Heat action plans are India’s primary policy response to economically damaging and life threatening heatwaves. They prescribe a variety of preparatory activities, disaster responses, and post- heatwave response measures across state, district, and city government departments to decrease the impact of heatwaves. This report analyses 37 heat action plans at the city (9), district (13) and state (15) levels across 18 states and identify several opportunities to strengthen Indian HAPs. We find that most plans do not account for local context, are underfunded and are poor at identifying and targeting vulnerable groups. This is the first critical assessment of HAPs in India.
