Farmers’ positions in the household fuel transition Balancing tradition and modernity in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu Blue Bakker

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Farmers’ positions in the household fuel transition

Balancing tradition and modernity in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu

Blue Bakker

Anbu in the field in Villiyanallur. (Source: author)

Bachelor thesis Human Geography/Future Planet Studies Supervisor: Jaap Rothuizen

Second reader: Dr. Dennis Arnold

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences University of Amsterdam

Student number: 10609032 June 23, 2016

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Abstract

Traditional biomass cooking fuels are considered harmful to users’ health and economic opportunities, yet they remain ubiquitous throughout India. Access to modern fuels is not widespread among understudied rural populations and farmers in particular. This paper investigates the position of farmers in the household fuel transition using empirical data from a series of interviews conducted in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu. LPG use seems most importantly positively correlated with household income level but is also linked to other, often practical factors. Traditions and agricultural production, on the other hand, tend to prevent households from abandoning biomass fuel use, it was found. The academic discussion focused on the environmental effects of traditional and modern fuels only complicates the matter.

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Introduction

India has been the subject of much academic interest because of its immense demographic and economic growth and the social and environmental diversity across its vast land. Central to India’s development is energy: it is to an obvious degree required for mobility and industry, but its consumption on the household level -‐ lighting, heating and particularly cooking -‐ is for the average rural Indian as significant, if not more so. While the use of LPG as a modern cooking fuel has been steadily increasing, two thirds of all Indian households still cook on traditional biomass fuelled stoves (Bhojvaid et al., 2014). Use of the latter has been widely described as harmful because of its serious health hazards and time consuming firewood collection, especially to women and children. On the other hand, modern energy sources are mostly fossil fuel based, leaving their desirability under discussion in light of global climate change concerns. While household cooking is not by far the most energy consuming sector, its relevance lies in the indispensability of food as a basic human need. The household fuel transition is furthermore an instance of worldwide development and modernisation, an indicator of broader phenomena rather than a spectacular revolution.

A third of the rural Indian population earns their income through agriculture (Government of India, 2011). The sizable farmer population of India is an understudied one in relation to energy transitions. Not only do they encompass a largely traditional and mostly low income part of society, farmers also have an more complex relationship with biomass fuels than other populations. Besides being biomass fuel consumers, farmers serve as producers of the energy source too. With this research I have the ambition to elucidate the relationship of farmers with traditional and modern fuels. The research will be set in the Cuddalore district in Tamil Nadu (depicted in figure 1), a southern state that has often been cited as one of the most developed in India (Patil, 2010). The central question in this research reads: What is the position of farmers in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu in the household fuel transition? It is to be answered using data from a series of semi-‐structured interviews with farmers done in the research area. The hypotheses and data cover the topics of politics at play in modern fuel access, household and farm characteristics, and sociocultural attitudes.

The following chapter of this research paper will go into relevant existing theories and data concerning household fuel transition and related concepts. The methodological considerations taken into account in doing the research will then be explained. In the next chapter the collected data will be provided and consequently analysed with regard to the hypotheses. A summarising discussion of the research along with recommendations will conclude the paper, only to be followed by acknowledgements and a reference list, respectively.

Theoretical framework

Patterns of biomass and gas use

‘Energy transitions’ is a concept that describes patterns of energy use and especially changes in those patterns. While the concept is often linked to sustainability and economic development when applied to national or larger scales, on the household level it often indicates issues of poverty and (fragmented) modernity. In this chapter the general pattern of the most common household energy sources will be explained,

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followed by several theories and models that aim to capture the essence of household energy transitions, and finally some relativising remarks on trade-‐offs between the fuels. “Some 2 billion people are without electricity; a similar number remain dependent on fuels such as animal dung, crop residues, wood, and charcoal to cook their daily meals”, Barnes and Floor write. “Without efficient, clean energy, people are undermined in their efforts to engage effectively in productive activities or to improve their quality of life” (1996: p.499). This is the main argument to associate ‘traditional’ fuels with people of low income. Although use of these fuels had been decreasing globally for decennia, it has been rising again among poor populations of some countries recently (Saha et al., 2005). In India, two thirds of all households cook on traditional biomass stoves (depicted in image 1), especially in rural areas, which adds up to 30% of biomass users worldwide (Bhojvaid et al., 2014). Murugan (2011) writes that while half of the Indian energy budget is accounted for by household consumption (cooking, lighting, heating), the sector holds a share of no more than 12% of commercial national energy.

