National Programme on Improved Chulha (NPIC)

1. National Programme on Improved Chulha
(NPIC) of the Government of India: an overview
R.D. Hanbar and Priyadarshini Karve [1]
Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI), Maninee Apartments, S. No. 13, Dhayarigaon
Pune 411 041, India
E-mail (Priyadarshini Karve): adkarve@pn2.vsnl.net.in
The National Programme on Improved Chulha (NPIC) in India was a unique programme aimed
at popularising the use of improved cooking devices in rural areas. India’s heavy dependence on
wood and biomass as domestic fuel is expected to continue even in the present century. However,
from April 2002, the Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources has discontinued its funding
support to NPIC.
After its inception in 1984, NPIC underwent several changes in both policy and implementation.
The present paper attempts to make a critical appraisal of the programme. NPIC concentrated mainly
on development of a variety of efficient stove models, and their promotion and popularisation. The
programme revealed the intricacies involved in the apparently simple issue of use of biomass as a
household fuel. Two of the important issues that came up in the course of the programme were: (1)
the impact of wood and biomass fuels on the health of the rural women and children; and (2) the use
of the commercialisation approach as against the subsidy and welfare approach.
We also discuss several approaches for potential future programmes in the light of the lessons
learnt from NPIC. We hope that future programmes will be aimed at achieving the greater goal of
creating a culture of efficient, clean and sustainable utilisation of biomass energy in the rural areas.
1. Introduction
Wood and biomass are used as domestic fuel even today
in a majority of households in India. With its wide cultural
diversity, a vast range of traditional cooking devices and
practices are prevalent in different parts of the country.
These include the three-stone fire, horseshoe-shaped chul-
has[2]
, chulhas with one or more pot-holes, sawdust
stoves, special stoves for burning coal or charcoal, etc.
The Government of India initiated the National Pro-
gramme on Improved Chulha (NPIC) in 1984-5. To start
with, the main objective of the programme was to reduce
the demand for fuel-wood. This was expected to ease the
pressure on the forests and check deforestation, on the
one hand, and translate into economic benefits for the
fuel-wood user (in terms of saving of time and money),
on the other hand. Accordingly, the programme concen-
trated on increasing the fuel-use efficiency of wood-burn-
ing stoves. There were two secondary objectives: (1) to
reduce the drudgery of rural women, and (2) to create
income-generating opportunities in the rural areas [Singh,
1997].
It was argued that use of an efficient stove would lead
to fuel-saving. This would in turn reduce deforestation.
Reduction in fuel requirement would also mean less hours
spent by rural women in collecting fuel-wood and an ef-
ficient stove would emit less smoke and soot, reducing
the health hazard to women. In addition, manufacturing
and selling of the efficient stoves would be a remunerative
rural enterprise.
Although this was not specifically stated, it was also
expected that NPIC would contribute towards creating a
culture of efficient, clean and sustainable use of biomass
energy in the rural sector. This was to be achieved by
giving one improved stove, at a subsidised price, to every
rural household. It was hoped that the user would appre-
ciate the benefits of the improved stove and be motivated
to continue with its use rather than revert to the traditional
stove. It was estimated that there were 120 million house-
holds in the country using traditional stoves and biomass
fuels. According to the statistics provided by MNES in
its annual reports, the programme had, up to 2001, suc-
ceeded in reaching 32.77 million households, i.e., just
about 27 % of the total potential.
NPIC was a unique long-term effort by a national gov-
ernment to promote improved stove research, develop-
ment and dissemination throughout a vast and, in many
respects, diverse nation. There are important lessons to
be learnt from this experiment by policy-makers in all
developing countries that continue to rely heavily on
wood and biomass in the rural domestic energy sector.
2. The structure of NPIC
NPIC was funded by MNES in 23 states and 5 union
territories (administrative units under the control of the
central government) of India. The administrative structure
of NPIC is shown in Figure 1.
There were two components of the programme -- the
R&D component and the target fulfilment component.
