As India’s capital New Delhi braces for an approaching severe heatwave, local education authorities have rolled out a series of new protective rules for the city’s schools, including an unusual policy: regular “water bells” to remind children to stay hydrated and avoid dehydration amid soaring temperatures.
India, the world’s most populous nation, has long grappled with deadly summer heat. Official government data shows that between 2012 and 2021, more than 11,000 people across the country died from heat stroke, a stark reminder of the public health risk posed by extreme high temperatures. The country hit a grim milestone in 2024, when it recorded the hottest annual average temperature since systematic climate record-keeping began in 1901, aligning with the global trend of increasingly frequent extreme weather events driven by human-caused climate change.
In May 2024, New Delhi saw temperatures climb to 49.2°C, matching the capital’s all-time record high set just two years prior in 2022. While Wednesday morning brought relatively mild conditions, with temperatures hovering at a comfortable 29.4°C across the 30-million-person metropolitan region, forecasters warn that a sharp warm-up is already on the way.
Temperatures are projected to jump to 41-43°C by Wednesday afternoon, and could climb even higher to 42-44°C by the end of the week. In response, the India Meteorological Department has issued a yellow heatwave alert for the entire Delhi region, signaling that sustained extreme heat is likely to arrive in the coming days.
On Tuesday, the Delhi Directorate of Education released an official set of guidelines outlining new heat safety protocols for all city schools, designed to protect student health as temperatures rise. Beyond the distinctive water bell policy, the guidelines require schools to restrict or cancel all strenuous outdoor physical activities, hold public awareness sessions to educate students on the importance of consistent hydration, curtail outdoor school assemblies or move them to shaded or indoor spaces held for shorter durations, and ban all open-air classes entirely.
One of the most unique requirements is the mandatory water bell system, which requires schools to ring a bell every 45 to 60 minutes throughout the school day specifically to remind students to stop and drink water to prevent dehydration. Another innovative addition to the guidelines is a mandated buddy system: every student is paired with a peer to monitor one another’s physical well-being and catch early signs of heat-related illness before they become serious. This low-cost, easy-to-implement policy is designed to help school staff catch at-risk students who may not speak up about discomfort on their own.