Working under acute heat conditions played a key role along with wage hike demands in the violent labour protests in the second week of April at Noida, shaking the country and forcing the Uttar Pradesh government to immediately revise wages to stop the situation from going out of hand, indicates a study.
Reports on the labour protests in Noida, which forced the Uttar Pradesh government on Saturday to revise minimum wages in the state, have mainly focused on the meagreness of wages and the high cost of living. Many experts, however, feel that such reports ignore a major factor that led to the protests — heat stress.
When the protests broke out on April 13, Noida was experiencing a heat level of 36° Celsius to 39° Celsius, with forecasts to reach 42° Celsius. The workers who led the protests – contractual and migrant and from the garment and hosiery sectors – belong to the category of workers who have been repeatedly identified as bearing the highest occupational heat burden in India.
87 per cent workers reported heat-related symptoms
Recent research in the country points at this emphatically. ‘Breaking Point: Heat and the Garment Floor,’ conducted by HeatWatch & TISS, February 2026, surveyed 115 garment workers across 15 factories in Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region, which includes Noida in Uttar Pradesh), Tamil Nadu, and Gujarat; and found that 87 per cent of workers had reported heat-related symptoms, such as headaches, dizziness, weakness, and muscle cramps, in the preceding 12 months. About 69 per cent said heat had affected their ability to work, and 78 per cent skipped breaks in order to meet production targets, showing nearly double the stress levels of those who did not.
The average heat stress is in the “high” category
Climate risks increase in exploitative work situations.
The Heat Stress Index (HSI) — what the temperature feels like on the human skin when relative humidity is combined with air temperature — of the sampled workers was 58.9, the “high stress” category. Among the surveyed, 25 per cent scored above 70, considered “critical” or equivalent to “severe heat strain” according to the HSI.
Among the 15 factories, 11 had metal or asbestos roofs. A heat advisory asking such workers to “stay indoors” can perhaps make matters worse for some. Continuous operation of high-energy-intensive industrial machines in these factories added to the heat stress.
About 45 per cent of the workers showed amber-to-brown urine, a clinical marker of dehydration and kidney strain. Among the workers, 78.3 per cent said it was difficult to get permission to use toilets, which stops them from drinking water during work.
Garment workers suffer most
A 2025 Springer Nature study surveying 3,000 informal workers in southern and central India found that 91.2 per cent workers reported reduced productivity due to heat. Garment workers were seen to experience a 98.5 per cent heat-induced productivity loss rate, the highest among all sectors. Dehydration was the single strongest predictor.
Loss of productivity and absenteeism lead to less income.
For many workers, nights, which can help recover from excessive daytime, bring no respite. Most of the protesters in Noida were migrant men from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh and were forced to stay in shared, crowded rented accommodation with little ventilation. Spending nights in such places after 12-hour shifts does not have any cooling effect.
Women workers affected more by heat than men
The HeatWatch & TISS study of garment workers found that women experienced an HSI of 61.5 as opposed to 18.6 for men. Women were restricted more in the factory space, as they could not step out as easily as men during breaks. About 97 per cent of women reported a burning sensation during urination, and 92 per cent reported menstrual disruption linked to heat and dehydration.
According to several reports, most factories did not have on-site medical facilities.