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2. The R&D component was handled by a technical back-
up support unit (TBU). This was an independent non-
government or academic body comprising R&D
professionals. In the case of Maharashtra state, the TBU
was assigned initially to the Centre for Application of Sci-
ence and Technology for Rural Development (CAST-
FORD), and from 1996, to the Appropriate Rural
Technology Institute (ARTI)[3]
. In other states, the TBU
was assigned to specific departments in universities, en-
gineering colleges, research institutes, etc. The tasks as-
signed to a TBU were:
• development, through laboratory and field trials, of im-
proved stove models suitable to the eating and cooking
habits prevalent in the region of operation;
• adoption of villages for field-testing of the developed
models;
• training of stove-makers, trainers, users, officers of the
programme-implementing agencies, NGO represent-
atives, etc.;
• preparation of publicity material in the local language;
• entrepreneurship training for commercialisation of im-
proved chulhas through potter-entrepreneurs;
• feedback survey in randomly selected villages to assess
the quality of the installed improved stoves and to collect
user feedback for further improvements in stove designs
as well as target fulfilment strategies; and
• testing of models of portable improved stoves for ap-
proval of manufacturers for participating in the target
fulfilment component in the state.
The target fulfilment component was handled by the state
government machinery through various implementing
agencies operating at different levels. This was run pri-
marily as a welfare activity of the government. In most
cases, the state government’s department or ministry that
dealt with rural development was the ‘‘nodal department’’
for the programme. However, in some states the pro-
gramme was attached to the Forest Department or Social
Welfare Department. For example, in Maharashtra, the
programme was run by the state’s Rural Development and
Water Conservation Department. The Secretary of the
nodal department was overall in charge of the programme.
Every year the nodal department received a certain tar-
get of improved stoves to be installed in the state. The
target was apportioned among all the districts in the state.
At the district level, the Chief Executive Officer of the
district headquarters was in charge of the programme. The
CEO apportioned the target among all the blocks in his
district. In each block, the Block Development Officer
(BDO) was in charge of the programme, who in turn se-
lected the villages for installation of improved stoves. In
recent years, the responsibility was shifted to the Child
Development Project Officer (CDPO), in keeping with the
growing emphasis on reducing the ill-health effects of the
use of wood and biomass as fuel in the household. The
village panchayat handled the programme at the village
level, with the help of self-employed workers or SEWs
(improved chulha-makers trained by the TBU), and ap-
proved portable stove manufacturers.
Figure 1. Flowchart showing administrative structure of NPIC
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3. The nodal department was helped by several nodal
agencies that received independent funding from MNES.
These were the energy development agencies in different
states, and national-level organisations such as the Khadi
and Village Industries Commission, National Dairy De-
velopment Board, and All-India Women’s Conference.
These agencies also took up targets for installation of im-
proved stoves and fulfilled them with the help of the pro-
gramme implementation structure present in each state.
Generally, the TBUs established in different parts of
the country concentrated on modifying the stove designs
in use in their respective areas of operation, and, in a few
cases, on developing radically different designs. The most
important criterion for the design improvement was al-
ways the fuel-use efficiency -- the amount of heat ending
up in the cooking-pot per unit weight of fuel consumed.
In keeping with the secondary objective of reducing the
drudgery of rural women, a large number of the improved
stoves developed were so-called ‘‘smokeless’’ stoves, i.e.,
stoves with chimneys to take the soot and smoke out of
the kitchen. Over the years every TBU developed and rec-
ommended a range of improved stove models which were
taken up for promotion under NPIC [RWEDP, 1993]. The
Laxmi stove promoted in Maharashtra and Goa is shown
in Figure 2.
