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Within the CII, we have a group to encourage these people. This group will support any entrepreneur who has got a good green product but does not have money. Once it is convinced that the entrepreneur is genuine and the product is right, it will arrange for a soft loan from a bank.
About 65 products are currently being developed through this initiative. Of course a lot more needs to happen on this front. More and more technologies and products must be developed locally like what Mili Majumdar and her group did with the sewage treatment plant in the Godrej Business Centre. Very importantly, the government must encourage this.

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I have a vision that when India turns 75 in 2020, we will be exporting green products.

The concept of an MEP service provider is still relatively new in India but it has started to pick up. It must have been quite difficult for you when you started Spectral in 1980. Tell us about those times and do you think the green building concept is actually helping the growth MEP service providers and why?
You are quite right. When I came back to India after doing my PhD, we had very good consultants for air conditioning – Maneck Dastur; we had good consultants for electricals - Murthy; we had good consultants for plumbing - Menon. They were all giants in their fields but we did not have one unified consultant who offered all these services under one umbrella. Due to a lack of integrated approach, there was no optimisation of the services and hence the utilities were also costing more to the users.
I started Spectral with the aim of providing integrated and optimised MEP services. The first step was fully coordinated drawings; we faced a lot of resistance at that time and technically too it was quite difficult as there were no computers. But people soon saw the merit and we got six jobs.
We worked really hard and delivered. Then we bagged contract for the Asian Games in 1982 and that really helped us bring MEP as a discipline in the country. Today we have several MEP contractors in India and I am glad we started the journey.
Now about the link between green buildings and MEP. Green buildings mean optimised energy and optimised energy can only come through optimised MEP. Luckily I started integrated optimised MEP services twenty years ago and when the green building movement came to India, I was ready for it. Spectral already had this wealth of optimised MEP experience when IGBC started. One must appreciate that the largest operating cost in a building is MEP.

The Leed India rating system has had its days of glory but it has also faced criticism. Some have called it too commercialised while the proponents of Griha (TERI’s rating system for Green Buildings) have criticised it by calling it too homogenized and not encouraging innovation and diversity. Your views.
Although Griha came much later than Leed India I have great respect for this system. I must say that Mili Majumdar of TERI has done a phenomenal job to bring a wholly Indianised system with Griha. Griha has also been adopted by the Government of India, which is wonderful.
When the original Leed came to us, we recognised that it was a very Americanised system. We Indianised the system by putting more emphasis on things that need more attention in India like water, safety, fire safety and so on. BEE too has started the Star rating system for energy consumption and I welcome it.
In fact, I believe we need more and more systems so that there is no complacency. I have no problems with having more rating systems just that they must keep evolving.
Griha has not undergone any change ever since it was started by TERI in 2004-2005. On the other hand, Leed has undergone three changes ever since we started it. It is a constantly evolving system. I think this is where Leed scores over Griha.In terms of innovation, Leed has five out of sixty points for innovation. That is almost ten percent.
Sometimes you also hear the objection that Leed means only air conditioning. That is not the case. Take the example of the Police HQ in Gulbarga in Karnataka. It has a Leed Gold rating and uses the ancient Indian concept of cooling towers (Sheetal Minars) instead of electrical air conditioning systems. One must also understand that the Leed rating system is used in India only for commercial buildings. For other structures and systems, we have the IGBC Green Home rating, the IGBC Green factory rating, the IGBC Green city rating and so on.
To sum it up, I would say all these rating systems should continue to grow consistently together. Over a period of time, they should grow more respectful of each other and have some kind of synergy.

Do you think the Indian government has put in place policies that help further the cause of green architecture? What more needs to be done?
A lot more needs to be done. I will give you one example. Today, Vidur Bharadwaj has done Lotus Boulevard which is green. The power tariffs and the taxes that this project has to pay are no different than the conventional building standing next to it that wastes energy and water.
The other building will require one ton of AC for 150 sq ft while Vidur’s building would require one AC for 250 sq ft. The user gets the advantage of lower bills but not of lower tariff. So if someone is saving the nation’s energy why should he be charged the same tariff that is charged to someone who is wasting nation’s energy?
Take the example of a country like Singapore which has lower tariffs, lower taxes, lower insurance and even lower interest housing loan rates for green buildings. So the government should incentivise green buildings through lower charges.
I am happy that SBI is charging half percent less on home loans taken for IGBC Green Homes. We will soon be approaching ICICI and HDFC for the same. Similarly, the government needs to do its bit in promoting the movement. Of course, we are not sitting idle.
We are already speaking with the state governments and many state governments have directed us to municipalities. And we are working with the municipalities upwards. Many municipalities in states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are willing to adopt green measures and giving incentives to green buildings. Of course, our fight is going to take long.