1

India

2

Kerala

3

Energy situation

• Domestic electricity consumption is growing at the rate of 21 % per year since 1995. There was almost a doubling of electricity in homes from 1995-2000.

• The number of household customers growing at about 6 % per year.

• 60% of electricity consumption in households• Demand far exceeds supply of electricity. Scheduled

blackouts daily, unscheduled often.• Environmental and social concerns have virtually

stopped hydropower.• Other renewables expensive and not seen as realistic

4

Energy consumption related to:

• Changing household

• Changing role of women

• Trans-boundary work migration

• Globalising economy and media

5

Changing household and family

• Joint to nuclear families

• Women with full responsibility for housework, yet entering work force

• Dowry pressure on women

• Consequences for consumption

6

Chore or activity

Always or often participates (%)

Rarely or never participates (%)

Male Female Male Female Food preparation 10 88 82 7 Dish washing 23 73 76 7 Clothes washing 10 68 80 22 House cleaning 11 68 81 22 Table 1. Participation of male and female head of households in selected home chores and activities, Trivandrum (based on structured interviews with 408 households in middle class neighbourhoods).

Chore or activity

Always or often participates (%)

Rarely or never participates (%)

Male Female Male Female Food preparation 9 86 83 10 Dish washing 7 64 87 21 Clothes washing 11 60 79 25 House cleaning 12 60 80 27 Table 2. Participation of male and female head of households in selected home chores and activities in households in which women work full time outside the home, Trivandrum (based on structured interviews with 408 households in middle class neighbourhoods).

7

Appliance (percent of total sample owning in parenthesis)

Percentage of households owning, Female HOH working N = 148

Percentage of households owning, Female HOH not working N = 242

Refrigerator (82 %) 90 % 76 % Electric Iron (90 %) 96 % 85 % Electric Grinder (59%) 65 % 56 % Electric Mixie (92 %)1 95 % 88 % Washing mach (56 %) 68 % 49 % Car (39 %) 45 % 37 %

Table 4.1. Differences in ownership of convenience appliances between households with female head of household working outside the home or not (middle and upper income neighborhoods in Trivandrum).

1 Grinders and mixies save considerable time and work in cooking, since the Kerala curries require grinding of many different herbs and spices.

8

9

Kerala ethnoscape

• In Trivandrum, 40% of families have at least one member working outside

• Maintain an inside/outside identity

• Send money back

• Bring things back, which move through extended family networks

10

Microwave Ownership

0

10

20

30

40

50

1 2 3 4 5 6

Income

% O

wn

ing Overseas

No Overs

All owners

11

Refrigerator ownership

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

1 2 3 4 5 6

Income

% O

wn

ing Overseas

No Overs

All owners1

12

Washing Machine Ownership

0

20

40

60

80

100

1 2 3 4 5 6

Income

% O

wn

ing Overseas

No Overs

All owners

13

Air Conditioner Ownership

0

10

20

30

40

1 2 3 4 5 6

Income

% O

wn

ing Overseas

No Overs

All owners

14

VCR Ownership

0

20

40

60

80

100

1 2 3 4 5 6

Income

% O

wn

ing Overseas

No Overs

All Owners

15

Personal Computer Ownership

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1 2 3 4 5 6

Income

% O

wn

ersh

ip

Overseas

No Overs

All owners

16

Car Ownership

0

20

40

60

80

1 2 3 4 5 6

Income

% O

wn

ing Overseas

No Overs

All Owners

17

Ghandi on modernism and consumption

The Mahatma was wholly opposed to those who argued India’s future lay in imitating the industrial and technological society of the West. India’s salvation lay in ‘unlearning what she has learnt in the past 50 years’. He challenged almost all the Western ideals that had taken root in India … His nightmare was a machine-dominated industrial society which would suck India’s villagers from the countryside into her blighted urban slums, sever their contact with the social unit that was their natural environment, destroy their ties of family and religion, all for the faceless, miserable existence of an industrial complex spewing out goods men didn’t really need. He was not, as he was sometimes accused of doing, preaching a doctrine of poverty. Grinding poverty produced the moral degradation and the violence he loathed. But so, too, he argued did a surfeit of material goods. A people with full refrigerators, stuffed clothes cupboard, a car in every garage and a radio in every room, could be psychologically insecure and morally corrupt. Gandhi wanted man to find a just medium between debasing poverty and the heedless consumption of goods.

Source: Lapierre, Dominique and Larry Collins. 1997 (second edition). Freedom at Midnight. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, Ltd.

18

1991 ’Opening of India’

• Removal of duties on imported goods

• Removal of luxury taxes

• Foreign investment and foreign businesses

19

Foreign collaborations and foreign investment in India, 1991-1997

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997

Total number of foreign collaborations

950 1520 1467 1854 2337 2303 2325

Total amount of foreign investment (in billion Rupees)

5,3 38,9 88,6 142 321 362 549

SOURCE Government Report on Currency and Finance, 2000 5 Rupees = 1 kroner

20

TV

• 100 cable channels in Trivandrum

• New ideas about consumption and the good life

• Huge amounts of investment in television advertising (also directed at children)

21

Technology scripts

• New technologies bring scripts for change

• Refrigerators

• Buildings and air conditioning

22S15

23

Sustainability: Southern perspectives

• Inevitable and allowable increases in energy consumption for basic services

• Growing middle classes interested in taking their place as global consumers

24

Implications for global approaches to energy sustainability

• Technology and knowledge transfer

• Reinforce local knowledge and existing sustainable practices

• Take on the main burden for energy reductions in the rich countries