Dr. Saravanan Thangarajan, Mittal Institute Associate
As heatwaves intensify and rainfall patterns shift, the effects of climate change in South Asia are no longer confined to the environment; they’re reshaping lives in deeply personal ways. A new India Development Review article, “In Tamil Nadu, Climate Extremes Are Reshaping Maternal Well-being,” by Mittal Institute Associate Dr. Saravanan Thangarajan explores how these environmental stresses are affecting maternal mental health across India. The research, supported by the Mittal Institute and building upon collaborations from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, offers insights into the intersection of climate, health, and gender.
Dr. Thangarajan, a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Ariadne Labs, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, gave us an introduction to his article and shared some images from his fieldwork in Tamil Nadu.
In Tamil Nadu, South India long summers, tin-roofed homes radiate heat long after sunset. Inside, mothers balance childcare, work, and exhaustion as temperatures rise beyond the limits of breathable air. These quiet, persistent challenges often remain outside the frame of climate adaptation debates, yet they reveal a critical intersection between environmental stress and caregiving, one that resonates far beyond South Asia.
This research, conducted across all 38 districts of Tamil Nadu in collaboration with Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and supported by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute and the Harvard Kennedy School, explores how rising heat and air pollution influence maternal mental health. Nearly two-thirds of mothers surveyed experienced mild to moderate depressive symptoms, with the highest burden among caregivers of children with disabilities, where social stigma, economic strain, and environmental exposure coincide. While rooted in India’s context, these patterns mirror a broader global reality in which women and caregivers in resource-constrained settings face disproportionate climate-related stress.
Amid these pressures, women continue to adapt with remarkable ingenuity, from local coordination networks to culturally rooted cooling practices that protect infants and sustain well-being. These findings emphasize the importance of strengthening low-cost, context-appropriate interventions, training health workers in climate-responsive care, and co-designing adaptation systems that center mothers as agents of resilience. This work contributes to the Mittal Institute’s broader effort to illuminate climate-linked vulnerabilities across South Asia and deepen global understanding of maternal and child well-being as indicators of equity and resilience in a warming world.
Images from Dr. Thangarajan’s Fieldwork
Listening as Care: In rural Tamil Nadu, a mother caring for her child with a disability describes the weight of daily survival under heat and financial strain. Listening to such stories transforms research into empathy, the first step toward equitable health systems.
Resilience Within Walls: This small cement house in Vellore stands as both shelter and struggle. Inside, mothers caring for children with disabilities adapt to heat, power cuts, and scarcity — their resilience forming the real foundation of community health.
Image (left) Invisible Air, Visible Burden: Black smoke cuts through the sky over rural Tamil Nadu — a daily scene for families living at the edge of industrial zones. For mothers already burdened by caregiving and heat, polluted air isn’t abstract — it’s the silent weight they breathe in every day. Image (right) Fields of Fragile Calm: Green fields stretch endlessly across Tamil Nadu, but the air carries heat that never leaves. Each season grows more uncertain, and farming mothers carry that weight of harvests, hunger, and hope , shaping both their health and their children’s futures.
Conversations of Care: In the stillness of the afternoon, a mother speaks of rising heat, sleepless nights, and her children’s health. The walls hold her words quietly, as if listening too. What begins as a question becomes a conversation, not about data, but about endurance and hope.
Shared Silences: Beneath an old tiled roof, a quiet conversation unfolds — not about data, but about daily survival. The rusting bicycle beside us carries years of effort, a record no report can capture. Fieldwork is measured not in surveys, but in shared silences.
Image (left) The Roadside Lives: Along the state highway, homes lean close to the road — walls bright, air thick with dust and diesel. Laundry dries beside traffic, lives unfolding between movement and noise. It’s a picture of endurance, ordinary yet immense. Image (right) 4) At the Edge of Shelter: A narrow drain runs beside this brick home, flooding each time the rains return. Inside, mothers clean, cook, and care , turning small acts of survival into strength, even as heat, water, and worry blur the edges of daily life.
Where Cities Begin: At the city’s edge, a worksite turns into a home by night. Dust hangs in the air, tarps become roofs, and survival is built from what’s left behind. Every brick laid here holds both labor and longing.
Listening Rooms: The room was dim, the air heavy, and the walls carried years of quiet struggle. Here, mothers spoke about sleepless nights, illness, and hope, their stories filling the space with a strength that words could barely hold.
The Line Between Promise and Precarity: At the edge of a field in Tamil Nadu, the air feels heavy with both growth and uncertainty. The soil is green and alive, yet every season brings new tests — heat, floods, and shifting rains. Standing here, the question isn’t about resilience alone, but about how much longer the land and its people can bear the weight of change.
☆ The views represented herein are those of the interview subjects and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Mittal Institute, its staff, or its steering committee.