Govind Ram, a junk dealer living on the outskirts of the Indian capital, Delhi, bought an air conditioner in May after his children pleaded with him.
“In my 45 years in the air-con industry, I've never seen anything like this. The spike in demand is a complete surprise, with sales likely to more than double this summer compared to last year,” says B Thiagarajan, managing director of Blue Star, a leading cooling and refrigeration company.The sale of air conditioners will possibly see an unprecedented growth of 60% this summer in India - March to July - from the usual 25-30% growth in previous years, Mr Thiagarajan reckons.
Notably, 95% of Indian air-con buyers are aspirational middle-class first-time purchasers; over 65% hail from smaller cities and towns; and more than half buy through zero-interest consumer loans. Also, the average buyer is now in their thirties. Most of the sales come from the hotter northern region – since mid-May, for example, daily temperatures in Delhi have consistently stayed around or above 40C .
The data highlights how the poor face extreme heat even indoors, without direct sun exposure, said Neelanjan Sircar, director of CRI. In other words, the "gap between rich households, who already own air conditioners, and poor households, who are not yet able to buy them, is widening", according to a study by researchers from University of California, Berkeley and University of Mannheim, Germany on air conditioning and global inequality.