NPIC was designed primarily as a target-oriented wel-
fare activity, and this aspect did not change much over
the years. Initially, the target used to be denominated in
terms of number of improved stoves to be distributed in
a state. From 2000-01, the target was denominated in
terms of number of villages to be covered under the pro-
gramme in a state. The success or failure of the annual
implementation of the programme in each state was al-
ways judged by the number of stoves distributed and the
proportion of these in operation. These success parameters
were measured through periodic surveys conducted by in-
dependent agencies [see, e.g., NCAER, 1996]. In addition,
the TBUs conducted routine surveys as a part of their
assigned functions. The implementing agencies of the
nodal department and the nodal agencies also conducted
periodic surveys for physical verification of the work
completed by a SEW before releasing his/her payment and
the amount of subsidy given to the beneficiaries. All these
surveys too generated useful data that were used for as-
sessing the success of NPIC, and the results were used
for modifying the programme implementation strategy
from time to time.
3. Policy changes incorporated over the years
Over the years, the programme underwent various
changes in perception, approach, and implementation.
Firstly, the field trials of the early improved chulha de-
signs brought out the importance of user-friendliness. The
early chulha designs included metallic moving parts such
as dampers in an attempt to control the air-flow through
the fuel-bed over the cycle of combustion. However, the
presence of such parts made both the construction and the
operation of the chulha complicated and the concept had
to be dropped soon. The need for keeping the designs
easy to construct, install and use imposed restrictions on
the possible improvements in traditional designs. Conse-
quently, most of the improved stove models promoted in
recent years did not have fuel-use efficiencies greater than
40 %.
It also became apparent that it was not correct to link
deforestation with use of wood as domestic fuel. Rural
households use a wide variety of fuels. These include
fuel-wood as well as agro- and forestry waste biomass,
and fuels such as dung-cakes and charcoal. In general,
big trees in the forest are not cut down for the sole pur-
pose of obtaining fuel-wood. The main causes of defor-
estation are increasing demand for both land and timber.
The forestry waste generated through such tree-cutting op-
erations (small branches, pieces of wood, sawdust, etc.)
end up in the domestic fuel market.
This realisation led to two conclusions.
• NPIC, even if 100 % successful, would not alone
achieve the goal of checking deforestation. This led to
a subtle shift in focus towards the so-called secondary
goals of the programme.
• The fact that the same stove is used with a wide va-
riety of fuels -- wood, forestry waste, agro-waste -- had
to be incorporated into the research and development
strategy. The performance of a stove (efficiency, cook-
ing time, smokiness, fuel requirement per cooking
task, etc.) depends on the combination of fuel type
and stove design. Therefore, the earlier improved
stoves, developed by using wood as the fuel in all
laboratory and field tests, were not necessarily most
suitable for using other biomass-based fuels. As a re-
sult, special efforts were undertaken to develop multi-
fuel stoves (e.g., the portable metallic CPRI stoves,
developed by the Central Power Research Institute,
Bangalore) and biomass-specific stoves (e.g., Navjyoti
sawdust stove, developed by the Indian Institute of
Technology, Delhi).
4. The entrepreneurship development programme
The increasing emphasis on NPIC as a vehicle of income
generation in rural areas also brought about several
changes over the past 5-6 years. Important contributions
Figure 2. Laxmi stove
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4. in this context were made by the TBU for Maharashtra,
attached to CASTFORD till March 1996 and to ARTI
from April 1996 to March 2002.
Previously, under NPIC, rural youth were trained in the
art of constructing improved chulhas in a 10-day training
course conducted by the TBU. The trainee was called a
self-employed worker (SEW). The services of the SEWs
were used for installation of the chulhas under NPIC in
each block. Thereafter, it was expected that the SEW
would conduct the work of installation of improved chul-
has in rural households on his own as a means of earning
a livelihood. However, the drop-out rate among SEWs
was very high because of their low earnings.
In the 1990s, the Maharashtra TBU attempted a differ-
ent strategy [Karve and Hanbar, 1997; Hanbar et al.,
1999a; Karve et al., 2001]. The following is a brief over-
view of the strategy.
Firstly, a mould was designed for construction of the
chulha models being promoted in the state. With the
mould, it was possible to mass-produce the various
chulha models in a central workshop, and then transport
these to the users’ houses, within 10-15 km range, as
ready-to-install chulhas. This also ensured uniformity
in the quality of the chulhas. The concept became so
successful that MNES recommended it to all the TBUs
under NPIC.