Figure 1: The relative positions of Tamil Nadu and Cuddalore district in India. (Source material: Google Maps; edited: author)

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Alongside the states of Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Kerala, Tamil Nadu has the highest rate of rural access to modern energy sources. Still less than 20% of the state’s rural population had access to the fuels, as described by a ten year old large scale survey (Patil, 2010). This implies that the majority of the population depends on traditional fuels, mainly the various incarnations of firewood. Dependence on biomass fuels is common everywhere in the developing world but its intensity increases in areas of low income that are close to the forest (Jan et al., 2012). In Tamil Nadu the poor collect firewood from forest areas, the middle class buys it from firewood shops and the rich get it from their own field, Murugan writes (2011). Land distribution among the population is notoriously uneven in Tamil Nadu, however. 55% of all households did not own any land (including cultivated homestead space) ten years ago and an additional 35% owned less than one acre of agricultural land (Rawal, 2008). Gathering firewood from the own land is thus not an activity that is widespread across the state’s population. When referring to traditional fuels that are recognisably of plant origin (different types of agricultural residue and parts of or whole plants and trees known as ‘firewood’), this paper will use the words ‘biomass fuel’. Or, as the Government of India defined the term: “‘biomass’ resources are the biodegradable fraction of products, wastes and residues from agriculture, forestry and related industries” (2009: p.5).

Agricultural waste is an important factor with farmers as the research population. Agriculture generates fuel and thusly gives the producer a certain independence of other biomass fuel sources. A third of biomass fuels across the world was made up by agricultural waste in 1985. In India this percentage lies between 13 and 41% (Mestl and Eskeland, 2009; Yevich and Logan, 2003). Many types of agricultural waste are used: paddy hulls and straw, stalks of millets, leaves, processing residue and shells of some fruits and nuts. While not all types of agricultural waste can be used as raw fuel inputs, all may be used for the production of biofuels. These are not to be confused with biomass fuels; the word refers to more efficient ethanol or gas types based on processed biological products (Scarlat et al., 2010). Biofuels will be further explained later in this chapter.

The energy ladder: income as independent variable

Household level energy transitions and household fuel choice were academically explained in the ‘energy ladder’ theory some twenty years ago. Income is the independent variable in that theory, which holds that household fuel choice linearly shifts from biomass related traditional fuels to transition fuels such as kerosene and ends in modern fuels in the line of LPG and electricity (Jan et al., 2012). ‘Fuel switching’ is every move up the energy ladder, which is ordered according to households’ simplified preferences for fuel. The topmost fuels on the ladder would be unambiguously optimal for the household: they are the cleanest, most convenient and quickest. As households gain income, they abandon their old techniques and adopt the ones a step up the ladder (van der Kroon et al., 2013).

There is a desire among low income groups to switch to LPG (liquefied petroleum gas), and distinctly more so than with other fuels, Alam et al. state (1998). It is at the top of the energy ladder and among other things cleaner than a transition fuel such as kerosene. Although kerosene is made accessible by subsidies, it is only used by a very small portion of the rural poor, as opposed to their urban counterparts among whom its use is widespread (Patil, 2010). In both settings its use has decreased, however, as it made way for the shift to LPG for cooking (Kavi Kumar and Viswanathan, 2011). Rural areas often lag behind urban arenas because of the prevalence of a more traditional

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mindset among inhabitants and policymakers in the former. The higher costs of starting new infrastructures due to remoteness amongst rural households is a handicap of the countryside in adopting new technologies (Reddy et al., 2009).

