Understanding the challenges to clean cooking in rural India
Student name: Ms Smriti Bhatnagar
Guide: Dr Priyanka Kaushal
Year of completion: 2013
Host Organisation: Deutsche Gesellschaft Fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Michael Blunck
Abstract: My project at GIZ was in the area of Promotion of Clean Cooking in Rural India (Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar
Pradesh). The project focussed on enabling factors that will aid in creation of a self sustaining market for cook
stoves in the rural areas.
There are many factors that are hindering the development of a self sustaining market for cooking stoves. The
lack of demand, lack of supply from the manufacturers, and the lack of an enabling market eco system are the
broad categories where interventions are needed.
The Government of India with the help of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy had launched the National
Program on Improved Cook Stoves (NPIC). However, this program was largely deemed unsuccessful. The
reasons for the same will be discussed in this report.
Largely my internship consisted of two phases. In the first phase, I analysed the nature of National Program on
Improved Cook Stoves (NPIC). The mechanisms of rolling out the program, the administration, the nature of
subsidy, product development were studied in detail by doing a literature survey. Some of the lessons leant from
the program were documented. These lessons can be found in the Results section of this report. In the Annexure
Section, the Table 1 sums up in a compact form all the lessons learnt from this program.
The second phase my project at GIZ was focussed on understanding the consumer preferences for cook stoves in
the rural areas of Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. An extensive user testing study was conducted to
understand the needs of consumers. The details of how this six week study was conducted have been documented
in this report and feature in the methodology section. The results have also been presented.
