Can individuals ‘develop’ if climate worsens work conditions?

India is growing. But what happens when the conditions under which people earn their living begin to make work harder, less productive and more dangerous?

Consider a street vendor in Delhi selling fruit from a roadside cart. Her income depends on the number of hours she can remain outside. On an ordinary day, she may work for eight or nine hours. During an extreme heatwave, however, staying outside for the same duration can become physically exhausting and potentially dangerous. She may leave earlier, sell less, fall ill, or spend part of her income on treatment — yet GDP may still be rising. But has her development necessarily advanced?

This question exposes a fundamental limitation in the way development is often understood.

Economic growth is important. It creates resources for better infrastructure, education, healthcare and employment. Yet growth is a means to development, not development itself. If rising national income does not translate into greater opportunities and freedoms for people, the growth story remains incomplete.

Development is about what people are actually able to do

This is where Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach offers a powerful way of thinking about India’s development challenge.

Sen moved the focus of development economics away from income and commodities towards people’s capabilities — their substantive opportunities to achieve the kind of lives they value. Income matters, but it is valuable because it enables people to achieve better health, education, security, mobility and participation in society.

The distinction becomes particularly important when climate change enters the picture.

Consider two workers earning the same daily income. One works in an air-conditioned office, has paid leave and can work from home. The other drives an auto-rickshaw, sells goods on the pavement or works at a construction site. A heatwave does not affect their capabilities equally.

The second worker may technically remain free to work. But if working during peak heat threatens their health, while taking a break means losing income, their substantive freedom to work safely has narrowed.

Climate, therefore, should not be treated only as an environmental variable. It is also a conversion factor, as it determines how effectively people can convert income, employment and other resources into actual well-being.

Growth’s climate cost

India has made genuine progress in human development. According to the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report 2025, India’s Human Development Index (HDI) stood at 0.685 in 2023, placing it 130th out of 193 countries. Its life expectancy at birth was 72 years, while mean years of schooling stood at 6.9 years.

These achievements matter. But an average can conceal substantial inequality.

India’s Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI) falls from 0.685 to 0.475 when inequality in human development dimensions is taken into account — a loss of 30.7%.

This distinction is crucial for understanding climate vulnerability.

A wealthy household can respond to extreme heat by using air conditioning, private transport, flexible working arrangements and better healthcare. A daily wage worker may have none of these options.

Thus, the same temperature can impose very different development costs on different people.

Climate change can therefore reinforce pre-existing inequalities rather than simply adding a new environmental problem.

When heat enters household budget

A 2024 peer-reviewed study by Saudamini Das and E. Somanathan, published in Environmental Research Letters, surveyed nearly 400 informal workers in two Delhi slums during the summer of 2019. The workers included people engaged in construction, vending, rickshaw driving, painting and rag picking.

Every 1°C increase in wet-bulb temperature was associated with a 13-percentage-point decline in gross earnings, a 19-percentage-point decline in earnings after work-related expenditure, a 6-percentage-point increase in the reported probability of sickness, and a 2-percentage-point decline in the probability of going to work.

During the two heatwaves observed in the study, net earnings were 40% lower.

For a salaried employee with paid leave, extreme heat may primarily mean discomfort. For an informal worker, it can mean lost income. Lost income can mean school fees going unpaid, a medical appointment being postponed, a debt payment being delayed or food consumption being reduced. The temperature outside therefore enters directly into the household’s economic security.

That is the point at which climate vulnerability becomes a development trap: low income limits the ability to adapt, which increases heat exposure, reduces productivity and earnings, worsens health, and deepens economic vulnerability — a self-reinforcing cycle.

Gender dimension cannot be ignored

Development also has to ask who is experiencing these constraints. The UNDP’s 2025 Gender Development Index (GDI) gives India a value of 0.874, placing it in Group 5, the category with the largest gender disparities in human development achievements. Female HDI was 0.631, compared with 0.722 for males. Climate vulnerability can deepen such existing disparities.

