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Garmi Khata: Heat Registry Voices

42:01 recording · EN · 3 speakers

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Brief overview

Delhi households' handwritten heat diaries became evidence asking the NHRC to treat extreme heat as a rights violation.

  1. Lived experience kept as formal evidenceHouseholds wrote weekly entries and attached electricity and medical bills, so the diaries carry proof, not only stories.
  2. Official temperature hides what homes feelA 42-degree news reading meets rooms Dipali describes as ovens, with thermal images of a wall at 52 degrees Celsius.
  3. Heat costs income, sleep and educationGulshan lost all work, Arshi refused group study, and Dipali skipped her June final-year exam because of the heat.
Executive Summary AI
  • As part of Greenpeace India's Delhi Rising campaign, households across Delhi kept a heat registry — a garmi khata, a handwritten weekly record of what extreme heat did to their health, income and daily lives — and on July 14 three months of those registries were submitted to the National Human Rights Commission.0:42
  • Avinash Chanchal, Deputy Programme Director of Campaigns at Greenpeace India, argues that reports and IMD heat-wave alerts capture temperature but not lived experience: India declares a heat day when temperature crosses 42 degrees Celsius, yet nothing tracks hotter nights, rising humidity, outdoor workers who get no rest between eight- and ten-hour shifts, or middle-class households in CR Park who2:42
  • Dipali Tonka, who kept her own diary, says writing daily entries showed her community that heat is a climate issue rather than a season, and she reads zine testimonies from Sundanagiri — 13-year-old Nasreen's fourth-floor room with a chula, 19-year-old Arshi refusing group study, and Gulshan, a home-based worker whose husband could not drive his auto and whose room wall measured 52 degrees Celsius8:17
  • To stop the stories being dismissed as isolated, the diary includes pages where households attach electricity and medical bills each week or month; Dipali reports bills of three to four thousand in homes where a person earning 10,000 a month may spend seven or eight thousand, pushing women to cut their own medical care.22:08
  • Avinash lists three demands to the NHRC — recognise the heat registry as evidence, recognise extreme heat as a human rights concern touching the rights to life, health, work and dignity, and move beyond non-binding guiding notices and the unfunded heat action plans in 130 cities and states toward notifying heat as a national disaster — while Dipali asks for cooling centres, safe drinking water and27:36
Key Quote
“These lived experiences was completely missing from the narrative of heat wave.”
— Avinash Chanchal2:42
Key Quote
“these house these households who decided to keep heat registry is also kind of making a statement that they are taking the evidence in their own hands.”
— Avinash Chanchal5:42
Key Quote
“it's not a seasonal problem it's now the climate issue and we need to address it”
— Dipali Tonka8:28