New murals in Delhi highlight extreme heat impact on workers, demand national disaster recognition

Badhti garmi, naa rukta kaam... kaho yeh naainsafi kiske naam?: This line, written on one of the murals, raises a poignant question. On International Labour Day, three community murals were unveiled in Sundar Nagri in East Delhi, telling the story of how extreme heat is reshaping the lives, bodies, and livelihoods of workers. The murals are part of Greenpeace India’s Delhi Rising campaign, demanding that heatwaves be formally recognised as a national disaster, adequate funding for heat action plans, and for urgent implementation on the ground.

The murals depict the intensity of heat and how it impacts outdoor labourers, home-based women workers, and children navigating deadly temperatures with minimum
relief and protection. The murals also capture resourceful ways communities cope with extreme heat, their improvised cooling methods that make survival possible. It also
reflects how heat extends into classrooms and childhood, affecting students’ ability to learn and rest.

Developed through a participatory process, the murals emerged from conversations between artists, residents and workers, where stories of exhaustion, fatigue, disrupted
incomes and collective coping were shared and translated into visual form. What has emerged is more than art; it is a powerful assertion that workers are not merely affected
by heat, but are actively navigating, adapting, and responding to its impacts. “These murals are not just art, they are evidence,” said Aakiz Farooq, climate and energy
campaigner at Greenpeace India. “Communities are already living through a crisis that policy is yet to fully acknowledge. Recognising heatwaves as a national disaster is a
necessary first step, but it must be backed by funding, planning, and real action that protects workers on the ground. Extreme heat is being manufactured by fossil fuel
companies whose emissions are warming our planet. Workers are paying for that with their health and their livelihoods. Polluters must be held accountable. Heat must be
declared a national disaster, and it must be funded as one,” he said.

Mohommad Zaheer, a Sundar Nagri resident/worker who contributed to the murals, said, “Heat affects our bodies, our work, and our homes. It makes our body inactive,
drained and impacts our income. We are not able to sleep properly even at night as in recent years it feels too hot during night too. These walls now show our reality and the
small ways we try to cope every day.”

Artists Harit Gulia, Shipra Rani, and Manmauji, along with their team members Ravi and Anurag Kumar, shared, “This was about listening and co-creating. Art became a way to translate lived experiences into something visible and undeniable. These murals carry stories of struggle, but also of strength and solidarity.”

As Delhi faces increasingly intense and prolonged heat conditions, initiatives like this aim to push the conversation towards accountability, with workers’ safety at the center. On May Day, workers in Sundar Nagri used art to call for safer conditions, structural support, and urgent climate accountability.

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