Secondly, the TBU organised special SEW training
workshops (Figure 3) exclusively for hereditary potters
who were already engaged in making and selling tradi-
tional chulhas. During these courses, the potters were
motivated to start their own improved chulha manufac-
turing enterprises. They were also given information
about various schemes under which soft loans and other
financial assistance could be obtained. In 1992-93 a
number of these potters started their own enterprises.
A review undertaken a year later revealed that some of
the enterprises had recorded annual turnover of about
Rs (rupees) 100,000 (approximately US$ 2,000 at the
current exchange rate of US$ 1 = Rs 48). However, it
was felt that the potters needed some training in basic
entrepreneurship qualities, such as advertising/promot-
ing their products, book-keeping, and cost-benefit
analysis. In 1994-95, it was decided to conduct en-
trepreneurship development courses for the potters. The
syllabus was designed in consultation with management
experts. The topics covered under this course are listed
in Box 1. Funding for conducting the courses was pro-
vided by MNES.
From 1994-95 to 2001-2002, the TBU annually con-
ducted potter-oriented SEW training courses followed by
entrepreneurship development courses for selected SEWs,
all over Maharashtra. Several hundred potential entrepre-
neurs received training in this period. In addition, the
TBU made extra efforts to help the novice entrepreneurs
in getting chulha installation work contracts. This helped
them in gaining valuable field experience as well as es-
tablishing themselves as improved chulha suppliers in
their regions of operation. As a result of this sustained
effort, today there are about 50 potter-entrepreneurs in
Maharashtra, with annual turnovers of Rs 100,000 (about
US$ 2000) and more. More importantly, this means that
there are 50 rural-based improved chulha-manufacturing
units accessible to rural households wishing to acquire
improved chulhas in the open market (Figure 4). It is es-
timated that up to 2001-2002, each potter-entrepreneur
sold 1000-1200 improved chulhas annually. About 35-
40 % of these chulhas were sold in the open market, un-
subsidised. ARTI had organised a meeting of the
potter-entrepreneurs in the light of the closure of NPIC.
In the meeting the entrepreneurs expressed confidence that
Figure 3. A training programme in progress
Box 1. Topics covered under the
Entrepreneurship Development Course
1. National Programme on Improved Chulha
2. Aim and importance of Entrepreneurship Devel-
opment Programme
3. Commercialisation of improved stoves and gov-
ernment policy
4. Entrepreneurship, commercialisation, and the
role of TBU
5. Qualities of a successful entrepreneur
6. Selection of enterprise and opportunities
7. Market survey and report
8. Financial aid schemes of banks
9. Schemes of Khadi and Village Industries Com-
mission (KVIC)
10. Schemes of District Industries Centre (DIC)
11. Schemes of District Rural Development Agency
(DRDA)
12. Experience of a successful chulha entrepreneur
13. Preparation for and writing of project report
14. Aesthetic sense and presentation of product
15. Advertising and sales management
16. Planning of production and management
17. Importance and method of keeping daily ac-
counts
18. Deciding the price of the product
19. Requirements for commercialisation
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5. they would continue to do good business through sale of
improved chulhas in the open market, and would not be
severely affected by the absence of the government-run
programme. Thus, the emphasis on commercialisation has
proved to be a significant step in creating a culture in
rural households of using improved stoves. The success
of this endeavour by the TBU of ARTI was also noted in
a survey conducted under the World Bank Study on
Household Energy, Air Pollution and Health [TERI-Win-
rock, to appear].
