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Are we wasting our built infrastructure? Are we wasting our roofs across India? I think we are. A recent visit to Jaisalmer drove home the point. In the midst of the desert, from a vantage point, a local lamented: all that energy from solar is for others, not for us. As he said it, I was also looking out at the city-full of empty rooftops. A few had installed solar, but most kept just a few white water tanks. So, I wondered, why more people hadn’t got inspired by the solar story around them and put up their own panels.

I won’t go into the incentives — various states have made policies imperfect as some might be. What I will say is that the capital costs are still prohibitive for most, and that makes it difficult to wait for the return on investment. While this should be amended, many other options exist. Can CSR budgets not put in most of the money, for example? Can builders not be mandated to include this and keep it functional? If toilets could be built in a country that has resigned itself to open defecation, surely, we can transform how we think of owning our own energy source.

While India has developed some of the most ambitious solar plans, the Solar Alliance and our country’s landscape in some parts is dotted with solar farms, the average Indian hasn’t made solar power a part of their lifestyle as much as we should. To solarise our everyday lives, we need both a top down and bottom up approach.

(Bharati Chaturvedi is the founder and director of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group.)

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