[Stoves] Why is it still so difficult to design cookstoves for 3 billion people?

[Anand Karve]

Dear Xavier,
what you write is no doubt the actual situation at this moment, but things
are changing very rapidly in this country.  1% of the population shifts to
urban areas every year in Maharashtra. Already, we have only about 50%
population living in villages. Our organisation was founded initially to
cater to the needs of the rural people, but we find that nowadays there is
hardly any buyer from the rural areas for our appropriate technologies
because the way of life of the urban people is looked upon as the role
model by the rural people. However, there is no need to stop your business.
At least here in Maharashtra, our business is now restricted to selling the
biomass based cooking devices (including Prakti stove) and solar lighting
devices to environmentally conscious urban buyers. Even our biogas plants
are being sold to urban users. We call our biogas plant "urban domestic
biogas plant".
Yours
A.D.Karve

***
Dr. A.D. Karve

Chairman, Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd (www.samuchit.com)

Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 11:38 PM, Xavier Brandao <xvr.brandao at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Anand,
>
> That means we will be soon out of business!
>
> Which would be great news, if about 1.2 billion Indians were soon having
> 100% clean cooking.
> Indeed, India is a country where, when the political will is there,
> mountains can be moved, and change happens very rapidly, even to the
> poorest. We follow attentively the quick progress of LPG and induction
> stoves.
>
> But what we see when we go to the villages, even in a comparatively rich
> and developed state such as Tamil Nadu, where LPG and electricity is
> spread, is that people are still massively using wood for cooking. Often,
> they have gas connection, but their bottle is empty, and even with a
> subsidized gas, they prefer to cook with (free, collected) wood, than to do
> a gas refill. And they do most of the cooking with wood.
> Don't you think also that the amount of energy required for induction
> cooking would put a great toll on the already strained supply of
> electricity in India? Load sheds are still too often.
> It is possible that wood cooking still has a few decades of life
> expectancy.
>
> I think in the coming decades, clean biomass cookstoves will still be part
> of the energy mix. But we need to be ready to evolve, to adapt. Master the
> clean combustion of wood products is something that could be adapted to
> other markets than only the household markets, may the need not exist
> anymore for households.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Xavier
>
>
>
> On 6/15/16 11:30 PM, stoves-request at lists.bioenergylists.org wrote:
>
> As far as India is concerned, our government is planning to give
> electricity to all households in the next 5 years. Induction stoves are
> being used even in villages, where electricity has become available. The
> programme of giving LPG to poor householders has also already been started.
> Availability of electricity and LPG, and the rapid pace of urbanization
> would soon spell the end of biomass based cooking.
>
>
>
> --
> Xavier Brandao
> COO
>
> Prakti
> T  +91 413 262 34 37
> M  +91 997 610 69 21
> S  x.brandao
> W  www.praktidesign.com
> A  Spirit Sense, Old Auroville Rd,
>    605 104, Bommiyarpalayam, Tamil Nadu
>    INDIA
>
>
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