In the sweltering lanes of Sunder Nagri, a northeast Delhi slum where ground temperatures breach 54 degrees Celsius, forty families have begun writing down what numbers alone cannot say — the rashes, the ruined produce, the sleepless nights on rooftops. Their heat diaries, gathered this summer of 2026, are an act of quiet insistence: that survival is data too, and that those who bear the heaviest burden of a warming world deserve to be counted in the policies written to address it. Submitted to India's Human Rights Commission and shaped by a landmark Supreme Court ruling, these testimonies ask
Delhi slum residents document extreme heat survival in groundbreaking heat diaries
Residents experience heat-related skin infections, health deterioration, and economic losses; street vendors lose income as customers avoid extreme temperatures; families lack adequate cooling and ventilation.