Banda/Lucknow, May 20 -- Banda in the drought-prone Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh has repeatedly made the headlines for its record-breaking heat, which has altered daily life in the district. So intense is the heat that by 10 every morning, Banda shuts down. The situation has prompted Lakhan Gupta, a jeweller with one of the larger shops in Attara town of the district to leave home at 6am and finish most of his work before the heat settles over the district. Suppliers are called early. Meetings are wrapped up before the sun turns harsh. By 9, he is back. By 10, the road outside is empty. The shutters of his shop remain open, but customers rarely come before evening. "Since April, I have sold almost nothing," Gupta says. "After 10am, Banda becomes deserted. At first, you see one or two people outside. Then, as the day rises, there is only silence." On April 27 this year, Banda recorded a day temperature of 47.6degC, the highest temperature anywhere in India that day. It was also the hottest city in the world out of 8,212 meteorological stations that day, according to the Lucknow Met department. This temperature was Banda's highest since 1951 and surpassed its previous April record of 47.4degC on April 30, 2022 and April 25, 2026. On May 18,2026, Banda was once more the hottest in India at 47.6 degC. It was also the hottest district in the country the previous day, recording a temperature of 46.4degC on May 17. The district has been boiling since April 16 this year when the mercury rose to 44.4 degC as Banda became the hottest city in the country. As a result, this summer, farmers in parts of Banda began working in fields at night under LED floodlights because daytime labour had become unbearable. Construction workers stopped taking afternoon shifts. Contractors say labourers are willingly sacrificing up to 40% of their wages rather than work between 10am and 5pm. Migration, locals say, has started earlier than usual this year. Construction sites are struggling to find workers. Food stalls that once opened through the afternoon now operate after sunset. Across large parts of the district, daytime activity has collapsed into narrow morning and evening windows. At Bhadedu village, Prahlad Valmiki sits inside a 17-by-17-foot room with a large cooler running continuously against one wall. It offers little relief. "Banda is getting hotter every year," he says. "The number of hot days keeps increasing." Valmiki's wife is the village pradhan. Through the summer, residents have been coming to them with complaints linked to heat, water and failing crops. "The time has come to look at this seriously," he says. "Otherwise Banda will not remain liveable." Meanwhile, at 44 substations in Banda, where electricity supply extends to nearly 16 hours a day, electricity department staff have been deployed to keep transformers cool amid intense heat conditions. Employees are continuously pouring water on over 1,379 transformers across the district after several units malfunctioned over the past 45 days due to extreme temperatures and excessive load. Officials said the ongoing heatwave and rising electricity consumption have put unusual pressure on the system, prompting emergency measures to prevent further breakdowns and prolonged power cuts. Environmental researchers and local activists say the district's rising temperatures are not simply the result of a bad summer or a passing heatwave. What is unfolding in Banda, they argue, is tied to years of ecological degradation across Bundelkhand's already fragile landscape. A study published in the Journal of Extension Systems, co-authored by Arjun P Varma, assistant professor at Banda Agriculture University, tracked forest cover in the district from 1991-92 to 2021-22, using satellite and ground data. The findings showed steep decline across every category measured. Dense forest cover recorded a simple growth rate (SGR) of minus 16.87% and a compound growth rate (CGR) of minus 15.16%. Open forests declined at similarly sharp rates, with SGR at minus 14.57% and CGR at minus 12.57%. Overall geographical forest area too remained in steady decline. The distinction matters. SGR measures average annual decline over the study period. CGR measures how losses accumulate year after year. In Banda, both indicators were deeply negative across categories. "The major reasons are large-scale mining and agricultural encroachment inside forest land," Varma says. Then he mentions something that does not appear in the study. "I myself work inside the office from 9.30 in the morning till evening now," he says. "I cannot go into the field." Banda has always been a difficult landscape. Rocky terrain, sparse vegetation and limited water retention made summers harsh even before temperatures began rising across north India. But researchers say the district has also steadily lost the systems that once moderated heat. Prof Dinesh Saha, head of meteorological department, Banda Agriculture University, says the region's rocky terrain absorbs limited water even in normal conditions. Mining has accelerated the drying of rivers, reducing groundwater recharge. Deforestation has further weakened moisture retention, while dust from stone-crusher units settles over soil and vegetation. "All these factors compound each other," Saha says. "The situation is serious." The damage is visible across the Vindhyan range that cuts through parts of Banda district. In Baberu's Gauri Khanpur village, farmer and activist Banda Gopal points toward stretches of broken hill where blasting operations continue alongside stone-crusher units. "Official estimates say 25% of the Vindhyan hills here have either disappeared or been severely damaged," he says. For 22 years, Gopal says, he has filed