Alternative (non-‐biomass) fuels and related equipment are often only affordable to the poor if sizable subsidies are provided (Bhojvaid et al., 2014). Although modern energy sources nowadays are highly subsidised and targeted at the poor, mostly richer Indians benefit from them because of their higher social and political capital (Alam et al., 1998). Related is the phenomenon that the opportunity cost of collecting and using biomass fuels increases with the education level of its users: the possibility to spend one’s time in a more ‘fruitful’ way (earning money) theoretically makes the time spent on the actual activity (collecting firewood) less worthwhile (van der Kroon et al., 2013)

Image 1: A traditional outdoors cooking setup beside a stack of biomass fuel in Keerapalayam. (Source: author)

Energy stacking: other factors in fuel choice

Empirical evidence suggests the links between fuel choice and income are not as strong as supposed by the energy ladder model, van der Kroon et al. (2013) write. In several case studies households across the income spectrum were found to use biomass fuels, and to a lesser extent also LPG and electricity. Households seem to adopt new technologies as partial substitutes for old fuel sources rather than complete ones. Switching back to previously used fuels in times of low availability or accessibility are also characteristics of energy transitions that are not covered by the energy ladder. Energy transitions thus do not occur as discrete, linear steps up a ladder, but more ambiguously. Because multiple fuel sources are often used simultaneously within the

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household, ‘fuel stacking’ has been coined as a new model to describe household fuel choice (Jan et al., 2012).

A multitude of other factors besides income have been reported to influence fuel choice. (Un)availability and (in)accessibility of the preferred fuel source may be barriers for use (ibid.), and especially the way they are perceived by the household (Gupta and Köhlin, 2006). Information barriers, Reddy and Srinivas (2009) write, are among the most important in determining the type of fuel used. Preferences for new technologies are positively correlated to perceptions of health and time savings (Bhojvaid et al., 2014). Convenience or ease of use are also often described as among the most important motives for using particular fuel sources, as well as the related social norms as embodied by attitudes and actions of neighbours. The age of the household head may also affect fuel choice as older generations are generally more conservative than their juniors, and therefore prefer more traditional fuels. Cultural practices also often have this effect: it can be linked to traditional cooking, for instance. The related taste of food, finally, may also be a driver for the household to choose a particular type of fuel. This latter argument leads Dhillon and von Wuelisch (2013) to write that in some applications modifications are required to completely substitute traditional fuels with modern ones.

Negative effects of biomass fuel use

If much of their time is spent searching for firewood or much of their income is used to pay for fuels, people cannot farm or produce goods efficiently (Barnes and Floor, 1996). Poor households have to compromise one way or another in their fuel choice by either cutting down on consumption of essential goods (sometimes even food) when they choose modern fuels, or accept possible health effect that don’t show until much later if they decide to go for cheaper and more polluting fuels (Gupta and Köhlin, 2006). These dilemmas are indicative of poverty traps. “[Such] traps exist when incomes are too low to pay for investments in infrastructure, technology transfer, and education, which are needed to raise living standards” (Southgate et al., 2011: 216). Biomass burning is furthermore used very inefficiently. Only around 15% of the material is converted into usable energy, which makes it all the more time consuming to collect, Reddy et al. (2009) write. Throughout the tropics, mean firewood consumption is 1.3 kilograms per capita per day (Yevich and Logan, 2003).

There is a definite correlation between exposure to indoor air pollution resulting from incomplete combustion as may result from biomass burning, and significant health risks. These risks include pneumonia in children, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer. Even when cooking is done outside the house or in a separate kitchen, the levels of respirable suspended particulate matter exceed World Health Organisation prescribed levels (Kavi Kumar and Viswanathan, 2011). Around 424000 Indians die each year from the effects of indoor air pollution due to biomass burning (Mestl and Eskeland, 2009). The majority of those exposed to health risks are women, who are usually responsible for cooking, and infants, often near the cooking area with their mothers (Saha et al., 2005). While mostly these household members benefit from modern, less polluting fuels, they are often not the ones making (financial) household decisions (Bhojvaid et al., 2014). The negative health effects may lock households further in debt because of due medical bills, but it in another, more structural way it aggravates gender inequalities on the household and national levels. Biomass use may have disabling effects for women and girls because they are the ones most often spending time collecting firewood to cook with, which denies them the possibility to

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spend time on other enterprises such as making money or receiving education (Kanagawa and Nakata, 2006).

