A Better Cooking Environment for Rural Indian Kitchens
Small but significant steps taken by MicroEnergy Credits’ induction cookstove carbon program
By Nitisha Agrawal, Director, Social Impact, MicroEnergy Credits
7th August 2024
That I’ll get to see an induction cook stove in a small home in Samastipur, Bihar along with the same old facets of an Indian village life, has been a fascinating first experience. These homes are still lined up with walls of dried cow dung and rudimentary structures but one of their cooking options is an induction-based stove, something that even I don’t have in my kitchen currently. In my 8th year as a practitioner of access to clean energy opportunities for the most marginal sections of our society, observing the use of induction cookstoves feels like a quantum leap.
I got this opportunity with MicroEnergy Credits (MEC) as they are currently rolling out a unique and first-of-its-kind induction cook stove clean cooking carbon program. Traveling to the state of Bihar, we made our way to Hasanpur in Samastipur District. Hasanpur is known for its sugar mills and one would assume that a large part of the population in this block would find employment in these mills. But there is more to it when we go deeper into the villages and meet the women.
MEC’s differentiated model of last-mile connectivity resides in its partnership with women’s financial inclusion organizations across the footprints of India. This makes the model not only scalable but also consistently dynamic. By its definition of purpose, ‘microfinance serves as a cornerstone for financial inclusion and grassroots development in India’. By providing the marginalized sections of society with access to credit and financial services, it has contributed to poverty alleviation, women empowerment, and rural development.
Now consider this powerful tool to provide opportunities for clean energy technologies. While most models grapple with achieving scale, MEC effectively uses this platform to reach lakhs of households with distributed technologies like induction cookstoves, improved cookstoves, solar lights, water purifiers, and others.
Our hosts for this visit were one of MEC’s field partners working for women’s financial inclusion, which has a robust footprint in this region and other parts of India. I could start to feel the power of this narrative by listening and interacting with women who are part of this universe. I attended a ‘women’s center collection’ meeting with our partner’s field team and realized that these women not only have taken their first steps towards empowerment but are better informed of their opportunities in life. Making decisions about accessing finance, what type of finance, using digital payment methods, handling their own money, choosing from an array of products and services offered through financial schemes, getting together regularly and talking about their home situations with a lot more confidence, felt like a move in the right direction.
In this meeting, we asked the women about their experience using an induction cookstove. While some of them are still learning how to use the stove to its full potential, their initial experience seemed positive and exciting to some extent. Expression of excitement emerges from the ease of use of these stoves, and perhaps how quickly one can make a dish or boil water or even milk.
‘Click of a button’, and the cookstove is in use. Juxtaposing this ease against the smokiness of firewood-based cooking where it takes several minutes to get the fire going, use of a firestarter like plastic or kerosene and then subsequent and continuous fumes while the woman is cooking and even beyond that (as the smoke stays in the environment for a long time).
This makes me think of the mobile phone- the telecommunication revolution in rural India with the images of old grandparents being connected to their grandchildren first through voice and then through videos and now the digital payments revolution. The context may be different, but the emotion feels similar.
One may argue that induction-based cooking is drastically different from traditional cooking methods and so its impact on cooking output, but meeting these women made me believe that if given the right inputs and by continuously having conversations with them, they will choose what's right for them. And from what they shared; the taste is just what it needs to be.
What is also very interesting in this MEC program is that it considers both traditional cookstoves using firewood and LPG as baseline fuels. This shows the well-researched and also conservative approach of the organization making sure that there are no false assumptions and estimations as far as user behavior is concerned.
Now in these homes in Bihar and other states, there is an interplay of three types of cooking tools: traditional cookstoves, LPG, and induction. The scope of this article is not about usage percentages and the actual MRV process followed by program developers but MEC’s approach takes this into account by making sure that only the most conservative data is used. And looking at the cooking scenario in homes using induction, there is definitely less smoke, much less drudgery associated with fuel food collection, and critical saving of the woman’s time. This is an impactful transition towards cleaner kitchens and if we continue to motivate women to increase their adoption of using more of cleaner cooking options, they will make the right choice.
Like any other new technology, there is initial hesitation attached to the use of induction cook stoves, like a TV, a mixer grinder, a microwave oven, and even induction in urban homes. These aspects of slight hesitation can easily be removed by demonstrations, sharing of experiences, and sometimes just by talking. This is another differentiator within the MEC model where the field partners are present in the lives of their clients for several years through some kind of financial service. Naturally, the relationship will move beyond that of a cookstove, but it will always allow the client to come back in case of doubts or problems.
If we can support the user community with continuous capacity building and training through the field partners, then this will perhaps lead to deeper adoption of these technologies.
After the collection meeting, we visited the homes of some of the users of induction cookstoves where again the dominant thread was ease of use and very visible saving of time. Yes, there are infrastructural gaps related to power connectivity and the presence of extension boards, but these will improve over time with concentrated efforts by the government and other developmental agencies.
An impromptu cooking demonstration done during our field visit helped erase certain doubts in the minds of women who were hesitant to use the induction cookstoves.
Observing the expressions of some of these women and even men, I felt that there is an underlying emotion of aspiration through the use of these induction-based cookstoves. As if the household has moved up the ladder. Yes, to be able to use induction-based cooking for some of the cooking needs is a huge movement up the energy ladder and this is indeed the underlying objective of MEC’s program. Another interesting dynamic in favor of this technology is the positive response from the younger generation. We saw that in homes where there are youth and children, there is better adoption. Not only are the youth using it themselves to make a quick snack like Maggi noodles but these cookstoves are turning out to be very useful in making early morning tiffins for school-going children. As per MEC’s current monitoring, women have reported saving 1.10 hours per household per week, which is about 10 to 12 minutes each day.
Given an option, any woman would like to save 10 minutes of her time daily and escape from the drudgery of a smoke-filled cooking environment.
MEC through its field partner network has been instrumental in bringing these induction cookstoves to over 1,30,000 households in the first year of its program which is a stupendous achievement given the magnitude of this problem statement.
Even though these women are choosing the induction for some of their cooking requirements regularly, they are still choosing the most advanced and clean technology available in this space and everyone involved in this transition should be extremely proud of this achievement.
MEC’s unique program methodology uses metered technology to track the use of these induction cookstoves to measure the energy used for cooking. This also means that the data is collected digitally, resides on a cloud-based system, and ensures that there is no manipulation of the numbers. The meter will only take the readings if the induction is in use and then record the energy spent during cooking through induction. This process of data collection once again is a step in the right direction as this metered technology can be scaled up to each cooking device over time, much like recording the TRP or viewership ratings through a chip for our TV viewing preferences.
While this visit to Hasanpur in Samastipur district opened up an opportunity to witness a transition unfolding in the homes here, I am extremely optimistic and curious to understand how induction-based cooking is impacting the lives of women and families in other parts of India. Globally, there is much emphasis on induction-based cooking, and rightly so, but programs like MEC’s are also allowing the users to choose what may seem the current best option for them by financial empowerment of making the purchase decision and not free distribution.
With over 1.3 lakh users of induction cookstoves currently under this program, the numbers are likely to go up substantially over time as one can see the demand for it. And when there is a pull for any technology, we have seen how quickly the penetration happens.
On MEC’s part, it is committed to strengthening the user experience through its partners and helping reduce barriers to adopting these new and improved technologies leading to the overall well-being and empowerment of women in rural India.
