India is home to 24 crore families, out of which more than 10 crore families have no access at all to clean cooking fuel such as LPG. Most of the families lacking access to clean fuel are from rural areas where women rely on wood, charcoal, coal and cow-dung cakes as the source of fuel.
In the traditional patriarchal Indian society, the household duties such as collecting water, wood and leaves for cooking and looking after children falls on the women of the house. Apart from spending huge chunks of their time in collecting the wood, women were directly exposed to the severe environmental pollution due to burning of the above fuel which according to World Health Organisation is equal to smoking 400 cigarettes a day.
