SMOKELESS COOKING

Description

As questions arise over the Ujjawala scheme’s success, it would be prudent to introduce alternative clean sources of energy.

In India, many women in poor households who use firewood or dung cakes for cooking spend long hours collecting firewood and making dung cakes.
This is drudgery as it affects their health and puts the safety of women and girls in jeopardy.
Using firewood and dung cakes also leads to indoor pollution, as chulhas (firewood-based stoves) using these sources of energy release carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Both these gases have an adverse impact on the health of the family members.
They also impact the environment.
The earlier solution to this problem — smokeless or fuel-efficient chulhas for cooking — was introduced in the 1980s.
The National Programme on Improved Chulha was launched in 1984.
This was backed by training programmes for making and maintaining these chulhas.
But these programmes failed when subsidies were withdrawn, governments lost interest, people could not be convinced to use the new chulhas and did not participate, target beneficiaries were not properly identified, and there was little quality control.

The PAHAL (DBTL) scheme was earlier launched on 1st June 2013 and finally covered 291 districts.
It required the consumer to mandatorily have an Aadhaar number for availing LPG Subsidy.
The government has comprehensively reviewed the scheme and after examining the difficulties faced by the consumer substantively modified the scheme prior to launch.
In 2016, the Modi government launched the LPG scheme as the Pradhan Mantri Ujjawala Yojana (PMYU).
NITI Aayog laid out a road map for universal access to LPG by 2025.
The subsidy for LPG increased from ₹12,000 crore in 2016-17 to ₹21,000 crore in 2017-18 (Petroleum Analysis and Planning Cell, 2018), and 94% of all households had an LPG connection as of September 2019, an increase from 56% in 2014-15.

Cost of LPG Cylinders
Economic dependence of women on men
Lack of awareness regarding health issues associated with indoor air pollution
Increasing prices of cylinders which a poor can barely afford
Official data show that 48% rural households used LPG (2018) but only partially.
The other problems in accessing LPG are administrative and include the distance to LPG distribution centres, long waiting time, and rising costs of LPG cylinders.

Others need affordable alternatives to choose from, such as solar energy and solar cookers, smokeless chulhas, biogas plants and electric cookers where electricity is cheap.
Good research and development e orts need to be made in the public and private sectors to explore these alternatives.
As one solution may not fit all, there is a need to o er a set of energy sources to households so that each of them finds a suitable energy for itself.
Women in India can achieve energy security for cooking only through cheaper and efficient alternatives.