India went through another severe hot season in 2026.
In May, temperatures exceeded 45°C across parts of northern and central India. Electricity demand climbed above 270 gigawatts, setting records and contributing to power shortages in several areas.
By August 5, the Indian government had recorded **4,853 heatstroke cases and 20 heatstroke deaths** since March 1.
Twenty deaths sounds surprisingly small for a country of more than a billion people experiencing weeks of dangerous heat.
But it is important to understand what that number means.
It is an official count of deaths identified and reported as heatstroke. It is not an estimate of every death in which extreme heat may have contributed.
A peer-reviewed study published in May reached a very different estimate. Researchers from UC Berkeley’s India Energy and Climate Center calculated that a single day of extreme heat across India could be associated with about **3,400 excess deaths**, while a five-day heatwave could be associated with nearly **30,000**. The study found particularly high vulnerability in poorer parts of the country.
These numbers should not be confused.
The researchers are not claiming that hospitals overlooked 30,000 diagnosed cases of heatstroke. “Excess deaths” include deaths above the number normally expected — including people whose cardiovascular, kidney, respiratory or other illnesses may have been worsened by extreme heat.
That distinction is important because heat often does not appear neatly on a death certificate.
India has improved its surveillance. The National Centre for Disease Control says heat-related illness and death surveillance now operates nationwide through the Integrated Health Information Platform, and hospitals have been given specific guidance for identifying and reporting heat-related deaths.
But the gap between direct heatstroke counts and estimated heat-related mortality remains an important public-health question.
There is another problem that statistics alone cannot show.
For many people, avoiding extreme heat costs money.
An office worker may be able to remain indoors. A construction worker, farm labourer, street vendor or delivery worker often cannot.
Reporting from India this summer documented outdoor workers continuing to work through temperatures above 40°C because losing working hours also means losing income. Research on informal workers has similarly found substantial losses of wages and working days from extreme heat.
Air conditioning also solves little when electricity fails.
During the May heatwave, record power demand contributed to outages as households and businesses increased cooling use.
This is why extreme heat is not simply a weather problem.
The temperature may be the same outside, but the ability to survive it is not.
One person has air conditioning, reliable electricity and paid time away from work.
Another has a metal roof, an electric fan that stops during an outage and a job that still requires being outside.
Heat policy therefore cannot consist only of telling people to drink water, remain indoors and avoid strenuous activity.
Those recommendations are useful only when people have the ability to follow them.
The harder questions concern working hours, shade and water at workplaces, reliable electricity, cooler housing, access to medical treatment, public cooling spaces and protection for elderly people and those with chronic disease.
And the deaths need to be measured honestly.
India already has a national surveillance system for heat-related illness. The next challenge is understanding the much larger number of deaths in which heat may have contributed without appearing as the primary diagnosis.
That requires better mortality data and continued independent research — not simply choosing whichever number supports the more convenient story.
Official statistics matter.
So do epidemiological estimates.
They measure different things, and the gap between them tells us something important:
**heat can kill without the death certificate ever saying “heatstroke.”**
The people most exposed are often those with the fewest ways to escape it.
That is the part of the heatwave that should not disappear when summer ends.