In India, heat-triggered insurance offers 'some relief'

Clothes seller Lata Solanki used to face a devastating choice when India’s summer heat hit dangerous levels: risk her health going door-to-door for sales, or lose her income? But now the 42-year-old is part of an insurance scheme that pays out when temperatures hit a threshold, so she can stay home without jeopardising her finances. The “parametric” model pays out automatically when specific triggers are breached, in Solanki’s case after two consecutive days at 43.72 degrees Celsius. The payout is modest, but it helps, she told AFP in Ahmedabad, one of India’s hottest cities. “At least we feel there is some support,” she said. “Because of the heat, the fan runs day and night. The bill goes up.” This photograph taken on April 28, 2026 shows Lata Solanki (L), a clothes seller and policyholder of a heat insurance scheme, conducting a door-to-door sales in Ahmedabad. — AFP In 2023, the year before she joined the scheme, Solanki kept working during a heatwave and ended up sick at home for 20 days, losing at least 2,000 Indian rupees ($21) in income. The following year, she received 750 Indian rupees from the scheme, small but more than the cost of the premium, and a relief in a country where the average monthly rural household income is 10,000 Indian rupees ($105). India lost an estimated 247 billion hours of labour to extreme heat in 2024, equivalent to nearly $194bn in economic losses, according to the Lancet Countdown research group. Agriculture and construction bore the brunt, and climate change is accelerating the number of days of extreme heat India sees. Parametric insurance is seen as a way to protect the most vulnerable from climate impacts like heat, but also heavy rain. In India’s northeastern state of Nagaland, the government has insured its entire population against economic losses due to heavy rainfall under a parametric model since 2024. The federal government is examining how to extend the schemes more widely to “supplement insurance mechanisms and reinfo