IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2013 - 67

being of the villagers. The standard
of living was assessed on the basis
of four basic parameters that are
described as follows.
Economic Situation
Collecting fuel wood is a physically demanding and time consuming activity. In Semera, on an
average, a woman spends 2 hours/
day collecting fuel wood. Usually,
a woman walks nearly 3 km/day
during the process of gathering
fuel wood. This task takes up so
much time and energy that women
have to quit their jobs to engage
in household work. Cooking takes
up nearly 6 hours per day because
solid fuels have low calorific value
and burn very slowly. furthermore,
indoor pollution caused by burning biomass not only damages the
health of women but also causes
respiratory diseases in men and
children. This leads to extra expenditure on medical treatment and
further economic loss occurs when
men are forced to skip work due to
poor health.
Impoverished farmers in the
village use more biomass as cooking fuel compared to their wealthier counterparts since, they can't
afford to use alternatives like kerosene or LPG, and biomass is
virtually free compared to these.
In addition, these farmers have
smaller homes with less ventilation
which increases their exposure to
smoke. Hence, financially deprived
people are more susceptible to the
adverse effects of using biomass.
Social Situation
While interacting with the residents of Semera village, we noted
a sense of insecurity. Under the
burden of arduous farming practices and menial tasks like fuel
collection, farmers feel diffident
and demoralized. Lack of modern
technology has not only affected
their physical well being but also
affected them psychologically.
Indravati, a 32 years old farmer,
insists that her husband should

quit agriculture and migrate to one
of the nearby cities. She claims
that life in the village is filled with
despair and there is no future for
her children there. "I am tired of
inhaling the smoke and running
around for wood. The fatigue
makes me frustrated and I am irritable most of the time. I want a
solution," she grumbles.
Women and children spend a
lot of time collecting firewood
and crop residues. This has contributed to the rise in the number
of school dropouts. The children
who continue going to school also
end up skipping more classes and
perform poorly in exams. for
example, in 2009 more than 70% of
the students failed the tenth grade
(matriculation) exam. furthermore,
over dependence on firewood leads
to competition for wood accessibility in the village and this has
become one of the causes of conflicts between villagers.
Environmental Situation
The environmental hazards of
conventional cooking are already
known. Burning wood and crop
residue releases CO2 into the atmosphere which in turn contributes
to global warming. Traditional
mud stoves also known as "Chulhas" are inefficient; because of bad
design and structural problems,
chulhas end up emitting carbon
monoxide which is a highly noxious gas. On an average, every
household in Semera village uses
4 kg of solid biomass as fuel per
day, which leads to the emission
of around 2400 kg of CO2 from
each household per year [10]. In
addition to generating undesirable
levels of air pollution, extensive
reliance on traditional solid fuels,
particularly wood, leads to deforestation which has other adverse
impacts on local ecosystems.
With the efforts of Department of
Nonconventional Energy Sources
(DNES), improved cooking stoves
which are less polluting and more
energy efficient were introduced

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

fALL 2013

7%
22%
52%
19%

Fuelwood
Dung

Crop Residues
Commercial Fuel

Fig.1. Cooking fuels used in
Semera village.

nearly 25 years back, but the dissemination of this technology has
been disorganized. Out of over 100
million rural households, less than
20 million homes have been provided the improved cooking stoves
[7]. In Semera village, only seven
families managed to get improved
cooking stoves, but a majority of
those discontinued the use of these
stoves because of operational and
maintenance difficulties. Rekha,
a housewife, complained that her
stove stopped functioning properly
within two years of installation
and no provisions were made by
the government to repair or replace
nonfunctional stoves. She added,
"If the stove stops working, no
one is there to repair it ... and if I
approach the local mechanics, they
charge heavily ... there is no point
of beating your head about these
stoves and hence, I switched back
to conventional stoves."
Public Health Situation
Measured levels of health damaging pollutants from biomass stoves
are over 10 times higher than the
standards set by World Health
Organization (WHO) [8]. This
causes indoor and outdoor pollution that poses serious health hazards. In Semera, many women and
children suffer from one or more
problems such as asthma, irritation in the eyes, cough, or other
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