Under the Sun, On the Clock: The Urban Political Ecology of Heat and Gig Work in Nashik, Maharashtra

This study examines the intersection of rising urban heat and labour precarity in Nashik, Maharashtra, showing how climatic stress is unevenly produced and experienced across the city’s spatial and historical landscape. It explores how extreme heat is shaped by patterns of urban development, industrial expansion, and ecological change, and analyses the systems that structure the working conditions of outdoor, mobile labour — particularly gig workers in platform economies such as food delivery — through infrastructures, government policies, and the spatial and temporal organisation of the city. Framed within “urban political ecology”, the study conceptualises heat as both an environmental and social process.