Heltberg et al. (2000) write that biomass fuels gathered from the commons are the most important source of household energy in rural areas in India. Excessive firewood collection may lead to forest degradation, however, which in turn may cause firewood scarcity. Negative effects of forest degradation may include loss of biodiversity, altering watershed functions, greenhouse gas release and soil erosion. Alternative fuel sources, including agricultural waste, usually don’t result in these consequences. Although biomass fuels are generally collected without financial cost, the opportunity cost of collection labour can be high. Crop residues could alternatively be used as manure on the land, which also increases the opportunity cost of biomass fuels. This mechanism is partly atoned for by the trend towards using artificial fertilisers, however (Scarlat et al., 2010). Modern fuels are widespread in urban India but less so in the countryside. Larger farm sizes, trees on the land and a shorter collection time all correlate with forest to non-‐forest firewood substitution. As burning up crop residues instead of leaving them on the land may have detrimental effects for soil quality, a better option to increase household biomass fuel production is to increase the number of trees on the land.

Environmental trade-‐offs

India’s growing population pressure makes present uses of local resources increasingly unsustainable, Romijn et al. (2010) argue. Structural overuse of crop residues, wood and shrubs threaten the reproductive capacity of common property resources which are essential for locals’ livelihoods. The environmental discussion considering biomass an LPG use is two sided as it plays out on both local and global scales. Locally, biomass use may have environmental (and health related) effects such as smoke, smog and indoor air pollution. Modern fuels that seem harmless on the local scale, have global impact through greenhouse gas emissions, however (Gupta and Köhlin, 2006). Biomass works as a carbon sink and could even reduce greenhouse gas emissions in comparison with non-‐renewable fuels (Bieranowski and Olkowski, 2016; Boons and Mendoza, 2010). Crop residue as a resource could account for up to 15% of global primary energy consumption. That makes it a very relevant option in the light of international environmental agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, which often stress the use of alternative fuels (Bentsen et al., 2014).

Production of biomass with the intention to convert it into much more efficient biofuels has been the reason of academic concern, however. The quantities required for this purpose are significantly larger than for household use, and commercial production of biofuels may deplete biodiversity and soils, may decrease carbon sinks when green fields are converted into plantations, and may lead to poor labour conditions (Boons and Mendoza, 2010). Another key point in this discussion is the competition between biofuel and agricultural production. Farmland often needs to be converted for biofuel production, with the 2008 global food crisis as an often cited implication of this (Sexton et al., 2009). While raw biomass fuels themselves are usually considered carbon neutral in relation to global climate change, incomplete combustion releases ‘black carbon’ particles which are stronger greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide (Kavi Kumar and Viswanathan, 2011).

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Methodology

Central questions, hypotheses and operationalisation

In order to clarify household fuel use and related theories among Tamil Nadu farmers, I will attempt to answer the following central question in this research: What is the position of farmers in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu in the household fuel transition? This broad question will be made answerable by analysing it from three perspectives. The first considers external, top down attempts to stimulate a certain behaviour, and is embodied in the first sub-‐question: How do political activities affect the position of Cuddalore farmers in the fuel transition? Internal characteristics of the household that lead it to transition are the second subtopic: How do personal financial and physical capital affect the position of Cuddalore farmers in the fuel transition? The final sub-‐ question concerns the interrelations among households and wider traditions: How does their sociocultural profile affect the position of Cuddalore farmers in the fuel transition? A number of assumptions regarding the research questions and concepts were initially formulated to structure the data and to facilitate subsequent analysis.

