The Women of Uttarakhand: A
Chullah Workforce
DIVYA BISHT
INDEPENDENT STUDY PROJECT
SIT STUDY ABROAD
HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS
SPRING 2014
Research Question
 How do chullahs, both traditional and improved,
effect the lives of women in rural Uttarakhand?

Health, children’s health, and work productivity
 How are improved cookstove initiatives being
implemented in Uttarakhand?
 How effective have these initiatives been in
improving women’s lives?
Background
An International glance:
 Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves


3 billion people lack access to clean cookstoves and fuels
Goal is to foster the adoption of clean cookstoves and fuels in
100 million households by 2020
 UNDP Millennium Development Goals
 Reduce child mortality, Improve Maternal Health and Ensure
Environmental Sustainability
An Indian glance –
 Majority of India’s population
is still rural
 Indian population that
depends on solid fuel as a
primary source: 67%
Rural population: 87%
(Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves)

Indoor Air Pollution & Burning Solid Fuels
 Health Hazards
 “Day in and day out, and for hours at a time, women and their
small children breathe in amounts of smoke equivalent to
consuming two packs of cigarettes per day.” – (WHO, 2006)
 Black carbon emissions
 “Biomass cooking causes about two-thirds of black carbon
emissions in South Asia.” – Climatologist Veerabhadran
Ramanathan
 Deforestation
 275-400 million of the Indian population are forest dependent
 Local livelihood dependence results in degradation
(WHO, 2010)
Methods
 Interviews and Observations
 Fieldwork was conducted in:



Uttarkashi district, Uttarakhand in the
Dhari and Himrol villages (5 days)
Haridwar district, Uttarakhand in the
Rasulpur village (day visit)
Dehradun district, Uttarakhand in the
Donkwala village (day visit)
The Traditional Chullah
Dhari Village, Uttarkashi
Women of Uttarkashi
 Cook with indoor chullah
 Primary fuel source: wood
 Women collect wood from
far away

10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
 Symptoms of smoke
exposure:

Primarily eye pain and
coughing
 LPG stove access
 Inconsistent supply
 Too expensive
Panchi’s story
Panchi from Naugaon,
Uttarkashi went from:
 Traditional stove to
 Chimney stove to
 LPG stove
Chullahs in Rasulpur village
 Outdoor traditional
chullahs
 About three years ago,
Friends of Doon Society
gave smokeless chullahs
to some families in
Rasulpur village
 Chullahs were used for
about three months and
then fell into disuse
A failed project…
Why the failure?
 Chullahs required the wood to be chopped into small
blocks to insert
 Incident in Rasulpur is demonstrative of failures of
cookstove projects across India
 Major knowledge gap between manufacturers and
rural villagers
National Program for Improved Cookstoves
 1984 to 2002
 34 million improved stoves were produced
 Rs 1.5 billion spent ($32 billion USD)
But:
 Lack of field monitoring and evaluation
 No development of market mechanisms
 In 2002, program was decentralized
Different places, different cookstoves
 Diet preferences are diverse across different regions
in India
 Uttarakhand: high-energy food necessities due to
cold temperatures
 Improved cookstoves should:



Have higher heat efficiency
Capability to go from low to high heat intensity
Sustain long periods of cooking
India’s food zones
National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative
 Launched in December 2009 – one of the largest in
the developed world
 Supports local level training and employment
opportunities
 Acknowledges the need to commercialize cookstoves
 Monitoring and evaluation scheme
To conclude, back to the research questions…
 How do chullahs, both traditional and improved,
effect the lives of women in rural Uttarakhand?

Health, children’s health, and work productivity
 How are improved cookstove initiatives being
implemented in Uttarakhand?
 How effective have these initiatives been in
improving women’s lives?
Personal Reflection
Works Cited
Adler, Tina. “Better Burning, Better Breathing: Improving Health with Cleaner Cook Stoves”, Environmental Health
Perspectives Vol. 118, No. 3 (2010):
Barnes, Douglas F., Kumar, Priti and Keith Openshaw., “Cleaner Hearths, Better Homes: New Stoves for India and the
Developing World,” (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012).
De Sam Lazro, Fred. “In India, Battling Global Warming One Step At a Time.” PBS, December 17, 2009.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment-july-dec09-india_12-17/. (accessed April 24, 2014).
Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Dalberg Global Development Advisors, India Cookstoves and Fuels Market Assessment,
2013.
“National Biomass Cookstoves Programme”, Government of India: Ministry of New and Renewable Energy,
http://www.mnre.gov.in/schemes/decentralized-systems/national-biomass-cookstoves-initiative/. (accessed April 18, 2014)
Nayak, Bhibhu P., Kohli, Priyanka and Dr. J.V. Sharma, “Livelihood of local communities and forest degradation in India:
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“Resources,” Vanashakti, http://www.vanashakti.in/resources_law2.html (accessed April 31, 2014)
Subramaniam, Mangala, “Designing Wood-Fired Cooking Stoves: Where Is the Woman?” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.
29, No. 20 (1994), 1177.
Tinker, Irene. “The Real Rural Energy Crisis: Women’s Time,” The Energy Journal, Vol. 8, Special LDC Issue (1987), 131.