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The Indian lighting industry is becoming as concerned for the environment as it is about consumer awareness, good engineering and aesthetic designs. Manoj Verma, chairman of the Light India International 2009 Conference and VP, consumer products & international business, Crompton Greaves explains to Niranjan Mudholkar

The Light India International (LII) Conference organised by the Indian Society of Lighting Engineers (ISLE) has been a key event for the lighting industry  in India because of the conference focus on technical papers and fundamental research.

However, due to the emphasis on purely technical issues, it has not been very successful in attracting end-users like architects, interiors designers and developers.

 “We realised that it is critical to have the presence of end-users for such conferences and therefore this year we modified the format of the conference to make it more interesting for our customers,” said Manoj Verma, chairman of the Light India International 2009 Conference and vice president, consumer products & international business, Crompton Greaves.

Focus on practicality

Incidentally, this year’s conference was quite successful with more than 600 delegates including several from the end-user segment attending it. From the original three-day format, this year it was just a day-long event and was conducted at the same place as the venue for the ‘Lighting South Asia Expo 2009’.

So this was an added attraction for the delegates. “Importantly, we joined hands with the Institute of Indian Interior Designers (IIID) for this year’s conference. This year, the emphasis has been more on usage rather than technology, more on applications rather than products. It is equally important that while serving as business networking platforms, key trade events should also inform and educate the industry as well as the end-users,” Verma said.

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“The focus of the sessions during the conference was on practical case studies and experience rather than on theory,” he said. For example, the conference included a case study of a large multi‐disciplinary project where L&T with its architects, consultants and project team made presentation on the challenges faced for the Delhi International Airport Project.

“The presentation covered various aspects of project design and implementation but with a focus on lighting,” Verma said.

Another session by Behr Champana of TVS International, which is one of the world’s largest architecture companies, discussed lighting from various perspectives including creating cityscapes, designing colonies and town planning.

Champana has been involved in multi-disciplinary architectural projects in several countries and is presently stationed in Dubai. His presentation talked about how innovation in lighting technologies is shaping our perception of the sustainable cities and architecture of tomorrow.

“Champana is truly a dreamer and during his presentation, he shared visual collages of his dreams with lights. He also focussed on the need to move away from light pollution,” Verma remarked.

Adopting the CDM programme

While discussing the highlights of the LII 2009 Conference, Verma also underlined his industry’s growing concern for carbon dioxide emission and global warming.

“As an industry we are aware in terms of the threats of carbon emission and climate change. The industry has already made forays into the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Programme. The basic product for this programme is the compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), an energy saving lamp that allows you to gain carbon credits,” Verma said.

According to Verma, there are companies working with state electricity boards on the CDM programme. Andra Pradesh is one state where a CDM project has been implemented. “However, the CDM programme has not picked up the way we had expected it to pick for the simple reason that the awareness and the knowledge about the execution of the CDM programme has not yet come in to the fullest in the Indian lighting industry,” Verma added.