• There has been a general transition towards modern fuels among households in recent years. Most households used biomass fuels until recently, but as the negative effects of biomass fuel use have been widely documented, many households started using alternative fuels.

• Some households use multiple fuel sources. As the theory of energy stacking attests, many households do not exclusively make use of a single fuel type.

• Decreased availability of biomass fuels leads to a change in fuel type. When firewood resources are no longer accessible, users shift to other fuel sources. • Subsidies have stimulated alternative fuel use. Households have been able to start

using modern fuels as a result of government subsidies on that source.

• Awareness programmes have stimulated alternative fuel use. The government or other entities have succeeded in increasing knowledge on and use of modern fuel sources among households.

• Household income positively correlates to use of modern fuels. As is central in the energy ladder theory, households of higher income are more likely to use more modern fuels.

• The types of crops produced by a household do not correlate to biomass fuel use. All agricultural residues can be used as biomass fuels, therefore no specific crop limits the use of traditional fuels.

• A drive for modernity in the household positively correlates to use of more modern fuels. Households that do not have a conservative attitude are more likely to use modern fuels.

The main concepts that were measured in the interviews range from farm characteristics to attitudes towards modernity. When asked what fuel sources their household uses, many respondents tended to mention their modern fuels first. After further and more direct inquiry, however, all added their use of traditional fuels. Most respondents were unaware of their (disposable) household income level and especially those of lower income. The income class was therefore estimated by deliberation with my translator and was based on the type of house lived in, the size of land owned and the impression a respondent made, particularly through their manners. This has most likely created a bias in the data because it was based solely on our interpretation of a respondent’s context. My translator’s experience in taking surveys throughout the country and his background as a native Tamil make the interpretations more reliable,

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however. Distortion of the data was avoided, on the other hand, because it did not depend on accounts of the respondents that could easily have been false due to the sensitivity of the subject of income. Land size was measured in acres (approximately 0.4 hectares), the common imperial area unit. This variable was based on respondents’ accounts which, as will later be explained, were not only fallible but occasionally deliberately untrue. Satisfaction with fuel sources was directly asked about in interviews, as well as tested when asked about specific fuels’ pros and cons. Subsidies and awareness programmes were validated through continual inquiry of respondents and additional interviews with LPG companies. Status and power related experiences were collected from the more extensive interviews and particularly the handful of open ones.

Epistemological considerations

This research project was set up in a deductive fashion: based on existing theories, assumptions were formulated and tested using collected data from the field. The resulting conclusions were compared to the initial theories and hypotheses, which, as iterative research prescribes, were (suggested to be) revised. While the type of this work of research shares characteristics of both sides of the artificial quantitative/qualitative research divide (Bryman, 2012), it does not treat its data as intangible facts in any way isolated from their context. Instead the data is considered from a constructionist perspective: actors continuously alter perceptions and institutions with their actions and inactions.

The latter can be illustrated by a series of interactions I had with respondents. When asked whether they ever shared their spare firewood with agricultural labourers, many land owning respondents seemed slightly confused and all answered differently, indicating that there may not be a shared convention concerning firewood sharing. As a consequence the interaction, some farmers could potentially have considered firewood sharing to such an extent that their opinions on it changed, or that a conversation would start among landowners, leading to more conscious practices of firewood sharing that in turn could affect or be affected by counterarguments. Though this example may be considered far-‐fetched, it can also be used to exemplify two other related concepts. The epistemological belief of interpretivism, firstly, states that any subject is regarded by the researcher through the ‘lens’ of their personal discourse or knowledge. The question I asked in the example seemed relevant because of my knowledge of the concept of ‘social capital’, which would also direct my interpretation of the gathered data. Although it may seem like an interesting finding to one trained in human geography that landowners do or do not share firewood with agricultural labourers, to the respondents it may simply not matter. A researcher with a background in sociology, alternatively, would possibly recognise and focus on power relations in play. The final conclusion to be drawn from the firewood example is that the method with which data is collected also always distorts it. While the interview method in question could alter the language used by the respondent, a survey, for instance, could oversimplify it. The influence and interpretation of the researcher, in conclusion, cannot be underestimated when reviewing the data.

