[Stoves] Delhi clean cooking forum meeting

[nari phaltan]

Hi,

I just came back after attending the clean cooking forum meeting. I am
writing detailed articles on my observations and suggestions and hope these
articles will be syndicated. Here are my cursory impressions.

1. The data on daily deaths from indoor pollution is suspect. It will
always be since it is impossible to pinpoint one cause when there are
millions of causes for death. So the issues raised by Nikhil are valid.

2. However this scarce has raised the level of engagement of rich and
famous people - people who would not have thought at all about how poor
people live. This might have an effect of raising funds and putting people
to focus on rural poverty.

3. Also this also has a danger of raising brain-haired schemes like
electric induction cooking for rural poor. The poor households have never
seen electricity and now they will supposedly get electricity for cooking!

4. The LPG program of GOI is in full swing. This gives mileage and brownie
points to the present administration despite the fact that 90% LPG in India
is imported (50% imported and 40% produced from imported oil). There are
serious problems on the ground (both logistics and otherwise) but it looks
good to brag in international forums.

5. The registration cost of US $ 300/- was steep and I have no idea where
it was used. Except we got sumptuous meals (most of the food was also
wasted) and a big Bollywood tamasha on the gala dinner eve. I do hope the
excess food (there were innumerable meat dishes) was given to rural poor
and at least on those days the Delhi air might have gotten less pollution
from indoor cooking!

6. The Delhi air was polluted and the visibility was 50-100 meters. Kirk
Smith told me that it is due to indoor air-pollution and not due to
vehicular pollution - really taxing the credibility of the data and the man!

7. I think this jamboree (600 delegates from 50 countries) only resulted in
deals and invitations to more conferences.

Cheers.

Anil

Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
P.O.Box 44
Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
Ph:+91-9168937964
e-mail:nariphaltan at gmail.com
           nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org

http://www.nariphaltan.org

http://nariphaltan.org/about-2/awards/  Awards for NARI staff
http://nariphaltan.org/nari-in-press/  NARI in press
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