Fifty-eight years after independence, Indian women still toil daily to collect fuel wood, crop residues, and animal dung -- together known variously as biomass-based cooking fuels, non-commercial fuels or traditional fuels.
These fuels still provide 80-90 per cent of the energy needs in rural areas. While one part of our society is taking strides in nuclear science, space research, and information technology, there is little impact of that on the lives of women, who live in virtually 16th century conditions. Is providing clean fuels such a formidable problem, or do we not care?
The 2001 census finds nearly 700 million people without access to modern energy. Nearly 300 million people do not have access to electricity, but what is more, an even larger number, viz. 625 million do not have access to modern (cooking) fuels.
Why should that be so when it takes more investment, management, and technology skills to provide electricity than modern fuels? Partly, it is because the trained engineers supported by the ministry of power and the governments found political support to carry out this difficult mission.
Moreover, men, and perhaps women too, demanded it. In contrast, this "other energy system", one-third of India's total energy, is "managed" mostly by women with too little inputs of investment, management or technology and no political or administrative backing. Can we help these women energy suppliers or "managers" without taking this role away from them but instead provide them IMT and improve their lives?
A recent study by the Integrated Research and Action for Development showed that in Himachal Pradesh, a better off state with more penetration of LPG and kerosene, women walk 30 km every month, spending a great deal of time during 15 trips, each of about 2 km, to fetch fuels.
This burden, which is bigger in other states, causes backache (50 per cent), neckache, and headache and bruises every week (80 per cent) and most of the women have encounters with wild animals and snakes every quarter.
These statistics are hard to come by and we had to collect it. Health and other problems associated with "searching, gathering and transporting" have received much less attention than the problems from cooking with them.
Cooking using these fuels causes health impact, especially for women and children, because they emit a variety of pollutants in their close proximity often in poorly ventilated kitchens. It has been estimated by us that 19 per cent of people in Himachal have some symptoms.
Can we at least see this as an economic problem, if not a health problem, or a drudgery problem? Nearly 3 billion days are spent in gathering fuels and 700 million days in processing them, i.e. chopping, drying, turning, storing, stacking and handling.
About 800 million days are lost due to diseases. Add to these 12 billion days on fetching water and water-related diseases. What economic value can we put on 16.5 billion days? None, same sceptics may say. Can a nation continue to achieve 8 per cent economic growth if this is how billions of hours are spent by nearly 30-40 per cent of its population?
These problems have to be addressed if we are to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of eradicating poverty and hunger (energy is needed for cooking and livelihoods), achieve universal primary education (girls often do not go to school because they help their mothers at home), reduce infant mortality and maternal deaths (heavy loads and
indoor pollution add to this health burden), promote gender equality and
empower women.
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