In May 2016, India launched an ambitious energy program to dramatically expand access to ‘modern’ cooking energy services to its citizens by directing fossil fuel companies to provide Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) to hitherto unconnected families. This program, called the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, provided 20 million new Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) connections in its first year and is widely hailed as a success by many policy makers, academics, and practitioners in household energy studies. This program makes progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and is the latest avatar of several decades of development interventions in kitchens in India.
Low-income families in the global South rely on solid biomass for their energy needs. Many families in rural India cook their daily meals on locally made mud stoves (mitti ka chulha). Development actors want families to transition to ‘modern’ and ‘improved’ energy technologies for health, environmental, and social reasons and these new technologies could be powered by fossil fuels or renewables. Drawing on ethnographic research in rural Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka from 2013, I critically examine how gendered imaginations of social and environmental transformation unfold on the ground. I draw on a long history of cookstove projects and programs in India and analyze the ‘global’ and ‘scientific’ turn in household energy studies. I describe the materiality of ‘modern’ cooking energy services in rural India and reflect on the tensions inherent in household energy transitions, between health and climate concerns, and social and environmental objectives.
Sponsored by the South Asian Studies Council and the MacMillan Center