Tag: heat wave

The cost of forgetting Ballia

In the day or so before June 1, 14 people died in Bihar of heat stroke. Ten of these people were election personnel deployed to oversee voting and associated activities in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and of them, five died in Bhojpur alone. On Friday, at least 17 people in Uttar Pradesh, 14 in Bihar, and four in Jharkhand had died of heat-related morbidity. And of the 17 in Uttar Pradesh, 13 deaths were reported from Mirzapur alone. This is a toll rendered all the more terrible by two other issues.

First, after the first phase of the polls, the Election Commission of India (ECI) recorded lower voter turnout than expected (from previous Lok Sabha polls) and blamed the heat. Srinivasan Ramani, my colleague at The Hindu, subsequently found “little correlation” between the maximum temperature recorded and turnouts in various constituencies, and in fact an anti-correlation in some places. By this time the ECI had said it would institute a raft of measures to incentivise voters to turn up. These were certainly welcome irrespective of there being a relationship between turnout and heat. However, did it put in place similar ‘special’ measures for electoral officials?

On March 16, the ECI forwarded an advisory that included guidelines by the National Disaster Management Authority to manage heat to the chief electoral officers of all states and Union territories. These guidelines had the following recommendations, among others: “avoid going out in the sun, especially between 12.00 noon and 3.00 pm”; “wear lightweight, light-coloured, loose, and porous cotton clothes. Use protective goggles, umbrella/hat, shoes or chappals while going out in sun”; and “avoid strenuous activities when Balliathe outside temperature is high”.

A question automatically arises: if poll officers are expected to avoid such activities, the polling process should have been set up such that those incidents requiring such activities wouldn’t arise in the first place. So were they? Because it’s just poka-yoke: if the process itself didn’t change, expecting poll officers to “avoid going out in the sun … between 12 pm and 3 pm” would have been almost laughable.

The second issue is worse. Heat wave deaths in India are often the product of little to no advance planning, even if the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast excessive heat on certain dates. But to make matters worse, there was a deadly heat wave last year in the same region where many of these deaths have been reported now.

Recall that in the first half of June 2023, more than 30 people died of heat-related illnesses in Ballia village in Uttar Pradesh. After the chief medical superintendent of the local district hospital told mediapersons the people had indeed died of excessive heat, the state health department — led by deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak — transferred him away, and his successors later denied heat had had anything to do with the deaths.

So even if the IMD hadn’t predicted a heat wave in this region for around May 30-31, the local and national governments and the ECI should have made preparations for heat exposure leading at least to morbidity. Did they? To the extent that people wouldn’t have had to be hospitalised or have died if they’d made effective preparations, they didn’t. Actively papering over the effects of extreme weather (and of adverse exposure) has to be the most self-destructive thing we’re capable of in the climate change era.

Featured image: Representative image of a tree whose leaves appear to have wilted in the heat. Credit: Zoltan Tasi/Unsplash.

Curious Bends – the misery index, twin births, ethnic inequality and more

1. India’s heat wave has been made worse by its humidity

“But at least these places had a “dry heat,” and overnight temperatures have been falling into the 80s. Along the coast, temperatures were slightly lower, but much higher humidity levels created a punishing heat index that persisted throughout the night. In Mumbai, for example, the heat index bottomed out just below 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and only for a few hours overnight Wednesday. In severe heat waves, oppressively hot overnight temperatures are extremely deadly, because there’s just no chance for overheated bodies to cool off. That means the “misery index”—a creation of Web developer Cameron Beccario that factors in both heat and humidity—is off the charts nearly nationwide.” (4 min read, slate.com)

2. We’re producing enough electricity—but doing a bad job of distributing it

“There are no takers for all the generation capacity that is in place. There is demand but they don’t have the money to pay for the power due to the health of the [state distribution companies],” a senior government official told ET, adding that discoms across all states had incurred accumulated losses of Rs 2.51 lakh crore in 2012-13. In 2014-15, 22,566 MW of capacity was commissioned, which officials and experts said were stuck in the pipeline for years till they were put on the fast-track by the UPA in its fag end through the Cabinet Committee on Investments.” (4 min read, economictimes.com)

3. The strange and mysterious science of twin births

“Twins have fascinated both scientists and Bollywood directors alike. Why are there are some places with a statistically higher incidence of twin births? Much higher! Is it the water, the air, or could it be the yam? Padmaparna Ghosh and Samanth Subramanian investigate the mysteries behind twin births, getting behind the science, the statistics and some plain old superstition to uncover the theories and the conspiracies.” (12 min listen, audiomatic.in)

4. The connection between Cristiano Ronaldo and a remote dengue fever outbreak

“Break Dengue, a site funded by drug companies, NGOs, and other health groups, posits an unlikely potential factor in Madeira’s outbreak: global football star Cristiano Ronaldo. The epidemic’s origins trace back to a charter flight of tourists from Venezuela, according to Ana Clara Silva, an epidemiologist at Madeira’s health institute, who spoke at a recent infectious disease conference in London. Break Dengue’s Gary Finnegan noted that the tourists were quite possibly making a pilgrimage to the Portuguese soccer mega-star’s birthplace, as Ronaldo is a major tourist draw for Madeira.” (3 min read, qz.com)

5. In an ethnically divided country, the poor feel their poverty more keenly

“The authors show that as a country’s ethnic inequality falls, average GDP per person rises. A one-standard-deviation decline in a country’s ethnic Gini index—the equivalent of moving from the level of Nigeria to that of Namibia—is associated with a 28% increase in GDP per person. It seems likely that ethnic inequality leads to low levels of development, not the other way around. After all, in other tests the authors find that ethnic inequality mostly reflects unequal geographical endowments, such as more fertile land and distance to the coast. What explains these results? When there is inequality along ethnic lines, the paper suggests, those grouped at the bottom feel their poverty more keenly. The rich are easier to identify, and thus an easier target. All told, ethnically imbalanced societies may be more prone to conflict, which is hardly good for growth.” (2 min read, economist.com)

Chart of the Week

“In 2000, United Nations member countries agreed to ambitious development targets that they hoped to reach by 2015. These are the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Among them was to reduce the number of people suffering from undernourishment—enough to cut the global hunger rate in half. Now 2015 is here, and it turns out the world is actually doing a pretty good job on that measure. The UN has released its annual report on hunger, which it defines as chronic undernourishment—the inability to acquire enough food for at least one year. Here’s what it found: since 1990 31 more countries have met the UN goal of cutting hunger in half or bringing it under 5% of their populations.” (2 min read, qz.com)

hunger_31