Green Homes Emerge From the Understanding of the Physics of Water and Energy

Interview with Mr. Hariharan, CEO, BCIL.

1) You have been associated with several governments for water-related work. What are the factors that now dog India, according to you, for providing a safe and accessible water supply sanitation?

Healthy, continuous water supply is part of a global campaign today. The UN set a very ambitious target, at turn of century, of reaching such a goal by 2015. What is the basic challenge today in the districts of India or in urban India for providing safe and accessible water supply and sanitation? It is clearly two-fold: One is a very stark crisis that is looming large ahead of us on water for cultivation. I will not move into the statistics which can be mind-boggling; it is before you every time a farmer agitation hits the headlines on a river and riparian rights that deny farmers in one State of river water that is flowing from another. Karnataka's Cauvery water and the agitations of farmers in TN is only one of many examples.

Dams dam people's lives in the remote ecosystems is now beyond doubt. That has put a new twist to the 100-year-old practice of providing large-scale irrigation with water stored in such projects across India. Eco-activists have also been vigilant to more such dams coming up. While dams of the large kind is not the solution for providing irrigation water to our farmers, the challenge of providing water for the second crop to the farmer has only grown.

The question critically for any farmer is: How do I secure enough water for the second crop with the first rainfed crop barely enough to meet his own family's needs? Every waiter and dishwaster in a swarm of small hotels in every city are boys who have left their villages because there is not enough land to support the entire family. How do we create more opportunity in such hinterlands by giving them the chance to grow the second crop, which will either feed them through the year, or leave an income surplus?

Our monsoon means that we get all our rains in either June-August or November-January depending on which part of India you are located in. So how do you find ways of locally storing water at the village, or block or Tehsil level, in a way that you are able to provide irrigation water to farm fields? Organisations like the N M Sadguru Foundation in Dahod district of Gujarat are examples of such work that has put a smile on farmers' faces. This needs replication and scaling up, across districts. We have today less than 15% of India's entire cultivable lands under irrigation. Over 80% of our 140 million farmer families still look up to the sky and pray for rains.

There is then the more serious concern of drinking water itself. There have been many wonderful government programmes and initiatives to see how water can be provided to farmers in their villages. Again, the question is one of good administration, local initiative from people as well as funds for setting up very basic storage infrastructure for such water supply for drinking. The NORAD initiative, for example, in four districts of Karnataka was a good example of how people could be helped and enabled. I said 'was' because some warp of govt policy saw the program folding up 3-4 years ago. This program had covered a thousand villages across Koppal, Chitradurga, Raichur and Bellary. Now those same workers and engineers have found placement in the district directorates of watersheds or with other agencies working on watershed practices – but not with half the impact that Norad was making. This view may attract controversy, but we need to go beyond views and ideologies – the bottomline is the dynamic management of such challenges that people can look up to informed support from professionals who can drive such programmes.

There is a third dimension to water in India. The new challenge of urbanization in India has meant that we today have nearly 50% of our population in less than 5% of the country's landmass. The density of population in such concentrated settlements means that one cannot look beyond the availability of groundwater for meeting water needs. So borewells become a solution that all people take recourse to. Depletion of ground water levels have been alarming in just the last 20 years.

The solution at the urban level is clearly to do not with new sources of water, but with the way we rationalize the use of water, as communities, as cities and as governments.

The most practical way to achieve efficient urban water supply is to see that you treat and re-use water in a way that your non-potable needs of water are met with such treated water.

The good news is that nearly 70% of your water-needs in any urban housing area or in office blocks is clearly for non-potable use like flush tanks and gardens. These needs can be easily met with treated water.

The technology available for quality water treatment has grown sharply in recent years. There are technology companies that have cropped up with many different treatment options at reasonable costs for such treatment and re-use. The government, through the Central Pollution Control Board, has made it mandatory for builders to create such tertiary sewage treatment plant for re-use of water. All this augurs well for sensible use of water in the years ahead, with drop in demand for fresh water.

Regulation today in the building industry does not yet cover the installation of dual plumbing lines in large residential projects for treatment and use of treated waste-water for flush tanks and gardens with separate plumbing systems, quite distinct from the water lines for fresh water. This should be in place soon, in order that the demand for fresh water is met better. Nearly every city in India gets only about 25% of its water needs met from river water sources – the rest is with borewells that gouge groundwater up, and depletes the lifeline of large tracts of lands in cities and its peripheries.

