TheDaak review

Mapping the Class Ceiling of Delhi’s Heat Crisis

By Radhika Boruah

There is a mechanical fact about air conditioning that seldom makes it into a heatwave story. It is about how an air conditioner does not destroy heat and just moves it. Every unit operating takes the hot air out of one room and pushes it through a condenser, straight back into the lane outside. The air is hotter, heavier, and more concentrated than before. It is like the saying, “somebody’s comfort is always somebody else’s exhaust”. 

In a city divided as sharply by class as Delhi, it isn’t hard to guess whose lane that exhaust lands in and whose stays clear. This is the part of the heat divide that satellites miss. It shows up in a narrow alley in the informal settlements of Delhi like Jagdamba Camp, barely a kilometer away from where one child sleeps at a cool 24°C, like in Panchsheel Enclave, while another family has no air conditioner to run yet inherits a share of everyone else’s heat anyway.

Following Madhav and Sunny Shankar, residing in Panchsheel Enclave and Jagdamba Camp respectively, this piece will highlight their story, the gap living on either side of its hottest, most unevenly distributed season. Poor children experience more heat, but that heat interacts with poverty to produce distinct physiological, cognitive, and developmental outcomes that a well-resourced household is largely able to buy its way out of.

Two Boys, One City on Fire

Madhav’s night is a closed loop by design. Heat generated inside his home is captured, compressed, and expelled outward. His days move seamlessly from air-conditioned bedrooms to climate-controlled cars and chilled classrooms. When the mercury hits 48°C, his life shrinks slightly, but it does not shatter as much. I spoke to him about how he spends his afternoons. He would be gaming, reading, or watching the scorched world outside from behind tinted glass.

While I was there around Jagdamba Camp, I saw Sunny Shankar experiencing the exact same afternoon in much more inconvenience. Sunny lives under a rusty tin roof that acts like a thermal amplifier, trapping heat long after the sun goes down. By 3:00 p.m., the air inside his single-room home feels smoky, metallic, and impossible to breathe. There is only a single table fan that circulates hot air across the room like a hair dryer on full blast.

For Madhav, summer is a minor inconvenience, a period of forced indoor play, perhaps, but one spent in safety, hydration, and thermal comfort. While Madhav’s childhood is protected, Sunny’s is being eroded degree by degree. Instead of playing outdoor games or focusing on schoolwork, Sunny’s afternoons are consumed by exhausting survival. His eyes are perpetually rimmed with red from heat exhaustion and dust; his focus in school has plummeted because his body never gets to rest.

In Delhi, the “outdoors” has turned into a forbidden zone, turning childhood into a silent lockdown that no child voted for. For children living in poverty, extreme heat is never just a matter of elevated temperatures. It acts as a physiological multiplier, compounding structural deprivation to inflict quiet, permanent damage on growing bodies. And this is the very outcome wealthy households can routinely buy their way out of. 

What an air conditioner actually does to the street

Urban studies in Phoenix¹ , Wuhan ², and Xi’an³ demonstrate AC units as heaters for the outdoors. AC units suck the heat from indoors and release it outdoors. During the day, the heat gets dispersed into the air. However, at night, the dispersed heat is trapped right at ground level because the air is denser and heavier. In these residential areas, the heat caused by dispersing AC units can raise the temperature by 2°C.

Delhi’s data also shows this cycle. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) provided data that demonstrates electricity usage in the summertime in Delhi as having two spikes. The first is at 3:00 p.m. as offices and shops close for the day. The second spike happens at midnight, when residential areas become the primary consumers of electricity as the air conditioners turn on and run throughout the night.
The injustice really spikes after the second point. Midnight is when airflow away from the AC systems becomes the most damaging to the rest of the world. Heat that is ejected outside of AC systems now sits in the street with nowhere to go, which is where kids like Sunny sleep.

According to a report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), suburban areas in Delhi with low tree cover are nearly 4°C warmer overnight compared to greener neighborhoods. Across diverse urban landscapes, areas with abundant foliage retain significantly less heat. This is a pattern mirrored in major cities nationwide. Concrete and lack of tree cover may be similar, but in other cities there are factors like the design of the systems in the buildings. In cities like Delhi, where there are hot and humid conditions, children like Sunny who cannot afford air conditioning systems suffer the most. The systems of people who can afford it cool them to 24°C, while children like Sunny pay the cost.

The physical and developmental toll

The WHO states that children have less ability to sweat and a greater surface-area-to-body mass ratio than adults, so the ability to release heat is even less. Madhav is at a comfortable resting temperature of 24°C with no physical strain, while Sunny’s body is constantly combating his elevated core temperature with a racing pulse and dehydration. Heat is disrupting sleep too: when it remains hot at night, the body is unable to lower the core temperature enough to get to deep sleep for the physical recuperation that is necessary. And sleep is distributed unequally too: Madhav can sleep undisturbed in a cooled room for 8 to 9 hours of sleep, while Sunny is trying to sleep in a room that is constantly above 32°C with broken and disturbed sleep.