Data collection

In order to answer the research questions, a series of 64 semi-‐structured interviews was conducted. The interviews were based on an ever evolving item list of five topics on average, which always included household characteristics, fuel resources and

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agricultural practices. Because of the open-‐ended nature of semi-‐structured interviews, their duration varied between 10 and 30 minutes. Because of the summer heat, respondents were difficult to find between the hours of 11 and 3, which led me to abandon collecting data during this time altogether. Although this decision may have caused a slight bias in the data, the majority of Tamils (including those in agriculture) stays inside during the hours around noon, which probably confines the possible damage done.

The units of analysis in this research are households that earn their income (partly) through agriculture. However, interviews were mostly carried out with individual members of the household, the units of observation. Upon arriving in the research area, my translator and I often asked groups of locals where the nearest agricultural area could was located and in most cases it turned out to surround the village. Respondents were mostly found on their way running errands within the village, or resting in small groups in the street. A number of respondents was also found in the shade of their porch or garden. All interviewed respondents lived in the villages where they were encountered, so as to preserve the spatial characteristics associated with them. Although my translator and I trod both main and back streets, the method of selecting respondents in public areas has its drawbacks. Respondents were selected every 100 or so meters to preserve some degree of randomness in the sample, but striking or extroverted people were simply more likely to catch our eyes. Moreover, in Tamil Nadu as well as many other parts of India, it is more common for men to spend time in the streets than for women, thereby greatly increasing the chance of the former to be selected. This phenomenon is not as present in smaller villages such as the ones visited, as in more urban areas, but it still affected the data insofar that the man/woman ratio is roughly 2:1.

Because the type of crop produced in relation to the fuel source used by the household was to be analysed, a variety in agricultural crop production was required in the data. This variety could be found by investigating spatially spread out farmers. My translator refused to directly partake in traffic, however, and as a consequence the most convenient option to be mobile, a motorcycle, could not be used. Therefore we were dependent on public buses in reaching respondents instead. Four distinct research areas were found with the help of a handful of locals’ knowledge of agricultural production in the area: Bhuvanagiri, B.Mutlur, Villiyanallur and Parangipettai. These four villages at some five kilometres apart were selected for their main crops or context: respectively low income, flowers, fruits and a scarcity of sweet water. For each of the four main villages three neighbourhoods or hamlets were selected in order to collect more heterogeneous data per cluster and because farmers were simply more easily found in smaller settlements than in the main village. The Bhuvanagiri research area consists of Melamanakudi, Keerapalayam and Thathampettai settlements. The B.Mutlur cluster is made up of Manjakuzhi, Theethampalayam and Gandhi Nagar. Villiyanallur contains the northern and southern part of the village and Puduchattiram. Parangipettai, finally, encompasses Agaram Colony, Ariagosti and Ponnanthittu. All relevant locations have been marked in figures 2, 3 and 4. In every settlement 5 respondents were found, totalling the base sample size at 60 respondents. Two types of bias may have influenced the data, however. Firstly, a disproportionate number of lower income respondents may have been found because only households in villages were researched. Higher income households are more likely to live outside of villages than those of lower income, which points to a decreased chance for them to have been selected by the used research setup. The effect is not likely to be very large, however, because there simply are many more

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lower income households in Tamil Nadu, and several researched settlements also housed higher income households (notably those in the Parangipettai cluster). Secondly, the mode of transport used to reach the research areas probably affected the data to an extent. Respondents closer to the bus stop had a higher chance of being selected than those far from it. Whether housing distance from a transportation hub characterises a person in any way is not the subject in this research, it must be taken into account that people living more isolatedly had a smaller chance of being a respondent.

