Lanstoves, rural restaurants will reduce pollution in village households

Last week, a forum on clean cooking was arranged in New Delhi. Funded by international organisations like the UN, the World Bank and USAID, among others, it attracted about 600 delegates from 50 countries. The three-day forum discussed various cooking energy strategies to mitigate the misery of poor households in rural areas. There are reports (the veracity of the data is questionable) that nine million deaths take place globally every year due to indoor air pollution in rural households. Thus, various governments are dedicated to removing this pollution by producing clean cooking fuels and technologies. There were panel discussions on improved biomass stoves, supply chain of pelleted fuel, solar PV cooking and ethanol stoves, and on funding and investments in this sector.

In India, this programme is being spearheaded by the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) where the aim is to provide 50 million LPG connections to the rural poor by 2020. The government says that 30 million connections have already been provided.

India today imports 90% of its LPG (50% is directly imported and 40% is produced from imported oil) with a total outlay of Rs 32,000 crore ($5 billion) per year. Providing 50 million connections to rural households means this import bill will substantially increase. Besides the cost, there are problems on the ground impeding the implementation of the scheme. There are instances of poor households not getting cylinders because of lack of delivery infrastructure or because they are diverted to other customers. Also, even at the subsidised price of Rs 490 per cylinder, it is too costly for the rural poor. So, in many cases, when the gas in their cylinder is over, they go back to wood or biomass residues which are nearly free.

Another scheme involves promoting electric cooking to reduce pollution. Even today there are more than 50 million rural households which do not have any electricity; even in villages where the government says that electricity has reached, it comes for a few hours late at night when there is no cooking. The induction method consumes nearly 1,000 W of power. With this kind of power, a rural household can get excellent lighting and sufficient energy to operate a fan or other household gadgets.

The government is also talking of using PV solar power for running the induction stoves. Since there is no sun in the evening and early morning (when most of the cooking in rural households is done), there will be a need to store power—unviable at the moment. Besides, all PV modules currently used in India are imported. For a decentralised, rural-based country like ours, we should opt for systems that convert locally available energy re- sources directly into heat for cooking. Liquid fuels have the highest energy density among all the fuels and are easy to transport. Thus they should be promoted for use in efficient liquid fuel stoves for cooking.

An excellent technology for liquid fuel cooking is a lanstove developed in Phaltan, Maharashtra. It runs on diesel, which is available even in the smallest village. It produces excellent light (equivalent to a 100-200 W incandescent bulb) via a thermoluminscent mantle and the heat from the mantle cooks a complete meal for a family of five. It does not produce any smoke, smell, or particulates and since both heat and light are produced simultaneously, it is five times more efficient than electric cooking and lighting. The diesel can be subsidised for the rural poor through the Aadhar card.

Whenever we talk of kerosene or diesel, the first reaction is that they are dirty fuels. But let me remind you that all fuels are dirty—it is their combustion which makes them clean. Thus the focus should be on developing excellent combustion technologies for liquid fuels.

There is a need fund R&D so that agricultural residue can be converted into liquid fuels. India produces close to 600-800 million tonnes of agricultural residue per year. Most of it is burned after the harvest, resulting in air pollution in both cities and towns. Use of this residue to produce liquid fuels can drastically reduce our petroleum import bill.

However, very little international funding is available for pushing such technologies for rural cooking. And, though there are worldwide efforts underway on improving stoves, the biggest problem of rural women remains—the drudgery of cooking. After toiling the whole day in the field, they are required to cook a complete meal for the family. This, together with the meagre rations from the Public Distribution System shops results in malnourishment in rural households.

So, a very novel scheme of creating rural restaurants has been proposed, also in Phaltan. These restaurants will provide clean, wholesome food to the rural poor at a subsidised price via Aadhar cards. For normal clients the restaurants will charge the full price. This will not only give good food to the poor but the indoor air pollution in rural households will also be reduced, besides giving women relief from the drudgery of cooking.

