Meena Khandelwal, "Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women's Technology in India" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
About this episode
Dr. Meena Khandelwal discusses her research on the persistence of traditional cookstoves among Indian women despite the availability of modern alternatives.
Stove improvers have been designing and promoting “clean” or “efficient” biomass cookstoves in India since the 1940s and have been frustrated to find their carefully engineered stoves abandoned in trash heaps or repurposed as storage bins, while the traditional mud chulha retains a central place in the kitchen. Why do so many Indian women continue to use wood-burning, smoke-spewing stoves when they have other options? Based on anthropological research in Rajasthan, Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India (University of Arizona Press, 2024) by Dr. Meena Khandelwal argues that the supposedly obsolete chulha persists because it offers women control over the tools needed to feed their families. Their continued use of old stoves alongside the new is not a failure to embrace new technologies but instead a strategy to maximize flexibility and autonomy. The chulha is neither the villain nor hero of this story. It produces particulate matter that harms people’s bodies, leaves soot on utensils and walls, and accelerates glacial melting and atmospheric warming. Yet it also depends on renewable biomass fuel and supports women’s autonomy as a local, do-it-yourself…
People in this episode
Guest: Meena Khandelwal
Topics covered
- biomass cookstoves
- women's autonomy
- anthropological research
- technology adoption
- environmental impact
- cultural practices
Keywords
- cookstoves
- India
- women's technology
- anthropology
- clean energy
- cultural resistance
- flexibility
- autonomy
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: University of Arizona Press
Books & works: Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women's Technology in India
Places: India, Rajasthan
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