Abstract
The reasons behind growth in middle class household electricity consumption in India are examined, where household appliances are rapidly taking a place in home cooking, cleaning and cooling consumption. The resulting electricity demand comes with high environmental costs, both locally and globally, since the electricity fuel of choice in India is coal, which is plentiful. The analysis, based on ethnographic research in the Kerala capital city Trivandrum, examines changes in home consumption practices and relates them to political and social changes in India, especially in Kerala, over the past decades. The research demonstrates how an understanding of gender relations; family and household structures; work migration in cross-national ethnoscapes; and changes in India’s political relationship to global markets and globalising media are all important to the theorising of changing energy consumption. An important finding is that women are indirectly responsible for increasing consumption as home appliances are purchased to alleviate time pressure. Social performance is also contributing to changing consumption; the purchase of household appliances is not only a sign of ‘getting ahead’ but also of ‘keeping up’ with rapidly changing consumption norms.
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- 1.
The Nair, some members of the Ezhava castes, smaller castes such as the Samantans, Vilakkitallas (barbers), Veluthedatus (washer men) and, according to Fuller (1976), even some Muslims, practiced matrilineality and matrilocality well into the 20th century. The Hindu Nambuthiri Brahmin caste, which comprised less than two percent of the population, practiced patriliny, but the Nair matrilineal practice of sambandham allowed Brahmin men to have concubinal relationships with matrilineal Nair women. Christians and the vast majority of Muslims, who together constitute about 30 percent of the population of South Kerala, have always practiced patrilineality and patrilocality.
- 2.
This shift towards consumption as an integral part of Indian development was made during a period of declining economic growth, growing national debt and a growing trade deficit (Khilnani, 1998; Corbridge & Harriss, 2000). The Gulf War of 1990 exacerbated these problems because it led to declining revenues from work migrants (Non-Resident Indians). It also contributed to higher oil prices, which put stress on many parts of the Indian economy. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s made a further contribution to the deterioration in trade and ‘removed the only alternative ideological model to the capitalist market’ (Khilnani, 1998, p. 96).
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Wilhite, H. (2012). A Socio-Cultural Analysis of Changing Household Electricity Consumption in India. In: Spreng, D., Flüeler, T., Goldblatt, D., Minsch, J. (eds) Tackling Long-Term Global Energy Problems. Environment & Policy, vol 52. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2333-7_6
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