ASHRAYA NAGAR, India — This slum on the outskirts of Bangalore is a mix of poverty and modernism. Most huts here have no attached toilet or running water, but solar panels of all sizes appear on their asbestos rooftops.
Such contradictory scenes aren’t rare across India. In the northern state of Bihar, small businesses charge their mobile phones with electricity generated from rice husk gasification. In farmlands here in south India, villagers harvest wind power to pump groundwater for irrigation.