Women in rural India spend hours together traversing vast tracts of hilly terrain to collect the firewood for household leaving their family and children at home. Some times there is "Pakad" i.e. Forest Officials detain them and fine them Rs 2100 as they nerrated. Besides facing the hazards to wild life and human beings praying on lonely women in woods they face the smoke and closed door cooking in dingy houses without the smoke outlet their kids are also exposed to high dosages of smoke.
However during interaction with villagers it was pointed out that their husbands would not like the food cooked on stoves of biofuel oil or for that matter biogas as they like the chapatis made on chulhas. All women know the way to the heart of a man is through stomach at least village women would not like to annoy their husbands by cooking on stoves. The cowdung cakes made from cowdung are tremendous amount of waste of organic matter that must be restored to the soil, but the smell that the food gets by cooking on cowdung or milk which is kept for boiling for some hrs, or Battis made on cowdung are hardly have and alternative in cooking on stove of bioufuel. However at least if there could be shift in the mindset of rural people to stop cutting woods after being educated of the perils which virtually many parts of Africa are now facing is a difficult task to be undertaken. But perhaps changing mindset and educating them with environmental degradation is the only alternative left to save the planet and educating women is of primary importance.
Its change of mindset which is needed to replace wood and dung biofuel with biofuel oils
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