Swaying between saving the environment and mitigating women’s domestic drudgery: India’s efforts at addressing clean cooking fuels

In broader debates about global energy, the issue of cooking energy has recently started receiving fresh attention. In India, though this is an issue with major payoffs for health, livelihoods, climate change and domestic production, it often tends to be pitched exclusively as a ‘women’s issue’ even as women’s needs do not seem to be adequately addressed in energy policies and programs. In India, though the rationale for cooking fuel policies has moved from saving forests to empowering women, the policy thrust itself seems to be moving backwards from a focus on renewables (with the national biogas programs in the 1980s) to one on nonrenewables (with national Liquid Petroleum Gas programs today). This paper argues that in the long run, energy poverty cannot be solved only on the back of nonrenewable energy sources and exclusive cooking fuel policies while ignoring the huge potential of renewable energy sources which will enable better climate change adaptation and has the potential for building new livelihoods. It makes a case for sustainable and gender-sensitive interventions and makes feasible suggestions drawing from the learning of past policies and programs.