Furthermore, backed by a calm study space, Madhav can study effortlessly. Sunny is being bogged down by fatigue, memory issues, and a dramatic lack of focus. Cambridge University’s and PLOS Climate’s findings state that chronic heat stress has a negative, long-term impact on brain development, focus, and work in school⁴. All families with high incomes have access to water whenever they need it. Families in informal settlements have to rely on water tankers, as they have summer cutting water access. Reports from Harvard Law School are documenting the water inequalities that exist in Delhi and how heat makes basic daily activities almost impossible for kids like Sunny⁵.

The Business of Exported Discomfort

Around 62% of Delhi households own some form of cooling appliance, with air conditioner ownership growing fast among middle- and high-income families. Over the next decade, India is projected to add 130 to 150 million new room air conditioners⁶. Every single unit installed adds to the midnight power surge and vents more heat into the surrounding streets.

The families running air conditioners through a 45°C June aren’t doing anything wrong. No one expects them to sit in the heat out of fairness. But the underlying reality is stark: the city’s cooling relies on a system that fixes the problem for those who can pay by pushing that heat out onto the streets for those who can’t. Sunny Shankar never bought an air conditioner, but he is paying its physical price every night.

Where We Go From Here

We are raising two groups of children: those growing up in climate-controlled bubbles and those living in tin-roofed ovens. If we don’t fix our city streets with real green spaces, better building designs, and fair urban planning, we will lose the health and potential of the next generation. Kids in Delhi shouldn’t have to be “tough” just to get through a summer night at home.

To protect children from extreme heat, we need immediate, practical action alongside long-term fixes. In the short term, municipal groups need to launch quick cool-roof programs using reflective white paint or shade nets on tin roofs, which can lower indoor temperatures by 2°C to 5°C⁷. At the same time, government schools and community halls should stay open at night as cool shelters with clean drinking water so children have a safe place to sleep. This is not a hypothetical policy. It is a proven emergency measure. Cities from Portland to New Delhi have already shown how public infrastructure can be transformed into nocturnal heat refuges. Cities can convert closed civic buildings into overnight shelters that save lives using basic evaporative coolers, cots, and oral rehydration stations in government schools and community halls, offering a safe place to sleep for low-income children and families when unventilated shanties become uninhabitable⁸.

For the long term, city planning must focus on fairness: enforcing building rules so AC units don’t blast heat directly into tight walking lanes, planting dense tree cover in lower-income areas, and building public housing designed to stay cool naturally. That is the only way to break Delhi’s heat divide and give every child a safe, livable environment.

1.  Salamanca, F., Georgescu, M., Mahalov, A., Moustaoui, M., & Wang, M. (2014). Anthropogenic heating of the urban environment due to air conditioning. Environmental Research Letters, 9(4), 044024. 
2.  Chow, W. T. L., & Svoma, B. M. (2011) / Related Regional Application: Hu, L., & Brunsell, N. A. (2015). The impact of anthropogenic heat on urban microclimate in high-density Asian cities. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 121(3), 631–646.
3.  Wang, Z., & Zhang, Y. (2019). Numerical simulation of the impact of air-conditioning waste heat on the thermal environment in residential areas of Xi’an. Building and Environment, 157, 321–333.
4.  Vasilakopoulou, K., & Santamouris, M. (2025). Cumulative exposure to urban heat can affect the learning capacity of students and penalize the vulnerable and low-income young population: A systematic review. PLOS Climate, 4(7), e0000618. 
5.  International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School & Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR). (2023). When the Water Runs Dry: Human Rights, Climate Change & Deepening Water Inequality in Delhi, India. Harvard Law School. 
6. India Energy and Climate Center (IECC). (2025). Beating the Heat: How Air Conditioner Efficiency Standards Help India Avert Power Shortages and Cut Consumer Bills. Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley.
7. NRDC & MHT. (2018). Cooling Roofs, Saving Lives: Lessons from Ahmedabad’s Cool Roofs Initiative. Natural Resources Defense Council & Mahila Housing SEWA Trust and  World Bank. (2022). Primer on Cool Roofs: Implementing Cool Roofs in Low-Income Urban Communities. Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
8. https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/delhi-news/delhi-govt-turns-schools-community-halls-into-summer-shelters-for-attendants-near-major-hospitals-101779191340737.html and https://www.climatecentre.org/5322/blog-historic-heat-leads-american-red-cross-cascades-volunteers-to-adapt-to-a-disaster-like-no-other/#:~:text=Working%20alongside%20counties%20and%20local%20governments%2C%20the,of%20water%20and%20over%20300%20comfort%20kits.

Radhika is a Childfund Asia fellow who has been working for child rights and writing about socio-political issues.

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This feature is published as part of ChildFund Asia’s “Cities on Fire” initiative to raise awareness on how rising temperatures and urban heat impact the health, safety, and rights of children across Asian cities.