PI: Prof. Anish Modi, Department of Energy Science and Engineering

Co-PI: Prof. Shireesh B Kedare, Department of Energy Science and Engineering

Tata Fellow: Rishabh Chaturvedi (2017-19)

Regarding the use of chulhas, it has been documented that many improved chulha programs faced failures with the lack of adoption of the improved chulha by most households or due to just partial usage of the chulhas after the various constraints related to the existing cooking practices. Against this background, it is imperative to assess an improved-chulha program that adopts a bottom-up approach attempting to take into account the users’ priority of needs, the various aspects or constraints of the existing cooking practices, and the affordability for designing and disseminating the improved-chulha technologies.

This white paper proposal aims at quantifying and analysing the difference between the social acceptance levels of the various technological solutions disbursed through participatory and the non-participatory approaches. This shall be done through detailed field surveys and impact assessment studies. The proposed work will reveal a number of learnings and guidelines that may be used by various improved-chulha dissemination programs in order for them to significantly increase the probability of their success.