On a sweltering May afternoon last year in Delhi’s Ghazipur area, a ragpicker collapsed from heat exhaustion. “The family rushed him to the hospital,” recalls Majida Begum, a sanitation worker who witnessed the incident. “But he was declared dead on arrival.” With no official proof linking his death to heat, the family received no compensation. His death, like countless others, went uncounted—lost in India’s broken system for tracking heatwave deaths.
A Disconnected and Dated Reporting System
An investigation by PTI highlights how fragmented and outdated data collection is obscuring the real toll of heatwaves in India. Without accurate numbers, the government cannot identify at-risk populations, develop targeted policies, or take timely action to prevent deaths. Behind these data gaps are real lives—often poor, undocumented individuals—whose deaths go unrecorded due to an incoherent reporting system.
Conflicting Data from Multiple Agencies
Currently, three separate government entities collect heat-related death data:
- The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) under the Health Ministry,
- The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) under the Home Ministry, and
- The India Meteorological Department (IMD), which includes heatwave deaths in its annual reports.
However, each source reports wildly different figures. According to an RTI query:
- The NCDC recorded 3,812 heat-related deaths from 2015 to 2022.
- The NCRB cited 8,171 deaths from “heat/sunstroke” in the same period.
- The IMD reported 3,436 heatwave-related deaths during those years.
2023–2024 Data Still Incomplete
While the NCDC and IMD have released their figures for 2023 and 2024, the NCRB has yet to publish its data. The NCDC typically collects data from April to July (extended to March–July in 2019), covering 23 states. Meanwhile, the NCRB has tracked such deaths since 1995, classifying them under “accidental deaths from forces of nature” since around 2010.
Experts Explain the Gaps
As reported by The Hindu, experts point out that differences in methodology create wide discrepancies. A senior Delhi Police officer explained that NCRB figures mostly represent individuals found dead in public or private spaces, later brought for autopsy. These cases may not always reach the NCDC records.
For example:
- NCRB reported 730 heatstroke deaths in 2022, 374 in 2021, and 530 in 2020.
- NCDC recorded only 33 in 2022, none in 2021, and 4 in 2020—because many states didn’t report their numbers.
States like Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu often fail to submit complete data, officials admitted.
Data Silos and Manual Entry Slow Progress
A Health Ministry official, requesting anonymity, noted that NCDC data captures patients who visit hospital OPDs or are admitted, while autopsy findings usually fall under forensic departments, which don’t always share data with the NCDC. As a result, no single source offers a complete picture.
Another key barrier is the lack of electronic health records. Despite the introduction of the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) for digital data entry, hospital staff still input information manually. This makes confirmation of heat-related deaths difficult and slows reporting.
Staff Shortages and Non-Compliance Add to the Problem
Hospitals often face staffing shortages that hamper accurate and timely data collection. A senior doctor at a Central government hospital in Delhi alleged that authorities may also suppress death figures to avoid liability for compensation.
Even when systems exist, compliance remains inconsistent. For example, some hospitals stop reporting during cloudy days, assuming temperatures are not dangerously high.
Voices Calling for Reform
At the India Heat Summit 2025, Health Ministry Advisor Soumya Swaminathan emphasized the urgency of strengthening death-reporting systems. “These systems offer the most reliable data for policymakers to understand causes of death and plan accordingly,” she said.
Abhiyant Tiwari, Lead for Climate Resilience and Health at NRDC India, highlighted the challenge of attributing deaths directly to heat. Instead, he suggested using all-cause mortality data during heatwaves as a more accurate metric. This approach can identify “excess deaths” attributable to extreme temperatures, even when they are misclassified as heart attacks or other causes.
Tiwari also called for appointing a single agency to collect and publish all-cause mortality data, ensuring consistency and reliability.
Climate Change Makes Accurate Data More Urgent
With climate change amplifying the severity and frequency of heatwaves, the stakes are rising. Avinash Chanchal, deputy programme director at Greenpeace South Asia, called for urgent reforms in heat death reporting.
“Discrepancies between departments and rampant underreporting mean the real toll remains hidden. The government must understand that ignoring these numbers delays action and costs lives,” he said.
Until then, the Dead Remain Uncounted
Unless India overhauls its fractured heat-death reporting systems, the actual victims of extreme heat will continue to go uncounted—reduced to mere statistics, or worse, erased entirely from the record.