Global forums like the one held in Delhi may not help the rural poor directly but have been successful in bringing into focus the problems faced by them. This will facilitate an influx of funding—and, hopefully, bright brains—to the neglected areas of development. Anil K. Rajvanshi heads the Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in Phaltan, Maharashtra. The views expressed are personal. The recent proposal to involve the Indian Army to build the Elphinstone footbridge in Mumbai has been criticised widely. Retired service officers have urged the Defence Minister to review the decision, since it entails lowering the dignity and image of the Army, considered one of the finest fighting forces throughout the world. Punjab Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh, who is a veteran of the 1965 war with Pakistan, and a leading military historian, has observed that India should never repeat the mistakes of the late 1950s, when Major General B.M. Kaul had obtained permission from the then Defence Minister, V.K. Krishna Menon, to use the uniformed personnel for building barracks and putting them on jobs that were not meant to be performed by soldiers. Therefore, any attempt to downgrade the status of the jawans cannot be condoned at any cost.

On another note, the use of the Army for a civilian project in India’s financial capital clearly indicates that the state government and the Ministry of Railways were incapable of dealing with the task on hand. Indian Railways was always hailed as an exceptional organ of the government, and its execution of projects was granted extraordinary ratings. In many regions, while state governments or the Centre contributed to the completion of projects near railway networks, the final touches of construction on sensitive portions would always be the handiwork of the Railways. The high quality standards were its hallmark, and it is evident that the same certification can no longer be provided to it, given the recent spate of accidents on account of the callous and casual approach of the authorities. By deputing the Army to enter the civilian arena is proof enough that the government no longer considers the Railways to be a competent agency to deliver the goods.

There could be a valid argument that the Army has assisted the civil authorities in the completion of several significant missions; on the eve of the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi a footbridge had collapsed, and the Army was recruited to save the day by erecting a new one in no time. At that point the deployment of the Army was to bail out the nation, which was hosting the prestigious and momentous event. It is another story that things went askew due to colossal corruption of the concerned authorities and despite promises to bring the guilty to book, successive governments at the Centre have done nothing in this direction. The Shunglu Committee, appointed by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had redlined many actions that entailed unjustified expenditure and the misuse of government funds towards sub-standard work. The present dispensation has been sitting on the report and has not done sufficient follow-ups to fix responsibility and identify the culprits.

The Army, on a regular basis, comes to the rescue of civil authorities in times of natural calamities. In fact, the Armed Forces, the Air Force and the Navy included, have always been there to lend a helping hand. Their presence is reassuring, and their approach to rescue operations is clinical, professional and purely result-driven. These, however, are extraordinary situations and the defence personnel are involved in providing relief, which is beyond the scope of any other department or agency. The Army had been inducted even during acute communal developments, such as what happened in 1984 in the aftermath of the gory assassination of Indira Gandhi. The Delhi police and the civil administration had failed in preventing the massacre of innocent Sikhs and it was only after the Army was summoned that the situation was brought under control.

However, the proposal to construct the Elphinstone bridge by the Army is something altogether different. The avoidable tragedy, which claimed many lives, was on account of the Railways not being able to address the problem. The civil administration, too, came under fire for taking inadequate measures to rebuild the bridge, with full sight of the fact that a major mishap was waiting to happen.

In present times, the Armed Forces have been gearing up to meet every challenge posed by the enemies of the country. The Chief of Army Staff, General Bipin Rawat, has repeatedly been reiterating that our soldiers had the capacity and tenacity to fight a two-front war, while the Air Chief, B.S. Dhanoa, has noted that in the event of a confrontation with China, “we would certainly give it a bloody nose”. In this kind of surcharged atmosphere, where be the need to divert the defence resources to assignments which should ordinarily be handled by the civil government? After the country’s humiliation in the 1962 war, it was discovered that many of the ordnance factories were manufacturing shoes and thermos flasks. In other words, the state of preparedness was nearly non-existent, and despite this scenario, the jawans and officers readily laid down their lives in the line of duty.

Fortunately, the welfare of the Armed Forces is high on the priority ladder of the Prime Minister. During Deepavali, he made time to meet with the jawans in Gurez and the visit was aimed at ensuring that their morale remained at high-mast. Narendra Modi, has, in the past, been to several outposts as well, so as to show his solidarity with the soldiers who guard the country in difficult circumstances. Going by this, the natural corollary would be that he should issue clear instructions that no ministry could initiate activities that lower the pride and dignity of our soldiers. Between us.