Santosh Kumar urges national disaster status for heatwaves

Former Rajya Sabha member J Santosh Kumar urged that heatwaves be declared a national disaster, citing their deadly toll. Speaking at IIM-B’s Climate Innovation Summit, he stressed bridging policy gaps, citizen-led climate action, and expanding carbon credit schemes to grassroots projects

Hyderabad: Former Rajya Sabha member and Green India Challenge founder J Santosh Kumar on Thursday called for heatwaves to be officially declared a national disaster. He stated that heatwaves claimed more lives than floods and earthquakes, but continue to remain outside the purview of disaster relief frameworks.

Speaking at the Climate Innovation Summit 2026 hosted by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B), Santosh Kumar said the biggest challenge in tackling climate change was the “Missing Middle” which is the gap between policy decisions taken by governments and implementation at the grassroots level. He said India already has strong climate policies, but delivery at the ground level remains weak.

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“The bottleneck is the gap between a policy document in Delhi and a farmer in Telangana or a student in Karnataka,” he said.

Citing the Green India Challenge, Santosh Kumar said the movement mobilised 196 million geo-tagged saplings and 44 million citizens without relying on government directives. He stressed that environmental protection must evolve into a citizen-led movement of “climate federalism.”

He also advocated for expanding India’s Carbon Credit Trading Scheme to include gram panchayats and community-based environmental projects, instead of being limited to large corporations.

To make the summit carbon-negative, the Green India Challenge planted geo-tagged bamboo saplings in the name of every delegate under its ‘Punarvasu Project’ with an assurance to maintain them for 1,000 days.