In Bangalore, the center of India's high-tech industry, bricks and mortar are still very much in evidence. On a single block in a quiet residential neighborhood of this laid back southern Indian city, I spotted four multistory apartment buildings under construction, no doubt replacing single family homes.
In every town I've passed through while visiting India this month, the mania for homebuilding is apparent. Barefoot construction workers perch like birds on bamboo scaffolding, hauling up materials with heavy jute rope and buckets. Even in small cities, every other shop in town sells ceramic tiles, flooring or fancy plumbing fixtures. Highway billboards advertise luxurious new highrises. A lighting store displays huge chandeliers, promising "Light and Lifestyle."
My parents' new home in Kerala is part of this mania. Plans for a simple beach cottage quickly ballooned into a two-story, three bedroom/three bath villa, equipped with an outsize refrigerator and giant multiple air conditioners. When people can suddenly afford to live a comfortable western lifestyle in India, energy-saving ceiling fans and fluorescent lights hold very little appeal.
There's one telling exception, however. The house is equipped with a solar water heater. It's an energy-saver, but it also provides the incomparable luxury of running hot water in the kitchen and all the bathrooms. In older Indian middle-class homes, you have to turn on an electric water heater - called the "geyser" - before you fill a bucket with hot water for your bath (and pray that there's no power outage while you're in mid-soap).
Residential building is so fast and loose here that it seems unlikely for any national building codes to take root anytime soon. But solar water heaters do seem to be taking off. I don't know a soul with a solar water heater in the United States, but the Indian government has made them mandatory in all new government buildings, as part of its national Energy Conservation Building Code, and several cities are considering similar mandates.
India's National Solar Mission targets having 20 million square meters of solar water heater collectors by the year 2022. If our solar water heater allows me to take a hot shower during the cloudy depths of Kerala's drenching monsoon, I can only assume that the program will be a success.