A number of additional interviews were conducted in order to verify facts and to deepen data based on personal accounts. Four of the dozen of explorative interviews conducted in the research area (two in B.Mutlur and two in Parangipettai) met the conditions to be added to the main sample, and have been treated as such. Representatives of two LPG distribution companies, Hindustani Petrol and Indian Oil, were interviewed about their businesses and relevant legislation. Although the offices of the companies are located in the towns of Killai and Chidambaram respectively, just outside of the research area, both cater to residents of the researched clusters. Furthermore, one interview was done with the keeper of a firewood shop in B.Mutlur, and one with a Bhuvanagiri agricultural sciences post-‐doctorate researcher about the workings of the irrigation systems in the area. Most significant for the data, however, were three substantial open interviews with respondents following roughly the same topics as in the main interviews, but with significantly more emphasis on personal experiences. Two of three lived in Manjakuzhi and one in B.Mutlur. All three were selected using the same method as with the other interviews.

Interpreter

Key in my research was the close collaboration with my translator in collecting data in the field. Anbazhagan, or Anbu, and I lived and worked together for four weeks in the village of B.Mutlur. He is a middle aged native Tamil Nadu man with an academic background in agricultural economics and decades-‐long experience in the field in a variety of research projects. His influence on the data and even some methodological questions cannot be underestimated. Besides translating Tamil to English and navigating through the many social situations occurring in the field by means of customs I could not have known of, the two of us spent hours a day discussing how to approach certain questions and reassessing interviews or respondents’ characteristics. Anbu’s expertise on the topic of agricultural practices also provided me with a basic understanding of local economics and daily life, as well as a way to verify data gathered from interviews. In a number of cases, for instance, Anbu pointed to the land markings of a farmer and expressed his distrust of a claim of the land size. Observations of his such as these strongly guided my senses as to the discrepancies between accounts and reality.

Use of a translator, no matter their eloquence, is in all cases very likely to result in the loss of data. Besides the loss of subtleties in respondents’ accounts due to the language barrier, the way interviews can only be conducted with mediation of a third person makes them much less dynamic. In several cases Anbu’s specific presence, too, likely impacted the data greatly. Twice he rather irritatedly walked away from an interview less than a minute in because he felt a respondent did not answer truthfully. In one case he was approached by an inebriated man who aggressively kept a conversation going for minutes on end, scaring away respondents who we had not had the chance of interviewing yet. By many respondents, Anbu said, we were welcomed as either government or NGO representatives. The former invites suspicion among many as

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Figure 2: Income level per cluster of the research area. (Source material: Google Maps;

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Figure 3: Dominant household fuel per cluster of the research area. (Source material:

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officials usually do not come around for good news, many believe, while visits from the latter are often welcomed because they are expected to be accompanied by poverty relief. Although respondents’ initial reactions inclined to either interpretation, they are not likely to have influenced much of the collected data.After we explained our research purposes, most respondents would not have seen a reason to answer questions dishonestly. The time data collection took place coincided with ‘election time’; several weeks of active campaigning for the state elections. In the corrupt Tamil Nadu political environment, many government officials of all disciplines are bound to a party. In the expensive election time, many try to collect financial support from anywhere, including illicitly confiscating “spare” land of farmers. While Anbu was not convinced that this led many people to lie about topics such as income and the size of land owned, it has to be taken into account because of the potential impact it may have had on the reliability of the data.

Results

Respondent characteristics and general patterns of fuel use

Archetypically of India, Anbu and I encountered a diversity of people in our research population. Respondents’ household sizes were between 2 and 8 members, and their dwellings were built from materials ranging from straw to marble. Most respondents were poorly educated and had inherited their profession, land or lifestyle, while others had made a relative fortune abroad working in the tertiary sector. Many landowners in the Tamil Nadu countryside seem to engage in farming (albeit only actively for several weeks a year), even when they have another full-‐time job. One elderly Villiyanallur man noted: “I am a headmaster but I am also a farmer. And so was my father and so was his father before him”. Although both men and women from all income groups were interviewed, mostly low income women were found to be active as agricultural labourers (compare figures 2 and 4), which could be explained by the fact that their husbands often work in other low income sectors such as transport and construction. As many, mostly older respondents explained, there is less and less work in agriculture due to climate change and mechanisation which results in younger generations seeking jobs elsewhere.

