As the effects of rising summer heat get worse, Indian women street vendors are paying a heavy economic price

Savitri, a 48-year-old street vendor, trades utensils for old garments, going door-to-door in densely populated localities of Delhi. Her already strenuous work—walking or crammed into buses with a headload of over 20kg for 10 hours a day—intensifies in the heat.

In June last year, Savitri, whose husband is also a street vendor, suffered a heat stroke and was unable to work for two weeks. Faced with income loss, she borrowed ₹2,000 from her relatives and picked utensils worth ₹5,000 on credit from a shop owner. Ten months later, she is yet to fully repay the money.

“We find fewer customers on hotter days and get exhausted quickly due to heat and humidity. What we earn and save during winters gets spent during summers,” says Savitri, sitting at the Raghubir Nagar centre of SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association), where street vendors from that neighbourhood meet to discuss issues and learn about new schemes. Her work hours are halved by the heat of peak summer and care responsibilities at home increase due to heat-related illnesses among family members.

Extreme heat is no longer just a public health concern but it is also eroding incomes and pushing outdoor informal workers in India, particularly women street vendors, into cycles of debt. India is among the countries most exposed to rising heat, and heatwaves are projected to become longer and more frequent. Nearly 90% of India’s workforce is employed in the informal economy, which gives them no protection from climate-induced income shock.

Research released in February by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), a global network that supports the movement of workers in informal employment, especially women, shows that heat stress is significantly disrupting work patterns and earnings among street vendors in Delhi. Loss of livelihood resulted in debt increasing for both women and men vendors, but it rose at higher rates for women.

WIEGO and its partners, including SEWA and Delhi-based not-for-profit organisation Janpahal, conducted two survey rounds at the same vending sites in Delhi last year: first before peak summer (25 March–9 April) and then in mid-July, about a month after temperatures exceeded 46 degrees Celsius. In the second round, as temperatures rose, 96% of vendors reported fewer customers and 90% reduced work hours. Alarmingly, 79%—four times the first round—sought medical care for heat-related illness affecting themselves or their families.

With falling earnings and rising medical costs, 81% reported increased debt, up from 37% in the first round. While debt rose for both men and women, the increase was sharper for women (about 50 percentage points versus 40 for men).

Shalini Sinha from WIEGO’s urban policies programme says women vendors start at a disadvantage and heat compounds factors like stock losses and low customer footfall. “In the absence of infrastructure like drinking water and unpaid toilets, their cost of business goes up and profit margin goes down,” she says. “Women vendors’ access to credit, social protection or shock absorbers to deal with crises like these are non-existent. Many need to borrow from loan sharks which is an added financial burden. They lose a lot and they have very few mechanisms to fall back on,” she adds.

HEAT EXHAUSTION

Used clothes purchased by vendors like Savitri are resold at markets such as the Ghoda Mandi in Raghubir Nagar of West Delhi. One reseller, Mamata, 37, took a ₹50,000 bank loan last summer to cover her children’s school fees, household expenses and medical bills after her husband, who is also a door-to-door vendor like Savitri, fell ill from heat exhaustion. Both Mamata and Savitri say they also rely on multiple small loans of ₹500 from siblings, relatives and neighbours during the summer months. Neither has applied for the PM SVANidhi scheme, a government programme offering working capital loans to street vendors. The only difference is unlike Savitri, Mamata works at the fixed market, Ghoda Mandi, from 4-11am daily.

“Clothes vendors come to buy from us before their day’s work begins. Night-time heat is rising, and since ours is an open, unshaded market, we feel it just as intensely,” she says.

A study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in May 2024 showed that megacities in India are not cooling down at night. If temperatures remain high overnight, people get little chance to recover from daytime heat, which exerts prolonged stress on the body, says the study titled Decoding the Urban Heat Stress among Indian Cities.

“It is already so hot, I don’t know what will become of us in June/July,” says Geeta, 58, a veteran street vendor, who currently works as the supervisor of SEWA’s vendor programme in New Delhi. Ahead of summer, she is helping train women vendors on how to protect themselves from heat, including the importance of staying hydrated and what to do in case of a health emergency.

POLICY FOCUS

Vishwas Chitale, fellow at Delhi-based public policy think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), says heat action plans (HAPs) must “evolve from documents to implementation frameworks” that combine infrastructure, social protection and data-driven planning to protect both lives and livelihoods. “Local authorities should integrate heat risk into urban planning, ensure shaded rest areas and hydration at work sites, adjust working hours, and strengthen heat early warning systems tailored to vulnerable groups,” he says. HAPs are structured frameworks to tackle heat and its impacts on citizens using a coordinated strategy. This includes timely weather forecasts and early warnings, public awareness, healthcare preparedness, and protective measures to reduce the health impacts of extreme heat, especially among vulnerable populations.

Estimates by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in 2024 show that globally 70% of all workers are exposed to excessive heat. According to another ILO report of 2019, India is projected to lose 5.8% of working hours in 2030 due to heat stress.

Aditya Valiathan Pillai, visiting fellow at the independent research organisation Sustainable Futures Collaboratives, says it is “important” to address heat as a cross-sectoral issue, including its economic implications, rather than viewing it solely as a health issue. “It is important that we take the heat debate out of just a conversation on health and broaden it to include how extreme heat is impacting health, livelihoods and well-being in general. The economic threat is driving the health threat and vice-versa,” he adds.

“If you are thinking about insurance due to heat loss at the farm level, it is not a direct health intervention but it has a very big impact on health and nutrition,” he says, adding that infrastructure gaps at housing and market sites should be plugged.

WIEGO’s report flags “acute infrastructure deficit” in its findings. More than 70% of vendors lacked access to basic amenities like toilets, clean water and shade. Sinha adds that as part of building resilient cities, the focus should be on designing climate-resilient vending zones. This includes market sites having infrastructure provisions like cooling, shade, clean toilets, rest areas and storage facilities.

Mamata echoes similar views. “Despite how hot it gets and how much we sweat, most women vendors don’t drink water while out on work because there are no clean public toilets. Not even in fixed market sites. Something must be done about it,” she says.

Most women vendors at the centre spoke with concern about this year’s summer and the impending heat. They expressed concern about returning to a cycle of reduced work hours, lesser earnings, heat exhaustion and more borrowing.

When asked about how she is preparing for summer, Mamata says, “Gareeb insaan ki koi taiyyari nahi hoti. Garmi se bachne ke liye hum na toh bhagwan se lad sakte hai, na sarkaaron se (The poor can never be prepared. To save ourselves from heat, we can neither fight God nor governments).”

Anuja is an independent journalist based in New Delhi.