It is springtime in Delhi — the two months of comfortable, albeit enjoyable Delhi weather that brings some respite following the chilling winters and stands at the precipice of its blazing summer. As we sit through the transition season, we find ourselves grappling with the question of how “joys of seasons” are shaped by bodies, health, and access in ways climate discourse often ignores.
For instance, when we look back at winters from years ago, we are reminded of the assemblage of grandparents and elders, friends and family, and the dreaded (yet beloved) posse of neighbourhood uncles and aunts gathered on the collective terrace—where chai and conversation were exchanged while basking in the sun. The Delhi sun, a dreaded character in the city’s landscape for most of the year, would for a brief quarter transform into a cherished presence, setting the backdrop for shared warmth and sociality. Yet for one of us (Re: Nipun), this winter has been one of Delhi’s coldest, forcing his body to adapt to an uncharacteristically harsh cold. As a wheelchair user, Nipun struggles with thermoregulation, and limited mobility combined with extreme cold intensifies this challenge. His winters are not as “joyful” as mine.
While Nipun finds some relief as summers set in, Harshita, who finds fleeting relief in winters, is already anxious about the summer to come. Living with MOGAD, Harshita experiences Uhthoff’s phenomenon—a temporary worsening of neurological symptoms triggered by rising body temperature, commonly observed in demyelinating conditions like Multiple Sclerosis. For her, this means bouts of fatigue, nausea, and restricted mobility as existing symptoms resurface. With climate change making Delhi’s summers increasingly unforgiving—regularly pushing temperatures beyond survivable thresholds—the fear is not abstract, but imminent.
Crucially, our experiences are not exceptional. Persons with disabilities constitute roughly 16 per cent of the global population, with nearly 80 per cent living in the Global South. In India, while disability data remains fragmented and outdated, official sources point to a wide spectrum of disabilities—visual, locomotor, psychosocial, speech, and hearing impairments—each interacting differently with heat exposure, cold stress, flooding, evacuation, and access to relief. Yet climate disaster governance continues to treat vulnerability as uniform, built around assumptions of able-bodied mobility, sensory capacity, and physiological resilience.
This neglect is unfolding amid intensifying climate stress. The Climate Risk Index 2024 shows that the ten most climate-affected countries globally are all located in the Global South. Between 1995 and 2024, heatwaves and storms accounted for the highest share of climate-related fatalities, while floods affected nearly half of all impacted populations. India is increasingly falling into the category of countries experiencing recurring extreme climate events rather than isolated disasters—conditions under which gaps in preparedness do not merely persist but compound over time.
Our stories are part of a much wider range of experiences through which disabled people encounter climate change as it reshapes seasons, intensifies exposure, and normalises extreme conditions. As heatwaves and cold spells shift from episodic events to near-permanent conditions, climate governance must contend with two intertwined imperatives: first, the need for long-term adaptation that accounts for disability-specific needs in everyday climatic conditions; and second, the need for disability-responsive systems as hazards and disasters increase in both frequency and intensity.
In India, households with persons with disabilities are disproportionately concentrated in the poorest expenditure classes, with nearly a quarter falling into the lowest consumption category. With extremely low per capita spending and larger household sizes, individual acclimatisation to heat, cold, or polluted air is simply not viable.
The first of these—adaptation to everyday extremes—remains largely absent from climate policy discourse, even as disabled people are already forced to adapt in informal and unequal ways. While we can afford to manage some of our symptoms through indoor heating, air conditioning, or staying indoors—much like Delhi’s elite rely on air purifiers to survive pollution—these private strategies are neither universal nor scalable. In India, households with persons with disabilities are disproportionately concentrated in the poorest expenditure classes, with nearly a quarter falling into the lowest consumption category. With extremely low per capita spending and larger household sizes, individual acclimatisation to heat, cold, or polluted air is simply not viable. Treating climate resilience as a matter of personal adjustment thus shifts responsibility away from public systems and turns survival under extreme conditions into a function of income rather than rights.
The consequences of this gap are already visible in sub-national climate planning. For instance, while the Delhi Heat Action Plan recognises persons with disabilities as an impact group facing differentiated harms, it stops short of operationalising this recognition through concrete measures. There is little clarity on accessible cooling spaces, targeted outreach, or institutional support that would enable disabled people to cope with extreme heat in their everyday lives—revealing how acknowledgement without implementation offers limited protection.
If everyday climate adaptation exposes the limits of individual coping, disasters reveal the consequences of institutional failure. Unlike long-term adaptation, disability inclusion in disaster risk reduction has at least been formally acknowledged in global frameworks. The Sendai Framework is a development agenda articulated with the aim of protecting development gains from the risk of disaster. It is path-breaking in its provision of an actionable pathway for the implementation of accessibility for persons with disabilities in disaster preparedness and response. Yet closer to home, the gap between commitment and implementation remains stark.
During the 2025 Winter Session in the Lok Sabha, the Union government acknowledged that it does not maintain data on how many disaster shelters or emergency relief centres have been certified as accessible under National Disaster Management Authority norms, nor how many have been audited for accessibility under the Accessible India Campaign. At a time when India’s climate policy remains dominated by technological first policy, this evidence stands in stark contrast, highlighting the vulnerabilities faced by India’s disabled population. A system that has no answers for people who cannot evacuate quickly, navigate crowded relief camps, or access information through standard communication channels.
Responding to climate disasters requires moving beyond symbolic inclusion towards twin commitments: climate adaptation that accounts for disability in everyday life, and disaster governance that treats accessibility and participation as enforceable standards rather than aspirational goals.
In 2019, the National Disaster Management Authority issued Guidelines on Disability-Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction, aligning India’s disaster governance with the Sendai Framework’s emphasis on accessibility for persons with disabilities. Yet, as the Lok Sabha response shows, these commitments have not been translated into practice. Thus, while inclusion is articulated, it is not measured—and in the absence of measurement, accountability remains elusive.
With the rise of climate disasters from episodic to normative, the likelihood of acquired disabilities resulting from direct physical injuries is set to rise. Coupled with the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and rapid population ageing, this collectively points to a future in which disability prevalence will be on the rise. Responding to this reality requires moving beyond symbolic inclusion towards twin commitments: climate adaptation that accounts for disability in everyday life, and disaster governance that treats accessibility and participation as enforceable standards rather than aspirational goals. Without this transition, preparedness will continue to be designed for able-bodied bodies, leaving others to adapt, cope, or be left behind.
About the author(s)
Harshita Kumari is an Analyst at The Quantum Hub. She holds a Master’s in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. She lives with an invisible disability and works on social policy issues, with a focus on gender and disability inclusion, and is also engaged in emerging policy areas such as clean energy. Her writing has been published in leading Indian national dailies and details can be found here.
Nipun Malhotra is a national award-winning disability rights activist and the Co-Founder & CEO of the Nipman Foundation, working on health and disability rights. He is also Director, Policy & Programs at The Quantum Hub and Young Leaders for Active Citizenship. He has driven accessibility reforms such as wheelchair listings on Zomato, accessibility audits of public spaces, and legal victories including a Supreme Court PIL on accessible transport and the 2024 guidelines on disability portrayal in media. He also chairs the FICCI D&I Working Group on Empowering Persons with Disabilities and is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Born with Arthrogryposis, he uses a wheelchair.
