The Concrete Oven: Bangalore Heat Or A Feminist Crisis?

Today, let us speak about our city, and buy that we do not mean the Silicon Valley of India, or its tech parks and breweries, but the one which is a cement furnace at 2.00 PM in the end of March. Every one of us has known how the breeze is stuffy suddenly, how the label of the Garden City with the cherry blossoms trickles into your shoulder like a needle-jab. But where we talk of this heat we talk frequently enough clinical. We define such terms as Urban Heat Islands and ground water depletion. At Climate and She it seemed that there was something missing in this information-laden dialogue. We realized that climate change is conscious, and also, she is going through unknown troubles. That was the catalyst to our flagship project the Project #MenoPAUSE as in the actuality of a metropolitan city undergoing warming, the biological and the environmental come into conflict with each other in a way our policy-makers, and our families are no longer listening to.

Project #MenoPAUSE was conceived due to the fact that a gap in the research of climate health on urban female body is enormous. According to recent statistics, the average temperature of Bengaluru has been rising at an average rate of 0.5 degree Celsius in every ten years. When the government employs the so-called Heat Wave Alerts, they provide instructions to the individuals to remain at home. But what has been turned inside is a 10 x 10 room containing the tin roof which keeps the heat in or even in a modern day apartment where the glass windows have made the living rooms a greenhouse? They have been reported to sink into severe thermo-graphic variations in women experiencing menopause, who are already disadvantaged in the fact that their bodies are difficult to manage so as to be able to maintain their internal temperatures. Introducing a 40 degree Celsius external heat wave and a hormonal “hot flash” into the mix not only is it no longer keeping within the range of looking-glass discomfort you will be observing; is it are seeing augmented dangers of cardiovascular strain and heat exhaustion. The Lancet studies have also pointed out that extreme heat usage is closely related to the increased number of hospitalizations in women of this age bracket but cooling centres in the city and work policies fail to address these physiological needs.

The physical heat is just but an extension of the crisis of the Urban She, it is spilled over as well into the Time Poverty of resource scarcity. The Bengaluru region, is recording a historical low of the ground water rates whereby the women (with/without their socio-economic status) are the primary suppliers of water to their homes. This is equivalent to 3-5 hours a day of waiting or walking in hot and UV seasons of water in the classes with low income. It suggests the mental strain of tanker schedule, rationing water to the parents of older age, and the Tanker Mafia in high-rises of middle classes. We live in Bengaluru and observe the crisis of #HydroShe and Crisis of #ThermalShe in our everyday life. The water problem is not only a question of dry faucets; it is the question of the safety of the lady waiting on a tanker at the hour of 4:00 AM. The heat problem is not only sun problem, but also a lack of attention towards the body in transition.

It is not just a logistical failure but it also violates the UNAI provisions of the Right to Health and Dignity. The latest tactic is to ensure climate change is disconnecting women of their own agency and suffocating them with a fatigued group that can neither provide them with input to the same positions of leadership they must revise these systems.

What is most unfortunate about this intersection maybe is the manner in which those issues are treated in the society. This is secrecy on the suffering caused by the climatic conditions since menopause, menstruation and domestic water management can be termed as a personal or rather a female matter. Being a woman, on a hot day when one is in one of the most dreadful conditions of exhaustion or approaching menopause that it has been turned into a personal health issue or a phase. There is no appreciation of the fact that the concrete heavy architecture or the lack of green cover is the city is actively working towards her biological weakness. Being treated as a personal affair, society tries to de-politicize the crisis of climate. It assists the state in forgetting about the need to possess gender-sensitive climate structures as, in the written form, such a challenge is a personal medical challenge and not a social ecological disaster.

We are sealing this gap through the literature, data, and activism at the grassroots in an attempt to bridging this gap at Climate and She. It is not one of those battles simply to have a cooler planet. We are struggling to be in a world where every “She” is safe and healthy and heard. Climate crisis is also a feminist crisis and we have the figures which show. Our policies should be in a way that it captures that.