Lightning strikes the health of low income workers in India

Lightning is responsible for over a third of deaths by natural disasters in India. And it disproportionately affects the poorest people, write Majid Alam and Rishabh Jain On the morning of 6 July, 48 year old Leela Devi went to harvest moong beans near her house in Bihar, northeast India. She was struck unconscious by a powerful thunderbolt and despite being rushed by relatives to the nearby government hospital she was declared dead on arrival. Leela’s death is not an isolated incident. On the same day, 10 people were killed in lightning strikes across Bihar,1 with the overall number of deaths in the state for the year so far estimated to exceed 40. According to data from the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) 26 924 people across India died from lightning strikes between 2009 and 2019.2 Lightning strikes are also likely to be responsible for several deaths linked to other natural disasters like floods or cyclones. According to NCRB data on accidental deaths, 35.8% of the 8060 deaths from natural forces between 2021 and 2022 were caused by lightning—this is far more than for heatstroke (9.1%) or cold weather conditions (8.9%).3 The changing climate makes tackling lightning strikes more urgent. Sanjay Srivastava, founder of the Climate Resilient Observing Systems Promotion Council (CROPC), a non-profit advocacy group working in the field of disaster management, says that whenever …