You can see that the solutions are not complex, but the implementation of solutions are difficult because of the various pull-and-push factors that come out of lack of homogeneity and oneness of objective among all stakeholders. The Government, the Water Supply Board [Jal Sansthaans], Water Development Corporations [Jal Nigams], Building Societies and Apartment Associations, Village Development Boards and Panchayats, are all urban and rural local bodies who can take to many of these solutions for efficient water management - if only they were on one page on how to get the solution in place.

2) Over the years successive governments must have failed on so many accounts. But surely there may be some such factors that have improved over the years in WSS?

Well, there have been improvements in the way Water Supply
Boards have responded in the face of growing needs in both the urban and the rural sectors. The solutions still somehow remain confined to the domain of finding new sources of water. Such governments and local bodies must surely turn to demand-side engineering of water, in a way that they are able to reduce dramatically the need for fresh water. The solution is obvious: treat all waste water and use it for non-potable purposes. Singapore's Nuwater program launched about 18-20 months ago is now looking at treating waste water to a point where the island-state's citizens can drink it! The Prime Minister was on TV taking a sip of the 'Nuwater' which was fresh water emerging from grey and black water flowing off the city's drainage!

3) What are your main principles of BCIL for eco-conscious homes, and the success rates keeping it sustainable? How will all these efforts help in contributing to improving Water Supply and Sanitation in the broader perspective?

BCIL's eco-homes designs emerge essentially from our fundamental understanding of the physics of water and energy. The linkage to the land and its capacity to carry groundwater, and the necessity for using energy for drawing water are inextricable factors which we need to understand sensitively. Urban planners and architects and builders of residential and commercial spaces have to therefore recognize these two basic resources for water and energy, in a way that we can reduce creatively the demand for fresh water with technologies that are reliable, safe and capable of improving quality of life.

BCIL's eco-homes seek to address the need for water right from the commencement of a project to the post-occupancy needs of residents for healthy, continuous water supply. This is easier achieved in an urban setting than in a village landscape because of the continuous availability of power which is necessary for treating water that will then feed nearly 70% of all needs of a city's people. The amount of water you need for drinking, bathing or at the kitchen is under 30%. What you need for your flush tanks, washing cars and floors in homes, or for your gardens is a chunk that can come out of what we call 'loop water' in plans that help you 'grow your own water'.

So you can see that water supply and sanitation are two faces of the same coin. If there is enough energy that is made available, and if the beneficiaries are able to afford the energy cost [which is sadly not the case if you are in the remote hinterland], you can grow your own water in a way that your fresh water demand falls by nearly two-thirds. So why is that good news? In a city like Bangalore, this will mean that nearly groundwater depletion will nearly stop, because we will find ourselves water-surplus with what we get from Cauvery! Well, borewells in the non-water grid parts of the city will still run, but the amount of depletion will fall dramatically.

4) You are a chartered accountant-turned alternate technology expert. We hear that you witnessed some homes literally coming down that shook you literally and so the steely resolve to provide 'something' more to life. Please explain.

It has been a long journey. I have had the privilege of working and learning from many dedicated voluntary workers in many districts. The terrible face of poverty and of incalculable suffering that natural disasters inflict on large populations can make a searing impact on any person. I was no exception. Whether it is an earthquake and the mass deaths it can cause or the helpless faces of the very poor sections of dalits and of landless farmers in East Bhopal or in Aurangabad can leave an abiding impression, as it did with me.

What does it do to a person? You are right, it steels your determination to see if you can bring pragmatic solutions for people and communities in a way that they can see tangible benefits for life and living. These are, sadly, large challenges which are beyond the capacity of one individual or one organization. Even worse, many of these challenges of providing drinking water or cultivation water cannot be done without funds because there is no sustainable revenue model for providing paybacks and returns on investments.

Can we provide ecologically sustainable solutions for all people with an economically sustainable model? The answer is no. If I have been defeated after about 20 years of working in the development sector, it is because I see no solution in our villages and the hinterland, that can work beyond grants and funds to create good quality of life for communities with quality water supply for drinking and for cultivation.

Governments cannot be blamed. They have their limitations. People who are rich can only give so much as donations and contributions. The same is true of rich nations and the poor. So what can one do in the face of these huge, intractable challenges? I have taken the most practical road that was available to me – of pioneering a few models of such sustainable development that can hopefully inspire many more others to want to do similar initiatives and increase the positive impact of such interventions that enable and help people to find their own solutions.

