Anecdotes can spark new research
Our interest in heat and its impact on mental health has been shaped by our belief in the power of storytelling and collaborative inquiry as part of evidence-building. This interest partly emerged from our previous project that focused on the lives of women who work in public spaces. During the course of that project, a colleague shared with us a critical, yet often unnoticed challenge: the escalating impact of climate change on the livelihoods of women informal workers. Vendors in Shivajinagar (Bengaluru) for example, were foregoing umbrellas due to the fear of being evicted, leaving them vulnerable to extreme weather, including scorching heat. Vendors also reported experiencing sunstroke, dehydration, and other illnesses due to prolonged exposure to heat. Heat also resulted in a direct loss of income, because of the significant damage to their fruits, vegetables, and flowers. These narratives kindled our interest to investigate this particular problem further, as they highlighted the ‘distress’ faced by informal women workers due to the complex intersection between chronic heat exposure and the difficulties of informal work.
Our preliminary review of literature revealed a notable gap: mental health is often overlooked in discussions about the impact of increasing heat due to climate change, particularly in relation to vulnerable groups like informal women workers. As we delved deeper, we realised that this complex problem required not only an interdisciplinary lens, but also a wider geographical focus to generate meaningful results. To create a comprehensive plan, we reached out to experts on climate change, and mental health, as well as social science researchers from other major cities in India to get their inputs.
Last mile populations must be at first conversations
These initial conversations revealed that to foster a truly collaborative process, the communities who were directly affected, also needed to be actively involved in discussions on the multi-dimensional problems faced by them. The idea resulted in a two-day workshop where we invited grassroots organisations – Association for Promoting Social Action (APSA), Savitribai Phule Mahila Sanghatne, and Slum Mahila Sanghatne; mental health professionals from NIMHANS, and CSOs like Indian Social Science Trust (ISST).
As the workshop unfolded, we realised that despite being determined to keep our minds open, we had entered the space with assumptions not just about the subject-matter, but also about how one undertakes a collaborative process of ideation. Although these assumptions were informed by our learnings and experiences, we soon realised the limitations of our understanding and the necessity of openly acknowledging the extent of what we did not know.
The devil is in the details
Our first lesson was that the outputs of any form of action-research is a process of co-creation. Conversations with the community constantly pushed us to reimagine outputs as a continuous process of engagement, where communities are involved right from ideation. In fact, during the workshop, there were debates even on the choice of words used to frame arguments which reflected this reimagination. Ensuring that the framing incorporated the experiences of community members and CBOs helped drive the process towards communities’ needs and expectations. For example, we had initially planned to improve Heat Action Plans (HAPs) as part of the anticipated outputs. However, it soon became evident that other outputs preceded HAPs among community priorities. Instead, communities were more focused on other infrastructural and discursive challenges that they wanted to first address. For example, they were more interested in: What is mental health in the vernacular? How is depression distinguished from anxiety when we speak about it? How are different kinds of heat understood collectively?
What’s in it for us?
A major question recurrent throughout conversations with communities was: How would this benefit us and our communities? While it can provoke discomfited reactions, we decided to dwell within these uncomfortable spaces, especially given the different ways in which action-research can exploit the time, and physical and emotional labour of communities. For instance, before the workshop, one of our proposed outputs was to train primary healthcare providers on the SOPs developed for managing mental distress arising due to heat. However, the attendees were quick to point out that they didn’t want to be burdened with learning a mental health framework which had never incorporated their voices or needs.
Communities have/can arrive at expertise
Drawing from the experiences of participating field coordinators, it was agreed that the process would be cognizant of these issues, and would strive to ensure that communities’ resources are respected. Everyone collectively agreed that the study would engage with people on their own terms and interests, and that any engagement with advocacy or capacity-building would only stem from the needs articulated by communities.
Another significant shift during the workshop was the redefining of “expertise”. By insisting on shifts in the language used, the communities were also staking claim on being active co-creators of knowledge. The workshop taught us that neither solutions nor even ‘problems’ should be determined, formulated, or defined without centering their voices.
Processes take time and that is okay
The workshop also reminded us that participatory processes are time- and resource-intensive. For us, this meant having a bilingual workshop, with occasional translation to Hindi as well. It also required the presence of a rapporteur who captured conversations in all these languages and documented them in English and Kannada. The pacing of activities had to take into consideration the time required for cross-lingual conversations. Smaller groups for verbal feedback were formed to document responses from those who were not comfortable with written documentation. Participatory processes continued post-workshop as well. Discussions were undertaken by the workshop attendees, with their respective communities and allied associations. Larger research outputs, such as the research plan, were orally translated for community stakeholders during follow-up meetings. Subsequent rounds of consultations were held to address concerns that emerged from these discussions to ensure robust communication between all partners.
Follow the leader community
Aside from the process of developing a community-driven proposal, the most critical learning was that participatory and interdisciplinary action-research necessitates listening intently and openly to our fellow participants. Only from this process can we learn and adopt approaches and strategies that are truly responsive to the lived experiences and priorities of marginalised communities. Following the community’s lead, even when it challenges our expectations, is not just a best practice, but an ethical imperative, which could catalyse equitable knowledge production and meaningful change.
*All authors have contributed equally
Reviewed by: Niveditha Menon
Proofread by: Joann Miriam Mathew, Mrinalika R Pandit