Industry & Economy
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Petroleum
LPG kitchen fuel no. 3
Sudhanshu Ranade
Chennai
,
Jan. 20
AS recently as 2001, the year of the last Census, firewood was still the most important source of kitchen fuel in rural India. 88.6 million households (64 per cent of the total) depended on it. Crop residues and cow dung, next on the list, accounted for another 26 per cent of households. Any guesses for number 3; keeping in mind that in Census terminology `rural' generally refers to settlements with less than 5,000 people?
Chances are you were wrong. It is LPG. 7.8 million households (5.7 per cent of the total) used it; only 1.5 million used coal. 25.8 million households in towns and cities (48 per cent of the total) used LPG. Firewood came next, with 22.7 per cent . Kerosene, at number 3 (19.2 per cent ), accounted for most of the remaining urban households.
For towns, cities and villages taken together, firewood was way ahead of any other source of fuel, by a large margin. More than 100 million households (52.5 per cent of the total) used it. Pretty much tying for the second place were crop residue/cow dung (19.8 per cent) and — LPG (17.5 per cent )!
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