Stirring the clean cooking pot once again is the India Clean Cooking Forum (ICCF 2016). Held over the last two days in Delhi, it is once again trying to focus on the pressing need to take forward clean cooking energy access, and expand the sector for enhanced health and better environment conditions.

Ganesh Neelam, Head of Innovations and Technology at Tata Trusts, a lead partner of ICCF, answers some key questions on the clean cooking movement. Excerpts:

The theme of the Indian Clean Cooking Forum this year was affordability of clean cook stoves. Affordability has been at the core of the problems facing the clean movement to shift from chulas to clean cooking devices for several years. Have any solutions been found?

Affordability varies across regions and one of the important elements along with affordability is access to quality products that reflect the need for aspirational products to meet the needs of rural communities. There are technology solutions that provide fairly good stoves in the price range of ₹1,000 to ₹3,000. There is a continuous focus on finding solutions that are affordable as well as aspirational and innovative for the women to use regularly.

Tata Trusts initiated the Clean Cooking programme to create an ecosystem that ensures availability of social impact products with a core focus on clean cooking devices at the doorstep of rural and tribal communities. Linking consumers to loan mechanisms through community institutions is a move towards making the products affordable. In the last year and a half, over 3,000 induction cook stoves and natural draft have been purchased by communities in Gujarat and Rajasthan from over 275 entrepreneurs who have been trained and supported by Tata Trusts and its partners.

Last-mile delivery of clean cooking stoves has not happened in a large part of the hinterland. You generally find a showcase of an innovative technology in the rural areas, but not enough sales due to marketing and delivery drawbacks. Are there any new ideas in the pipeline to overcome this?

Yes, most of the programmes promoting cook stoves have been poor on the supply chain linkages and also have focused on providing cook stoves as grants or subsidies. Tata Trusts is ensuring the connect of last-mile distribution through private organisations that deal in social impact products and by connecting consumers to the rural community institutions. The approach is to ensure understanding the user’s needs, implementing awareness generation initiatives to increase acceptance of the improved cook stoves and motivating them to purchase them. Then we work with the private partners to market and ensure delivery of products by involving the local entrepreneurs along with community institutions. For sales, the Trusts are also working towards developing loan products through the community institutions for the customers to purchase stoves on EMIs.

There have been several designs for clean cooking stoves and as we know there is no one kind that fits everyone's needs. Requirements vary with cultural norms, topography and raw material availability. How are your plans to incubate clean cooking technologies going to deal with this?

The clean cooking programme is designed in a manner that is customised to the community needs. We first test consumer preference for the cooking medium and the stoves’ ability to cook various types of food items. Accordingly, the suitable improved cooking devices are promoted through proper marketing and demand creation.

Tata Trusts along with partners is also focusing on different ways to engage the community, such as chef competitions among the rural and tribal women to cook their traditional dishes on improved cooking devices, canopy exhibits, street plays, etc. This helps gain confidence that their regular dishes get cooked on the improved and clean cook stoves. We also work with the manufacturers to help them understand the user’s perspective and their cooking behaviour.

In your opinion which is the one biggest challenge that the Forum faces in shifting local populations large scale to clean cooking systems?

One of the biggest challenge is to work on an integrated approach towards promoting clean cooking, which helps meet the aspirations of the community. This includes changing the behaviour of the rural communities, motivating them towards purchasing and most importantly, adopting these clean cooking devices on a regular basis for all their cooking and heating needs.

What has been your experience with different communities where clean stoves were introduced and how do you see the future panning out?

The field level experience of working with rural communities in Rajasthan and Gujarat has been quite encouraging. The aspirations of having quality products is very clear and the institutional structure towards promoting the improved stoves along with Tata Trusts’ last mile distribution partners has been doing fairly well. We have promoted local entrepreneurs, creating a push among the community on purchasing the clean and improved stoves and linking consumers with the community institutions for financial support.

Tata Trusts is interested in developing an ecosystem that can sustain the demand and supply of clean cooking technologies along with financial services, research and policy linkages and can be scaled up across all the communities we work in, across India.

comment COMMENT NOW