The climate crisis poses unique challenges for disabled people around the world. Growing up in a slum in Delhi while navigating his own disabilities and his mother’s chronic illness, disability activist Puneet Singhal developed an acute understanding of climate change as structural exclusion. Here, he reflects on a series of interviews with disabled people in Delhi as part of his Green Disability campaign for climate justice and disability justice.
It was barely April when Ritu stopped leaving her home in New Delhi. The air outside was thick and scorching, rising above 42°C. Ritu, who was living with multiple sclerosis, felt as though her body was being boiled from the inside.
“It’s like being trapped in your own skin,” she told me on a call, her voice breaking under the strain. “Even the fan feels like fire now.”
Her ground-floor home in West Delhi is dark and narrow, barely ventilated, built before insulation or passive cooling were common. She can’t afford an air conditioner.
Ritu relies on a wheelchair – but the streets outside have no ramps and no shade, and broken footpaths are overtaken by parked cars.
Buses are one of the many ways that people get around in Delhi. Photo by Emma and Kunley via Flickr
She’s tried to use public transport, but most buses don’t stop long enough for her to board. Where Metro stations have elevators, they are often out of order.
“I don’t need sympathy,” she said, “I need a city I can survive in.”
Ritu is not alone. In the past few months, I’ve spoken with more than 30 individuals like her – disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and carers – all navigating the intensifying heat in Delhi.
These conversations were held in person, over Zoom, and via voice notes. The names of interviewees have been changed for their privacy, but their stories echo a shared truth: global warming is not just an environmental crisis – it’s a human rights emergency.
A city that leaves you behind
I was born and raised in a slum in West Delhi. My mother, a chronic asthma patient, suffered increasingly severe attacks during every summer of my childhood.
She would lie drenched in sweat, gasping for air in a windowless room, while I ran between water taps and hospitals.
Dusty street in New Delhi, India. Photo by Jnzl’s Photos via Flickr
At the same time, I was navigating my own reality with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and a stammer — conditions that made communication and physical coordination difficult. But there was no time or space to understand them.
Heat, hunger, and helplessness spoke louder than any diagnosis.
Back then, I thought this was just poverty. Now, I understand it as something deeper – structural exclusion.
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Today, I advocate for disability rights through an initiative called ‘Green Disability’. But this story isn’t about a campaign – it’s about what happens when a city, and a climate crisis, ignores bodies like ours.
It’s about how the rising heat in Delhi doesn’t affect everyone equally.
“The city feels hostile”
Ankur, a 24-year-old with autism and sensory processing disorder, explained how even a short outing to buy groceries has become overwhelming.
“The heat feels like needles on my skin,” he said. “The noise from traffic is louder, the smells stronger. I feel like I’m dissolving.”
For Ankur, public spaces have never felt safe. But with Delhi’s heat index climbing steadily year-by-year, his sensory environment has turned from stressful to uninhabitable.
During our call, he showed me his schedule. He leaves home only after 9pm and avoids peak afternoon hours, even for medical appointments.
“Sometimes, I feel like the city doesn’t want me in it.”
Empty Street in New Delhi, India, during the early morning. Photo by Andrzej Wrotek via Flickr
Research backs Ankur’s experience. According to the 2022 report from the International Disability Alliance and DICARP, only 39 countries out of 195 had made any reference to persons with disabilities in their climate plans. India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) mention neither accessibility nor inclusive heat resilience.
This silence trickles down into local governance.
The gaps in Delhi’s heat action plan
Delhi’s Heat Action Plan (2022) focuses largely on early warnings and establishing cooling centers. But most cooling spaces – schools, hospitals, community halls – are not physically accessible.
There’s no mention of sign language alerts, sensory-safe cooling zones, or coordinated support for disabled people during peak heat events.
There is also little accountability for how these plans are rolled out in low-income neighborhoods, where disabled people are already underserved.
Tanya, a blind woman in her 30s living in East Delhi, recalled being left behind during an emergency evacuation for a fire triggered by electrical overload.
“Everyone ran. I didn’t even know what had happened until a neighbor came to help me,” she said. There were no drills. No warnings. No protocol.
In Tanya’s words: “Heat makes the wires melt. But it’s neglect that sets things on fire.”
Climate change makes employment more precarious
Heat doesn’t just affect health — it affects livelihoods. Rakesh, a street vendor with a spinal injury, described how his tricycle cart often overheats, forcing him to rest under flyovers between sales.
“I can’t afford to stop, but my body can’t go on.” During a recent heatwave, he fainted on the road. Passersby offered water but no help.
Busy street with vendors in Delhi, India. Photo by Richard Sennett via Flickr
The International Labour Organization’s 2023 report ‘Ensuring safety and health at work in a changing climate’ points to a stark reality: people with pre-existing health conditions are at greater risk of heat-related illnesses, and informal workers often lack legal protections.
Yet, in cities like Delhi, the informal economy is the backbone – and among its most vulnerable workers are those with invisible or unsupported disabilities.
As extreme weather worsens, our ability to work, travel, and even stay alive is being compromised – not because of who we are, but because of how systems ignore us.
We’re not just battling heat. We’re battling grief too.
The feeling shared in many of my interviews wasn’t just fear or fatigue – it was grief. Grief for cancelled plans. For independence lost. For dreams deferred.
Seema, a caregiver to her sister with schizophrenia, told me how the heat disrupts everything: medication schedules, sleep patterns, emotional stability.
“We’re stuck at home. And that means more isolation, more outbursts. There’s no cooling-off – in our home, or our heads.”
Mental health doesn’t make headlines during climate events. But in the interviews I conducted, it was everywhere, in whispers about loneliness, in fears about being abandoned, in the exhaustion of always having to plan for the worst.
The right to be counted
India is home to more than 26.8 million people with disabilities, according to the 2011 Census, a number experts say is vastly underreported. That’s at least 2.2% of India’s population. But other sources suggest the disabled community could account for somewhere between 4% and 8% of India’s 1.4 billion people.
Top-down view of a busy street in Delhi. Photo by Eduard Muntaner Perich via Flickr
But we’re invisible in climate data. We’re not consulted in planning committees. We’re rarely featured in media narratives around disaster relief or urban design.
We are not just vulnerable, we are valuable. We hold insights on resilience, on care networks, on surviving systems that were not built for us. But we are systematically excluded from the conversations that shape our future.
We are not just asking to be protected from heat – we are demanding the right to shape how the world heats up.
Building peace through inclusion
Climate inaction is a policy failure and it’s also a form of violence. And like all violence, it can only be transformed through justice.
In Delhi, I’ve seen disabled communities create their own forms of resilience: WhatsApp groups for sharing oxygen cylinder locations; volunteer networks delivering medicines; tactile mapping for people with visual impairments. These are not “special needs”—they are blueprints for survival.
What would it look like to place disability inclusion at the heart of every climate plan? To recognise a cooling centre outfitted with ramps and sign-language interpreters not merely as “accessible infrastructure,” but as a clear expression of our shared civic responsibility? And to acknowledge that a city can call itself heat-resilient only when every resident—regardless of body or mind—has a safe place to breathe, rest, and belong?
Heat is not abstract. It is lived and it is breathed. And for disabled people in Delhi, it is a test of dignity, safety, and visibility.
This year, the city passed 45°C before May even began. We are not waiting for a future crisis. We are already here, sweating, gasping, surviving. It’s time to be seen.
*Names have been changed to protect anonymity
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Main image of India Gate during sunset by Eye.Ess.Ohh via Flickr