India's farmers carry an infinite genius for devising solutions that are cost-effective and sensitive to the lands and regions they inhabit. All we need to do is nudge the process; find them funds where we can. There are over 22 little chhaanis [they are not villages, but like little settlements] in Bhopal district, populated by the Bhils. They are poor, vulnerable. Intuitively they understand contours of land and behaviour of water. They know how to dig their wells and make little, localized dams that bring them benefit without hurting interests of communities downstream. All they need is their daily wages to build their own wells for drinking water. Each well costs no more than Rs 50,000 of wage costs. They can't spend as many days working for themselves without money for food and subsistence. Their traditional knowledge of water management is enormous, but they need just that bit of funding. Large programs of the govt don't work, for they they provide employment but don't address their need in a way that they can secure livelihood. Employment strips dignity, livelihood gives them back esteem.

When the faceoff between rural India and urban India comes to the fore, then the conflict becomes tragic. For the benefit of a larger common good of people in cities, we sacrifice the lives and livelihoods of a few lakhs or even millions of people. The examples of a Narmada, or a Bhilangana are sad manifestations of development which is insensitive to human beings and to the dignity of humans. But that is another story.

5) After Trans-Indus, Town's End, Wild Grass and Little Acre with principles of conservation, what are the other green features that are highlighted in BCIL Collective, your latest venture?

From our first residential campus, created a decade ago, to our recent creations of such sustainably defined residential or housing solutions, there has been much learning. We have now understood that we must reduce the footprint of lands that we claim for making homes out of lands that are fertile and provide food.

In our last project, BCIL T-ZED Homes, we designed to reach 100% autonomy or independence from the Municipal Water Supply and Sewerage Board. We established systems for air-conditioning homes in a way that it increased the health of its residents with treated, clean, fresh air. We derisked the long-term insecurity of water supply, by drastically cutting down the community's dependence on fresh water to just 30% of the total daily water needs of the community. We then designed and implemented plans to meet the reduced fresh water needs by discovering a traditional system of harnessing groundwater without having to dig deep borewells.

The features are surely 'environment friendly', but what is more important is that the features directly bring benefits to the residents in terms of greater comfort and convenience.

Into our most recent project, BCIL Collective, we have gone a step forward in the technology we have used for improving air quality in homes. We have implemented what is called the Earth Tunnel Ventilation System that harnesses the earth's subterraneous capacity for maintaining the temperature at a constant bandwidth of 24 - 27ºC. What it offers therefore is more than air-conditioning – it offers homes that are warm in winter, and cool in summer; a sort of 'thermostat' effect that is superior to conventional AC's. We have blended other traditional forms of air ventilation, inspired by the mughal architectural forms of 'tykhaanas' and 'tinsakhias'.

As we go forward into our future, we are more confident of devising more systems and refinements to the way we manage energy, water and waste and show the way to defining a new future for creating urban settlements.

6) Tell us more on your solar uses, flooring and landscaping, and the architects you employ.

To us at BCIL, a building is not simply an envelope of walls and roofs. Buildings are energy systems. We need to find ways of plugging in electricity and water supply. We need to plug out waste water and solid waste from each of these buildings.

We need to improve the quality of air. We need to provide comforts of hot water, cool and comfortable floors and visually appealing gardens and landscapes. Every design input is seen from the point of view of not ecology as much as human ecology.

We ask ourselves, how can we create a pleasant garden while it serves the function of preventing heat gain and avoiding heat radiation? How do we create a water body that is a swimming pool for the resident, while it is part of microclimate architecture that helps us to drop ambient temperature by 3-4 deg. C? How do we afford the comfort of hot water with solar energy and therefore drop the demand for energy in your homes by avoiding use of power-guzzling geysers? How do we use natural floors that offer therapeutic value for arthritics and rheumatism afflicted? How do we avoid use of synthetic floors that consume high energy in their manufacture? How do we employ flooring materials that are available within the local region and do not have to be transported from distances that mean higher fossil fuel cost?

Our design professionals are trained architects and engineers in areas of mechanical, electrical and civil engineering disciplines; they are people who have worked on the physics of water, energy and building materials. These are people who understand the need for seeking solutions that go beyond what have currently been used as engineering and architectural solutions in the last 50 years. We also rely on the resources of water managers, geologists and geophysicists. BCIL is a technology company, not a builder company in the ways we know construction alone. But what is important is that we don't make any compromise on what we offer to customers as value for their money and investment.

7) After decades of experience with water, what are the key mantras that you would want to highlight to our readers?

Well, Water is not about water. Water is about water management. We cannot manufacture water. We can only grow it in a way that you bring solutions that are practical.

The key to the future on water or on energy lies not in generating more of these resources. Half of the solution lies in the way we use energy or water, without having to compromise our lifestyles.