Imagine the same street vendor is a woman. Extreme heat may force her to reduce her paid working hours. But unlike an office worker who can simply go home and rest, she may still have cooking, cleaning, childcare and other unpaid responsibilities waiting for her. She can therefore lose paid work without gaining free time.

This illustrates why development cannot be judged simply by whether women enter the labour market. The more important question is whether employment expands their real capabilities, security and agency.

Climate cost of India’s growth model

The Solow model suggests that economic output depends partly on the effective use of labour, capital and technology. If extreme heat reduces workers’ ability to work or lowers labour productivity, climate change can directly undermine productive capacity.

But Romer’s endogenous growth theory provides an important reason for optimism. Technological progress and knowledge can increase productivity. For India, investment in heat-resilient infrastructure, better urban planning, cooling technologies, early warning systems and climate-adaptive workplaces can therefore be seen not simply as environmental expenditure, but as investment that helps preserve productive capacity.

The question should not be “growth or climate protection?” It should be: what kind of growth remains productive when the climate itself is changing the conditions under which people work? This is where environmental sustainability becomes inseparable from development.

The UNDP’s Planetary Pressures-adjusted HDI (PHDI) makes a similar conceptual move by adjusting human development for planetary pressures. In the 2025 data, India’s PHDI is 0.656, compared with an HDI of 0.685 — a 4.2% reduction after accounting for planetary pressures.

India starts responding, but implementation is real test

The Indian government has begun recognising heat as a labour and productivity issue.

In April 2026, the Ministry of Labour and Employment issued a nationwide heatwave advisory asking states and employers to introduce measures such as rescheduling working hours, providing drinking water and rest areas, improving workplace cooling and ventilation, and allowing workers to slow their pace during extreme heat. Special attention was recommended for construction workers, brick-kiln workers, daily wage earners and casual labourers.

India’s Heat Action Plan framework is also expanding. As of July 2026, the government reported that Heat Action Plans had been prepared by 23 states, 195 districts and 64 cities.

But there is a fundamental policy dilemma. If a daily wage worker is told, “Do not work during peak heat”, the advice may protect their health. But if stopping work means losing the day’s income, following the advice itself carries an economic cost. A warning is useful only when a person has the capability to act on it.

This is precisely why Sen’s approach is so relevant.

From Heat Action Plan to Capability Protection

India therefore needs to move beyond asking only whether workers were warned about heat.

Policy should also ask:

• Can a worker stop work without losing essential income?
• Does the workplace provide shade, water and cooling?
• Can informal workers access affordable heat-related healthcare?
• Can women reduce heat exposure without increasing their unpaid care burden?
• Do cities provide accessible public cooling spaces?
• Are heat safety standards actually enforced?

These questions suggest an alternative way of thinking about development: Capability Protection in a Warming Economy.

India does not necessarily need to replace the HDI. Rather, existing measures could be complemented by indicators of climate exposure, occupational safety, climate-related income loss and access to adaptation facilities.

This would extend the logic of alternative measures of development: what matters is not merely how much an economy produces, but what people are actually able to do with the resources that growth creates.

Real development test

India’s development story should neither be dismissed nor celebrated uncritically.

The country has made significant progress in income, health, education and human development. But averages cannot show whether every person has gained the same ability to transform economic progress into a better life.

For the street vendor standing under the summer sun, development is not an abstract number. It is whether she can earn without sacrificing her health. It is whether she can take a break without losing the day’s food. It is whether her children can remain in school when heat reduces household income. And it is whether economic growth gives her more choices, rather than merely demanding more from her.

This is ultimately the point of Sen’s capability approach: development is about expanding human freedom. A country can have a larger economy while some of its workers have fewer opportunities to work safely. It can have higher incomes while inequality determines who can escape the heat.

It can build a faster-growing economy while environmental pressures reduce the capabilities of future generations. So perhaps the most important development question for a warming India is not “how fast is it growing?” It is “is it expanding people’s capabilities faster than the climate is taking them away?”

That is the question India’s development model must now answer.