It must be mentioned here that even before the intro-
duction of the entrepreneurship concept, NPIC had al-
ready succeeded in creating a large number of rural- and
semi-rural-based entrepreneurs in the form of manufactur-
ers of portable improved stoves. However, it is a general
observation of field workers that in most parts of rural
India, portable stoves are looked upon as stand-by cook-
ing devices. The households provided with portable stoves
under NPIC tend to use traditional chulhas for daily cook-
ing and the ‘‘additional’’ stove only when extra cooking
needs to be done. An evaluation survey [NCAER, 1996]
indicated that the field-level implementing agencies pur-
chased the portable stoves, as they were easy to distribute
(no installation required), and fulfilled the target without
any assessment of user needs. In some cases, the stoves
were not even distributed to the target beneficiaries, who
were, in any case, not interested in using them. Another
important aspect of the issue is that, without subsidy, rural
customers cannot always afford the portable stoves. As a
result, the role of these stove manufacturers in achieving
the goals of NPIC remained limited, and the improved
chulhas remained the backbone of the programme.
5. Indoor air quality (IAQ) and related issues
In recent years, NPIC increasingly focused on the goal of
reducing the drudgery of rural women, and the pro-
gramme went through several changes aimed at fulfilling
this objective.
It is a straightforward conclusion that use of an efficient
stove saves the time and effort that rural women have to
put into collection of the fuel. Increasing the fuel-use ef-
ficiency from 10 % to even 20 % is equivalent to reduc-
ing the fuel consumption by half, thereby reducing the
fuel collection time per meal by half. In general the stoves
being promoted under NPIC have fuel-use efficiency in
the range of 20-35 %.
It is now well established that the pollutants (carbon
monoxide, suspended particulate matter, polycyclic aro-
matic hydrocarbons, etc.) emitted by wood- and biomass-
burning devices inside rural homes have a significant
adverse impact on the health of rural women and children
[Smith, 1999; Bruce et al., 2000]. Till recently it was as-
sumed that use of an efficient stove also reduced harmful
emissions from the combustion of wood and biomass and
led to better indoor air quality. However, several reports
indicate that this may not be true. A number of studies
claim that the improvement in overall efficiency of a stove
is achieved through improvement in the heat transfer ef-
ficiency and is generally at the expense of the fuel com-
bustion efficiency. Consequently, the proportion of harm-
ful emissions is even higher for most ‘‘improved’’ stoves
than for traditional ones, so that the improved stoves seem
to have an enhanced health hazard associated with their
use [see e.g., Zhang et al., 1999a; 1999b; Venkatraman,
2000]. This suggests that the emphasis on fuel-use effi-
ciency and user-friendliness in developing and approving
improved stove designs actually took NPIC away from
one of its objectives.
5.1. Possible solutions
5.1.1. Use of a chimney
An obvious remedy for this problem (and which was used
in NPIC) is to use a chimney to take the stove emissions
outside the house. However, several studies have indi-
cated that use of a chulha with chimney (the smokeless
chulha) may not have a statistically significant effect on
the harmful exposure levels experienced by householders
[Smith, 1987]. In spite of this, NPIC heavily favoured
chulhas with chimneys, on basis of the reduced concen-
trations of pollutant substances recorded in kitchens dur-
ing chulha operation [NPIC, 1998].
The apparently conflicting evidence on the benefits of
a chimney brings out one important point -- a serious and
focused R&D initiative on IAQ and related issues is es-
sential to settle this issue. As a first step, norms need to
be developed for assessing the potential health hazard on
the basis of concentration measurements of a variety of
harmful emissions. This is not a simple task as the health
effects generally appear after prolonged exposure and
some effects may be a combined result of lower standard
of living, exposure to pollutants in the workplace, and
exposure to smoke and soot in domestic kitchens. The
problem is compounded by lack of proper diagnostic and
medical facilities in the rural areas. This lack is likely to
affect the reliability of the health assessment data col-
lected through surveys. The determination of the concen-
trations of various pollutants in the stove emissions too
is not easy, depending greatly on the equipment and pro-
cedures used. A consensus needs to be evolved on stand-
ard procedures of concentration measurements to be used
in all region-specific studies, to enable comparisons
among studies conducted in different parts of the country.
In the last couple of years, some steps in this direction
Figure 4. A commercial chulha production centre in western Maharashtra
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6. have been taken by MNES, independent of NPIC. A pro-
ject entitled ‘‘Study and Evaluation of Improved Chulha
with Reference to Indoor Air Pollution and Health Aspects
in Field Conditions in Different Climatic Zones’’ was
launched by MNES in 2000, and it may be continued for
the next few years.
