sanitation and transport.
A hazard with no standard
Indian labour law regulates hazards it can name. There is no general statutory temperature threshold above which outdoor work must stop, no mandated rest-shade-water protocol, and no requirement to record heat illness as an occupational injury.
The absence of the recording requirement is the quiet problem. A worker who collapses on a construction site in May is logged as a medical event rather than a workplace injury, so the hazard never appears in safety statistics and therefore never attracts enforcement.
Recognition has begun
Heatwaves have been notified as a natural calamity under the operational guidelines for the State and National Disaster Response Funds for 2026-31. That unlocks relief funding, which addresses aftermath rather than prevention.
Several states run heat action plans, including graded alerts in Delhi and cooling stations for informal workers in Rajasthan. The recurring criticism is implementation: plans exist, and the municipal capacity to operate them in May often does not.
The corporate exposure is larger than it looks
Most heat-exposed work in a company value chain is done by contractors, and contractor workforces frequently sit outside the safety metrics reported under BRSR Core.
A company reporting an excellent injury frequency rate while its site contractors work through a May afternoon has not managed the risk. It has moved it outside the boundary of what it measures.
Source: Lancet Countdown labour hour loss estimates for India, and Ministry of Home Affairs disaster response fund guidelines for 2026-31.
