For many informal workers in Delhi, environmental stress has become a year-round condition of work. This pattern is particularly visible in low-income settlements such as Sangam Vihar, Sanjay Colony, Sanjay Camp, Fatehpur Beri, and Maidan Garhi, where many households depend on informal employment.
Heatwaves increase physical strain and reduce productivity for workers who spend long hours outdoors. Air pollution creates a different set of pressures, affecting health while also disrupting employment opportunities in sectors such as construction during periods of severe smog. Water shortages generate additional financial burdens as households seek alternative sources of supply.
Although these hazards operate through different channels, they affect the same foundations of economic security. Earnings become less predictable, expenses increase, and health risks accumulate over time. Environmental stress therefore increasingly functions as a livelihood challenge rather than solely an environmental one.
Households as the Adaptation System
The economic margins for many informal workers are already narrow. Workers frequently reported earning between ₹9,000 and ₹15,000 per month while working long hours, often exceeding 12 hours a day. Under these conditions, even modest environmental disruptions can carry significant consequences.
Much of the response to environmental stress takes place within households themselves. When piped water becomes unreliable, families purchase tanker water or buy drinking water separately for storage and daily use. In Sangam Vihar and Sanjay Colony, households reported paying between ₹500 and ₹1,000 for private water tanker. During periods of extreme heat, cooling often depends on adjustments to daily routines, while protection from pollution relies on masks and other improvised measures.
These responses demonstrate adaptability, but they also reveal where the burden of adaptation increasingly falls. Water, cooling, and protective measures are frequently secured through household expenditure, even when incomes leave little room for additional costs. Reduced work opportunities, medical expenses, and lower productivity further compound these pressures.
The Governance Gap
Public responses to heatwaves, air pollution, and water scarcity are typically organised through separate programmes, departments, and policy frameworks. Yet informal workers experience these pressures simultaneously rather than as distinct challenges.
The result is a mismatch between governance systems and lived experience. While environmental risks are addressed through sector-specific interventions, their effects accumulate within the same households and livelihoods. Exposure therefore extends across multiple policy domains even when public responses remain fragmented.
Designing for Mobile Livelihoods
Informal workers encounter heat, pollution, and water stress not only where they live but across the urban spaces where they earn a living. Resilience therefore cannot be built solely through improvements in residential infrastructure.
It also requires attention to the conditions under which work is performed, including access to water, shade, rest, and basic protections in public and informal workplaces. As environmental risks increasingly shape patterns of work, income, and economic security, environmental policy and labour policy become more closely connected than they are often treated in practice.