Under this project, studies were undertaken in the five
climatic zones (northern, eastern, central, western, and
southern) to assess the impact of NPIC on IAQ. The study
involves pollution measurements as well as health assess-
ment in sample households with and without improved
stoves.
5.1.2. The hotbox concept
One way of reducing the exposure to harmful emissions
from a stove is to reduce the ‘‘fire-on’’ period in the cook-
ing operation. Use of a hotbox in tandem with a stove is
an excellent way to achieve this [e.g., Still, 1997-98; Han-
bar et al., 1999b]. An additional benefit is that the esti-
mated effective fuel-use efficiency of the cooking process
is as high as 50-60 % when a hotbox is used with an
improved stove.
An extension of this concept is a stove based on the
principle of an oven -- heat generated through combustion
of the fuel is used for heating an insulated enclosed space,
within which the cooking vessels are kept. This concept
is very effectively used in solar cookers.
We have developed a cooking system based on this con-
cept and the results are very promising, in terms of high
fuel-use efficiency, reduced fuel consumption per cooking
task, as well as reduced ‘‘fire-on’’ time during the cooking
process. The reduction in ‘‘fire-on’’ time indirectly trans-
lates into a reduction in stove emissions and therefore in
exposure doses [Salunkhe and Karve, 2001].
5.1.3. Use of superior fuels
All said and done, the fact remains that combustion of
wood and biomass in a practical, user-friendly stove
would always be accompanied by harmful emissions. A
permanent solution to the problem would be to replace
wood and biomass with cleaner fuels.
To some extent, kerosene has substituted wood and
biomass as domestic fuel in semi-urban and urban poor
households. In certain parts of Maharashtra the authors
have seen rural households equipped with a chulha as well
as a kerosene or an LPG stove. The housewife uses the
kerosene or LPG stove for ‘‘quick’’ cooking -- e.g., making
a cup of tea for a guest -- and the chulha for cooking the
regular meals. However, unreliable supply, inadequate
availability, and high price (particularly in the case of
LPG), are the major constraints preventing widespread use
of fossil fuels in the rural domestic energy sector.
Recently, an attempt was made by the state government
to provide rural households with LPG connections in a
region of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. However,
in view of the extensive infrastructure that needs to be
erected and maintained for distribution of the gas cylin-
ders to ensure ready availability, and the high price (about
Rs 250, i.e., approximately US$ 5) that the consumer is
expected to pay per cylinder, long-term sustainability of
the scheme appears doubtful.
A more rational approach in this context would be to
convert wood and biomass into cleaner fuels such as char,
alcohol, wood-gas, and biogas for utilisation in the rural
domestic energy sector. To achieve this goal, appropriate
conversion technologies need to be standardised so that
rural-based small-scale manufacturing units can supply
the ‘‘improved’’ biomass fuels to local households at a rea-
sonable price. This would also require stove models to be
developed for handling these ‘‘improved’’ or ‘‘upgraded’’
biomass fuels.
6. Subsidy and sustainability of use of improved
stoves
Under NPIC, there was a policy of giving a partial subsidy
to the rural users on stoves being distributed through the
programme. A user could avail herself/himself of the sub-
sidy only once in a lifetime. In other words, NPIC would
provide only the first improved stove, at a subsidised
price, to every rural household. It was expected that use
of the stove would convince the rural user of the benefits
of continuing with the use of the improved stove which
she was expected to buy in the open market.
It was observed that such a one-time subsidy had its
use as an incentive for a rural householder to move from
the age-old traditional stove to an improved stove. While
acknowledging this, it must be pointed out that the one-
time subsidy would have been a worthwhile expenditure
if and only if the beneficiary preferred to buy an improved
stove when the time came for replacing her existing one.
