Hyderabad: Joginapally Santosh Kumar, founder of the Green India Challenge, stated that India's most urgent climate policy gap is the continued exclusion of heatwaves from the list of notified disasters under the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF). He called for broad citizen-led climate action across the country.
Heatwave Crisis and Funding Gap
According to Santosh Kumar, heatwaves have killed more Indians than floods, cyclones, and earthquakes combined in recent years. In April 2026, six Indian cities recorded temperatures exceeding 46 degrees Celsius. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued warnings on the issue. In 2024 alone, 247 billion labour hours were lost to heat stress. Despite this, heatwaves remain the only major climate disaster excluded from SDRF and NDRF funding. He urged the Karnataka government and all Indian states to lead the demand for reclassification at the next National Disaster Management Authority meeting.
Climate Innovation Summit 2026
Speaking at the Climate Innovation Summit 2026 held at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) on Thursday, the former Member of Parliament called for a fundamental rethinking of India's approach to climate federalism. He argued that the country's biggest challenge is not the absence of policy but the missing middle between national commitments and ground-level delivery.
Green India Challenge as a Model
Santosh Kumar presented the Green India Challenge as living proof of climate federalism in action. The movement has mobilised 196 million geo-tagged trees and 44 million citizens across India without waiting for a government circular or centrally sponsored scheme. He emphasised that India has excellent climate policies, including the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), 34 State Action Plans, the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme, and Mission LiFE. However, the bottleneck is not design but the missing middle between a policy document in Delhi and a farmer in Telangana, a student in Karnataka, or a fisherwoman in Odisha.
Climate Action Campus Talks
The ex-MP also introduced the concept of the campus as a micro-unit of climate governance, referencing the Climate Action Campus Talks (CACT) programme run by Igniting Minds Organisation, a Section 8 non-profit with UNFCCC COP29 and UNCCD COP16 Observer status. CACT has been delivered at 20 premier institutions, including IIT Mumbai, IIT Delhi, JNU Delhi, and BITS Hyderabad, and is scaling to 200 campuses across Telangana with 5-Year Net-Zero Campus Roadmaps and Mission LiFE integration.
Santosh Kumar stated that India has over 40 million students in higher education. If every campus becomes a unit of climate governance with carbon audits, Green Clubs, and data feeding into state climate dashboards, it would create the most granular climate governance system in the world, representing bottom-up climate federalism.
Carbon-Negative Summit Initiative
In a first-of-its-kind initiative for an Indian climate conference, the Green India Challenge planted one geo-tagged bamboo tree for every speaker and participant at the Summit and committed to nurturing each tree for 1,000 days. Named Punarvasu, meaning the reconstruction tree after Lord Sri Rama's birth nakshatra (the return of light), the bamboo initiative made the Climate Innovation Summit 2026 a verified carbon-negative event. Each participant received a personalised Punarvasu Certificate with GPS coordinates and a QR code linking to real-time growth and CO₂ absorption data.
Bamboo absorbs up to four times more CO₂ than equivalent tree species, generates 35% more oxygen than hardwood forests, and grows up to 91 centimetres in a single day, making it the fastest-growing and most carbon-efficient plant on Earth.
