From a smoking chula to a smokeless one and now biogas has made the lives of Pooja, 20, and Menka, 23, that much easier. Married to brothers in Paharsar village of Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district, they find they have more time to look after their infants.
“Cooking is less effort as we just have to turn the knob and there is biogas,” says Pooja, who feels that looking after the cow dung-based biogas plant installed in the house is less toil than going out and gathering firewood for the chula . However, one year ago, before the gas stove came to their village, for several years they had found the smokeless chula much more efficient than the smoking one.
“We hardly use it now, but the two-burner smokeless chula served us well for several years,” says Menka, as she boils water for tea. The biogas and smokeless chula are part of Lupin Human Welfare & Research Foundation’s rural development sustainability programme and were installed in a large number of homes in the village.
Photo: Kamal Narang