Simplifying Life

Dr. Anil Rajvanshi shares with us his experiences in living a sustainable but decent and emotionally satisfying life. This lifestyle has evolved slowly over time and required some effort.He had lived in US for many years in 1970s and had imbibed the consumptive lifestyle of US. Coming and living in rural India taught him many things among which was spirituality and frugality.

His experiments in sustainable living for the last 25 years are as follows:

1. He lives in a house designed by me and constructed in 1984. It is built of stone with 18” thick walls which allow tremendous thermal lag-time so heating and cooling due to ambient atmospheric temperature is delayed. It is passively cooled in the summer by laying old jute gunny sacs on the roof and sprinkling water on them two times a day. These sacs are very cheap and cost Rs. 10/m2 (1US$ = Rs. 47). The evaporating water from the sacs cools the roof from where 80% of thermal load comes into the house.  Thus when the outside temperatures are about 40-450C the house is cool in the afternoon with average temperatures of rooms ranging from 25-300C. This is mostly because of thick walls and cool roof. Besides we also close all the windows and draw the drapes over them so that hot air and radiation from outside does not come inside the house. The trees surrounding the house also help. In a couple of years or so the gunny sacs are worn out because of the salts left behind by the evaporating water. These old gunny sacs are either used as mulch in the garden or burned in our hot water boiler, which supplies water for there daily bath. The water boiler is a grate-type multifuel boiler with about a 10 m long chimney attached to it.  This chimney height gives an excellent draught and hence burns the wood and other material quite cleanly. In fact the water boiler is used for burning lots of different things as explained below. The ash from this boiler is used as a fertilizer in their garden either by putting it directly or composting it.  
2. All their kitchen waste is fed to rabbits (about 25-30 of them) who are in a cage in our garden. They use these rabbits to produce fertilizer (their droppings) which makes excellent manure in the garden. 
3. All other items inedible for rabbits like egg shells, tea waste etc. are put in compost pit (with dimensions of about 1 m X 1 m X 1 m). After 2-3 months the output from this pit is used as a fertilizer in their garden. 
4. They never waste any food.  The leftovers are either used next day or fed to our two dogs and  three to four cats. There is no special food for the pets. They eat whatever we eat.  
5. They have a 2-acre plot on which our house is located.  It mostly contains trees. Their leaf litter rots in the soil during rainy season and provide nice mulch. The dead branches and trees provide us the wood for heating our bath water in the boiler.  In fact they always have surplus of wood so that we sell it and make a nice tidy sum. Today the leaf litter from the trees and the compost fertilizer has really improved the soil quality. The soil has therefore become springy and quite fertile. 
6. Most of their groceries and vegetables are grown within 10-15 km of our home. The eggs are from free ranging chickens, milk from cows across the road and vegetables and groceries from the local market.  Most of these things are grown in Phaltan area. They use safflower seed produced on our Institute farm for crushing in local mill for oil,Thus the oil is fresh and without any chemicals.  
7. He mostly wears khadi or cotton spun in cottage industries.  Khadi is a very comfortable material to wear and also makes excellent dusters and wipers after the shirts get torn. 
   
8. Similarly all the papers in the office are used for writing on both sides and the used ones are brought to our house to again heat our bath water.  Thus everything is recycled. 
   
9. We use electricity sparingly – which is also facilitated by the Government of Maharashtra since we have 4 to 5 hours of power cut everyday! We have battery-powered inverters both in the offices and at home which supply enough juice for lights, fans and laptops only.During electricity cuts they usually walk, talk or read providing a good quality time to catch up on reading and discussions. 
10. They communicate more by phones and internet and believe that this is much more energy-efficient way of keeping in touch. 
11. They bring most of our groceries and vegetables in cotton carry bags and hence have little garbage of plastic. Nevertheless we cannot get away from plastic as most things come already packed in it and this is the biggest nuisance we have.Nevertheless technology for recycling of plastics or incinerating them efficiently and without environmental pollution in rural areas is very much needed. 
12. Their low electricity consumption results since we use only fans and CFLs and almost no air conditioning.  Even in their offices they use evaporative roof cooling. The low energy usage in transport is because on an average we travel only 15,000 km/yr. 
13. Similarly their average water consumption is 150 liters per person/day for household purposes.  This is almost one-fourth thanused by a U.S. citizen.Still they feel that this water usage can be further reduced.
14. A satisfying and decent life style can be maintained in much less energy and water usage as compared to that in western societies . if all of us become internally secure through spirituality then it can help us in living sustainably and the pressures on resources of the country can be reduced. And with proper planning and enlightened policy of the Government, Indians can enjoy a very high quality of life without becoming over consumptive.