India is cooling faster than it can afford and warming faster than it can survive. Our growth story has long been told through the symbols of its rising comfort: air conditioners humming in middle-class households, glass-towered sealed against the heat, and fans spinning over crowded public infrastructure. Yet, behind the rising comfort lies a quiet paradox: the more India cools, the more it warms. As heatwaves become increasingly prolonged and nights fail to cool, the rapidly growing demand for residential cooling is becoming both a social necessity and an environmental dilemma.

In 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projected that India’s power demand for just air conditioners could potentially exceed Africa’s total electricity consumption by 2050. Air conditioner ownership in India has increased three-fold since 2010, reaching 24 units per 100 households, due to rising temperatures. Meanwhile, electricity consumption resulting from space cooling has increased by 21 per cent between 2019 and 2022. This reflects both a growing aspiration and a survival response to climate stress. As thermal comfort becomes a marker of both progress and protection, its benefits remain deeply uneven.

For instance, state-level surveys show a large variation in access to cooling appliances. While northern states like Punjab and Gujarat have higher shares of households with coolers or ACs, eastern states such as Bihar and West Bengal belong to the group with the lowest shares. This divergence between the needs of the people and access to resources creates “thermal inequality", a gap that underscores India’s broader inequities in health, housing, and infrastructure. Its consequences are not merely about discomfort but about health and survival. The poorest households, often living in densely populated........

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