This summer season in India, schools were ordered to be shut, offices asked their employees to work from home and residents were told to ration their water supply. But what about those people who are the most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change? Recent studies by the World Health Organization (WHO) and climate agencies have shown that women exhibit a heightened susceptibility to extreme temperatures, heat in particular, as compared to men—especially those women who work without job security and social protection mechanisms.
Buthkuri Kanta, Karimnagar, Telangana
Wearing a plain white sari with a golden border, Buthkuri Kanta, 50, stands under the searing heat on a May afternoon outside her house in Karimnagar district of Telangana. “This is my staple colour during summer,” she says, adding that wearing black-coloured clothes absorbs heat. The highest temperature that day was 45 degrees Celsius. Karimnagar always records the hottest temperatures in Telangana.
Kanta is the district president of the Pravasi Mitra Labour Union of Karimnagar in north Telangana, which works to protect the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families in the region. “I have my own family back home,” she says, walking into the house of a migrant family. “But if we don’t help the community, no one else will.” She sits on the wooden charpai outside the house of Guthpuri Bokaiah, who narrates the ordeal of his son who died by suicide in Saudi Arabia due to the grim working conditions. Kanta’s own husband, Gangayya, migrated to Uganda in 2004 in a desperate search for a job. He died in an accident at a construction site where he used to work as a labourer. Kanta and her family did not receive any compensation from the government. Since then, Kanta has been helping other migrant families who are facing the same trauma.
While in summers, the floor of Gangavathi’s house is unbearable to walk barefoot, during the monsoons, the house gets flooded very frequently. On a normal day, while her husband works tirelessly until evening in a farm and her sons go off to school, Gangavathi spends most of her time inside the house. But that doesn’t help her escape the heat or the flooding.
Recent studies by the World Health Organization (WHO) have shown that women exhibit a heightened susceptibility to extreme temperatures, as compared to men.
Initially, she was happy with her choice of wearing white, but the traditional five-metre long sari made her uneasy as the day went on. But her discomfort doesn’t show up while interacting with families who have lost their loved ones. She sits next to them, empathises with them and tells them about an upcoming meeting in September with Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, where they plan to take their grievances to him. But when families serve her water, as a gesture of gratitude, she refuses respectfully. “I don’t eat or drink anything from outside,” she says.
Her work doesn’t fit into the conventional 9-5 time period. On this Saturday, she had already attended multiple meetings by the time we met. “I usually try to schedule my meetings in the early part of the day; otherwise I feel out of breath,” she says, wiping the sweat off her face. Why not start her ground work after 3 pm, when the heat is at its peak? She chuckles, albeit hesitantly. “There are usually many inebriated men roaming around after the sun goes down… I don’t feel safe,” she says.
But even the prolonged heatwave doesn’t deter her passion to serve. With a handkerchief in one hand and a small notebook in the other, she met at least five families that day, traversing some 50 km, without finishing a half-litre bottle of water that had become warm. “It is hard to find a place to relieve myself,” she says, as we stopped to take a break. She went into a couple of houses to find a spot. At one place, men guarded the area while sitting atop their bikes. At another, there wasn’t a lock on the door. Many of the areas she visits for the survey are deep inside the villages, where residents themselves do not have separate places for men and women to relieve themselves. “It is okay,” she tries to reassure herself. “I will go back home and do it.” That day, she returned home only at around 10 pm.
Deekonda Gangavathi, Rangampeta Village, Karimnagar District, Telangana
“We have been asking for a house for the past 20 years, but with no luck so far,” says Deekonda Gangavathi, the wife of a farmer in Rangampeta village in Karimnagar district, north Telangana. With each passing summer, Gangavathi’s one-bedroom home seems to be getting smaller for the family of four. It used to be a family of five, until Gangavathi’s elder son, Aravind, passed away in Dubai. “We were counting on him to send us a part of his earnings so that we could afford a house,” Gangavathi recounts in despair.
While in summers, the floor of Gangavathi’s house is unbearable to walk barefoot, during the monsoons, the house gets flooded very frequently. On a normal day, while her husband works tirelessly until evening in a farm and her sons go off to school, Gangavathi spends most of her time inside the house. But that doesn’t help her escape the heat or the flooding.
Their house is tightly packed with some steel vessels, a makeshift bed, a mini stove and a ceiling fan that works when there is electricity. “I cook for my family,” says Gangavathi, when asked what she does for a living. “Of course, it’s not a paid job,” she says, chuckling. There is only a very small, almost inconsequential, opening on the roof, right above the stove, to let some air out. But the smoke that fills the room, coupled with surface-level heat, cannot escape through the small opening. Gangavathi has a recurring cough and nausea, but still makes food for her family standing close to the stove. “The hospital is 10 km away,” she says, when asked why she doesn’t get her cough checked.
In the same yard where her home lies, there are two enclosures that function as a washroom and a place to take a bath. Both are adjacent to the main village road. Gangavathi uses one of her saris to cover the shower area. During the day, when temperatures are at their maximum, the village doesn’t get steady water supply. “I hold off on drinking water at such times, otherwise I will not be able to clean the washroom once I relieve myself,” she says. While sometimes she treks to fetch water, her husband helps her with the same while coming back home in the evening. “Men can relieve themselves anywhere without water,” she says, “but we can’t do that, right?”
Nalini Amma (name changed), Mysuru, Karnataka
From mid-March to mid-May, Nalini Amma, 46, wakes up every morning with fear. “Will there be water supply today?” is the first question that crosses her mind, even though she lives right beside the Cauvery River. The state witnessed an unprecedented drought and prolonged heatwave during the Lok Sabha elections. Many, who could afford to, stayed indoors in their air-conditioned rooms, paying heed to the weather department’s warnings. But not Nalini Amma. She worked as a house help in three houses in Mysuru. But all the while, she was menstruating. “I have gotten my periods back-to-back this time within less than a 10-day gap,” she says. “The doctor said there is a tumour in my uterus,” she says without hesitation, not knowing how serious a tumour can be.
Mysuru is usually known to be cooler than Bengaluru. But not this summer. “My skin feels like it is burning,” Nalini says, while walking to the poll booth to cast her vote. She doesn’t usually catch an auto to her places of work because the drivers charge higher prices for short distances (she lives about 6 km away from these houses). “I sometimes feel dizzy because of my heavy flow,” she says, while trying to catch her breath. Neither does she want to take a leave at the cost of reduced income. “My daughter just gave birth to a baby. We need all the help we can get,” she says. Her husband, on the other hand, has been in the habit of obsessively consuming liquor, she says. “I need a break from him sometimes,” she admits, while recalling an incident where he became violent with her after getting drunk. Her job, therefore, has been her escape, but at the cost of her health.
In one house where she works, the owners have a separate washroom for the house help. But while working in the other two houses, Nalini is not allowed to use the washrooms that the owners use. In such cases, she doesn’t change her pad for the whole day. “It gets so uncomfortable and I have been getting rashes,” she says. But she continues to work every day, despite the cramps in her body. She cannot afford to get a scan, as her earnings are spent to buy essentials for her family. On good days, she is able to convince one of the owners to pay her a meagre daily amount, instead of a monthly salary. “Sometimes my husband takes the money to buy liquor. So I have been hiding it to buy cold water,” she says. That day, she bought a new school bag for her grandson. “I don’t know if I will be alive until he grows that big.”
(This appeared in the print as 'Extreme Survival')