Such a decision would be governed not only by her sat-
isfaction with the improved design but also by the avail-
ability of improved stove models in the open market and
the unsubsidised price of these models. In NPIC, the sub-
sidy, without an adequate emphasis on ensuring sustain-
ability of the use of improved stoves, did not serve much
purpose. In later years an attempt was made to overcome
this problem by emphasis on durability of the stoves. For
example, it was recommended that in order to ensure long
life, the chulhas should be constructed with cement. How-
ever, this led to other problems such as heavy weight,
increased cost, etc.
Under NPIC, there was no assessment of what fraction
of the NPIC beneficiaries continued to use improved
stoves by buying these stove models in the open market,
without subsidy. As a result, no quantitative data are avail-
able for judging whether NPIC succeeded in creating a
culture of use of improved stoves, and to what extent.
8. Conclusion
NPIC has taught us a lot about utilisation of biomass en-
ergy in the rural domestic energy sector. It has also created
an R&D infrastructure, technically trained manpower,
technology disseminators, entrepreneurs, etc., in different
parts of the country. Even in the absence of funding sup-
port from MNES, with continued commitment and adap-
tation to suit the ground realities, the TBUs and other
state-level implementing agencies can achieve the goal of
creating a culture of clean, efficient and sustainable util-
isation of biomass energy in the rural sector.
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7. Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the participants of the Internet discussion group
stoves@crest.org, hosted by the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology,
USA, and the participants of the on-line Dialogue on Household Energy and Health, con-
ducted by the Shell Foundation’s Sustainable Energy Programme, UK, for thought-provoking
interactions. We also thank Kirk Smith (University of California, Berkeley, USA) and Chandra
Venkatraman (Indian Institute of Technology, Powai, Mumbai, India) for useful inputs. Ac-
knowledgements are also due to A.D. Karve (President, ARTI) and G.S. Tasgaonkar (Prin-
cipal, Sinhgad College of Engineering, Pune, and former Chairman, Institution of Engineers
of India, Pune Chapter), for valuable suggestions.
Notes
1. The second author is also affiliated to the Department of Applied Physics, Smt. Kashibai
Navale College of Engineering (for Girls), Wadgaon Budruk, Pune 411 041, India
2. Throughout this paper, the term ‘‘stove’’ is used for all wood- and biomass-burning
cooking devices made out of mud, baked clay or metal, whereas the term ‘‘chulha’’ is
used specifically for those made of mud. However, it may be noted that the term ‘‘chulha’’
in the National Programme on Improved Chulha is inclusive of all types of wood- and
biomass-burning devices.
3. The personnel conducting the TBU activity remained the same; it was just the name
of the organisation that underwent change.
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Corrigenda
The following errors have been found in our last issue (Volume 6, No. 1, Special Issue on
Sri Lanka):
1. In the article ‘‘Meeting Sri Lanka’s future energy needs’’ by Shavindranath Fernando
(pp. 14-20):
a. the first sentence of Section 3.1, Electricity demand forecast (p. 15), should read
‘‘The historic development of electricity generation from 1981 to 1997 is shown in
Table 2’’;
b.
b. the caption of Table 1 (p. 17) should read ‘‘Existing and committed power plants’’,
without the qualifying phrase ‘‘(as of 1997)’’ ending the caption as printed;
c. on the same page, in Section 3.2.2, Thermal generation, the parenthetical remark
after ‘‘Kelanitissa Power Station Covering gas turbine (115MW)’’ should read ‘‘(this
is a recent addition, and hence is not shown in Table 1)’’ and not ‘‘...not shown in
Table 2)’’ as printed.
2. In the article ‘‘Fuelwood-fired cookstoves in Sri Lanka and related issues’’ by K.K.C.K.
Perera and A.G.T. Sugathapala (pp. 85-94), the following work was inadvertently
omitted from the references listed:
Van der Knyff, T., 1988. ‘‘Netherlands-Sri Lanka Energy Programme’’, Boiling Point
15, Intermediate Technology Development Group.
We deeply regret these errors.
-- Associate Editor
Energy for Sustainable Development l Volume VI No. 2 l June 2002
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