Aatmanirbhar Ghar: Eco-homes with Free Energy – Water – Food

Imagine waking up with the dawn chorus of bulbuls and koels orchestrating a melody. Tree leaves whistling with the morning breeze. The rising Sun painting the eastern sky deep orange  Imagine leaning over your balcony to smell the fragrance of fresh earth and seeing your children plucking flavourful tomatoes and pulling out juicy carrots from your organic Kitchen garden below – harvesting the day’s fruits and vegetables while playing with colourful butterflies.

Imagine watering your garden with freshly harvested rainwater pulled out by from your water reservoir or pond by a large colourful windmill rotating in your garden & all your home’s energy needs fulfilled by solar panels harvesting the sunshine. Imagine your home as a green ecosystem. Imagine your own “Aatmanirbhar Ghar”  Sounds like a Dream? This can be our reality.

Our Homes can be self-sufficient in our 3 main requirements – Energy, Water & Food. 

Energy. Homes when designed to bring in natural light, eliminate the need for artificial lights during the day.  Homes cooled or heated through natural energy-efficient means, bring down the power requirement to less than half. This reduced power load can be met through renewable sources like solar, wind, biogas, hydropower. 

Water. Rainwater harvested from the rooftop of the home can be used for various purposes including drinking & cooking. Rainwater that falls on the ground around the home alongwith treated wastewater can be used for gardening & flushing. Excess water can be filtered and recharged back into the ground to replenish the depleting water tables. 

Food. With Edible Fruit Forests, vegetable & herb gardens around our home, we not only fulfil our own food requirements but also make our home a biodiverse ecosystem. We give back to birds, butterflies, squirrels and bees, their natural habitat. Needless to say, these green spaces are excellent outdoor classrooms for our children to understand the wonders of nature.

The current crisis has clearly revealed that we cannot afford to do what we have done so far. It is time to re-imagine our homes. 

Homes are living entities with Stories, just like you and me. They are the backdrop of our lives. They are an extension of our skin – our second layer of protection after our clothes. 

In urban areas, we spend more than 80% of our lives inside a building. 

We can make our homes in sync with Nature, smarter, sustainable, more meaningful. Homes that enhance our well being. 

Homes that are designed to complement Nature instead of competing with it. 

The beauty about what the world has witnessed in the past couple of months is that our first responsibility is towards our own well-being – to live healthy inside healthy homes.  Home is the building block of our community. To create healthy happy communities, we need healthy happy homes. 

Aatmanirbhar Ghar – healthy and happy homes – self-sufficient in Energy, Water and Food – can be our best step forward towards creating an Aatmanirbhar Desh.