Authors : Dr. Vaishali Jaiswal, Dr. Vaishali Meshram, Dr. Pravin Meshram
Page Nos : 316-323
Description :
Cooking is an important aspect to human lives. A sizable portion of India’s population still relies on biomass fuels, such as wood, animal wastes, and agricultural residues, to meet their energy needs for cooking. According to the 2011 census, 67.3% of the Indian population used biomass fuel for cooking. Also, the cooking devices used had poor thermal efficiency and posed a severe threat to health due to unclean combustion. Clean cooking fuels are a highly cost-effective health intervention and household’s energy-behavior indicates the economic development of a country .The past few decades have seen immense efforts by the Indian Government to introduce improved cookstoves and other cleaner cooking fuels; however, most of these interventions have largely failed to bring the much-needed transition. Learning from past experiences, the Government of India initiated the National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative(NBCI) in the year 2009. This program uses a different approach based on the changes that have taken place in society and technology over the years. In “Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana†(PMUY), the government provided gas connections to a total of 50 million poor households (from 2016 to 2018) .Piped Natural Gas (PNG) connections have reached more than 11% of households annually with a goal of 20 million by early next decade helping to move LPG to rural areas. In the present paper, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis has been done on clean cooking programs to determine the extent to which the new program is likely to ensure access to clean cooking energy for all.
