Extreme heat is emerging as a structural threat to India’s jobs, productivity and long-term growth, a new World Bank report warned on July 31, cautioning that rising temperatures will increasingly shape where people can work and how productively they can do so.
Titled A Livable Future: Protecting Jobs and Growth from Extreme Heat in South Asia’s Cities, the report found that heat exposure already cost India an estimated 247 billion potential labour hours and $194 billion in lost income in 2024, with agriculture accounting for 66% of the lost labour hours and construction another 20%. Across South Asia, extreme heat is already costing the equivalent of 31 million full-time jobs every year through lower productivity.
The pressure is set to intensify. South Asia is expected to add around 280 million working-age people by 2050, most of them in cities, even as rising heat makes it harder to create productive employment. Without adaptation, the region’s economy could shrink by close to 7% by 2050, the steepest projected loss of any developing region. Rising temperatures, the report warned, risk becoming “a structural constraint on productivity, livability, and economic growth.”
The poorest workers bear the sharpest exposure, the report noted, singling out those in informal settlements and on construction sites, in streets and markets with little shade or green cover. Urban India is squarely in the firing line, with Ahmedabad already recording more than 200 days a year of very high heat stress, while Mumbai is projected to reach 227 days and New Delhi 180 days by 2050.
The World Bank also pointed to an economic opportunity. It estimated that sustainable cooling represents a $1.6 trillion investment prospect in India by 2040, while a proposed programme to expand domestic manufacturing of affordable cooling equipment, the AHEAD initiative, could create close to 3.7 million jobs over the same period. With around 70% of the urban infrastructure India will need by mid-century still to be built, the report argued that policymakers have a rare window to embed heat resilience into future housing, transport and municipal planning.
The findings land as India pursues its Viksit Bharat 2047 goals and expands manufacturing under Make in India, both of which depend on a workforce that can stay productive through worsening summers.