complaints with authorities over illegal and excessive mining. "I kept warning that this would have consequences," he adds. "Now those consequences are visible." Local residents allege that mining companies routinely carry out blasting beyond permitted drilling limits. Explosives are used deep inside hill sections while crusher units run continuously nearby, reducing stone into aggregate. Environmental researchers say the consequences go beyond the visible destruction of hills. The Vindhyan range here consists largely of porous sandstone layered over granite. During rainfall, the sandstone absorbs water and gradually releases it underground, helping recharge aquifers. The granite layer below helps retain groundwater. Environmentalists say excessive blasting is destroying this natural recharge system. Mining and crushing operations have also coated surrounding areas with fine dust, which settles over leaves and soil, reducing their ability to retain moisture. Residents and researchers say the dust and heat together have altered local conditions noticeably over the past decade. What happened to the hills has a parallel in Banda's rivers. The Ken river, which originates in Madhya Pradesh's Satna district and flows for over 400 kilometres before joining the Yamuna, passes through roughly 100 kilometres of Banda and adjoining areas. Along that stretch, activists allege, sand extraction has reached industrial scale. Heavy Pocland machines were seen operating directly inside the riverbed, loading trucks and dumpers while obstructing natural water flow. According to social activist and journalist Ramlal Jayan, official estimates suggest around 55,000 tonnes of red sand are extracted daily from the Ken. But the mining, he says, no longer stops at the river. "Even after floods, when sand gets deposited in nearby fields, they take that too," Jayan says, adding machines scrape away sand left behind on agricultural land after the monsoon, leaving fields damaged and uneven. Four rivers flow through Banda - the Ken, Yamuna, Ranj and Bagai. According to activists and local residents, the sand mining that transformed stretches of the Ken and Yamuna has now moved into smaller rivers like the Ranj and Bagai. Villagers say water levels in several stretches have already fallen sharply, raising fears that fields in remote parts of the district could eventually lose their primary water source. According to National Green Tribunal guidelines and mining department rules, the use of heavy machinery inside active river channels is prohibited. Padma Shri awardee and water conservation expert Uma Shankar Pandey, who has studied the Ken extensively, says the river's Banda stretch has been heavily affected by sand mining. "Excessive extraction has stripped away natural river sand that helped retain water and recharge groundwater. In its place, exposed rocky surfaces increase runoff and reduce water retention," he says. Across villages in Banda, residents describe groundwater levels falling steadily over the years. Wells dry earlier into summer. Borewells go deeper. The ecological stress has come from more than one direction. According to an RTI response issued by the Uttar Pradesh forest department in December 2020, construction of the Bundelkhand Expressway involved the felling of approximately 1,89,036 trees along the corridor, including thousands in Banda district, explains Jayan. The 2025 study conducted by researchers from Banda Agriculture University, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University, Lucknow University and Banaras Hindu University, submitted four months back, found that Banda's total forest cover declined from around 120 square kilometres in 2005 to roughly 95 square kilometres now, a reduction of 15.54%. Dense forest cover fell from nearly 18 square kilometres to about 12 square kilometres, a decline of 17.55%. The researchers warned that if degradation continues at current rates, parts of the district could become barren within the next two decades. None of this exists outside the larger reality of climate change. Rising temperatures across the subcontinent have made heatwaves longer and more intense, particularly in semi-arid regions like Bundelkhand. But researchers say Banda's vulnerability has been intensified by local ecological destruction- shrinking forests, damaged hills, depleted rivers and falling groundwater. Prof Dhruv Sen Singh of geology department, Lucknow University, says, "Banda has become the heat Island because of loss of green cover, loss of moisture, increase in sand area, decrease in number of water bodies, westerlies winds from Thar desert and last but not least vicious cycle of heat means the surface gets heated all day and even before the surface heat subsides at night, the day breaks with brighter sun shine. Hence no respite." "Humidity, which also reduces the heat, is almost negligible. The Bundelkhand region comprises rocky terrain, which intensifies the heat. Besides, hot and dry Westerlies are blowing in the Banda region. During summer, an anticyclone develops near the Thar desert which pushes hot winds near Banda. The low vegetation and low water budget in Ken and Baghain further add to the existing hot conditions," he says. Retired director-general of Geological Survey of India, VK Joshi says Banda is situated in rocky terrain. By evening, movement slowly returns to Attara market. Tea stalls reopen. Shops become busy again. Motorcycles reappear on roads that had remained empty through the afternoon. Lakhan Gupta stands at the entrance of his jewellery shop watching customers trickle back after sunset. For six or seven hours every day, large parts of Banda have become unusable. The mining trucks continue moving through the district meanwhile....