The general pattern of LPG use follows income groups (compare figures 2 and 3). High income respondents, with the exception of a small number, use solely LPG for regular daily cooking. Many low income respondents on the other hand have never used gas. The poorest cluster of my respondents not coincidentally consists of landless farmers: people who only work two to twelve weeks on the land and the poorest of whom do not have any other work. The higher end of the lowest income group and people of middle income are more mixed in their gas use. While most do use LPG, some only use it occasionally and in conjunction with biomass fuels, and others full-‐time. Induction plates are used by only two respondents’ households. Safety and relatively lower cost were mentioned as the motives for use, although the latter would in most households not be realistic. Kerosene stoves are used by none, though some higher income households had used them in the past, including Anbu’s. He said LPG is now comparatively cheaper for household use and it doesn’t damage cooking equipment by blackening it, as opposed to kerosene stoves, a number of respondents agreed. Kerosene is still used by households for (emergency) lighting, and by some (mostly rural) restaurants and tea shops to cook on.

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Economic variables

Respondents’ income is thus key in people’s choice to use gas for cooking in the quantity they do. This seems especially true among relatively poor respondents. Their income was mentioned by many as the most important reason they didn’t use gas, or they only used it part-‐time, with an average of 6 cylinders per household per year across all income groups. A handful of respondents said they could afford to use LPG exclusively since their children had recently finished their education, which made more money available for their energy demand. Two more households had even recently started to use gas since a son had obtained a specialised drivers’ permit that had reliably increased the household income. Although no respondents were encountered that had stopped using LPG recently, many spoke of their prolonged lack of steady work in agriculture resulting from mechanisation and climate change, which has been keeping LPG out of reach for them.

An obvious point to be made is that people’s income is as much a limiting factor for LPG use as the price of the cylinders. Some respondents that had been using LPG for years looked back somewhat nostalgically to the time, some 15 years ago, when gas cost only 100 to 200 rupees per cylinder. The gas price had been gradually climbing up to around 400 rupees including household subsidy two years ago, before the national gas policy was revised. Since Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party took office in 2014, gas has no longer been sold at a fixed, subsidised rate. Households now pay the full, monthly fluctuating price, which is the same across the country, and lies between roughly 550 and 800 rupees. Subsidy given to households differs each month to level the net household cost at 411.5 rupees per LPG cylinder. Up to six cylinders are subsidised annually but there is no limit in the maximum number of cylinders that can be purchased. The subsidy (averaging around 250 rupees) is transferred to a household’s bank account which is formally linked to a household’s ration card. Ration cards are central to India’s Public Distribution System, through which cylinders are also sold. Officially almost every Indian household is registered in the system and thus owns a ration card in which all household LPG purchases are registered. Monthly households can also collect portions of free rice, lentils and kerosene based on family size and buy other basics such as sugar and palm oil at highly subsidised rates. All respondents have and use their ration cards, as is normal, Anbu confirms.

Although the Public Distribution System itself has not been thoroughly revised, and therefore still functions as before, the differently organised LPG distribution could be expected to have changed gas accessibility for some Tamils. Some respondents stated that the higher gross gas price made it more difficult for them to afford LPG cylinders. None said their gas use had decreased for this reason, however. Several other respondents, on the other hand, praised the convenience of the new distribution system. Users now merely have to call an automated telephone service and dial their ration card number, after which a new cylinder is delivered by the LPG distribution company active in the area. In the case of Manjakuzhi, delivery was impossible until 5 years ago because the village was not connected to the hardened road network which is necessary for delivery trucks such as the one depicted in image 2. Households wealthy enough to afford the extra deposit often own a second cylinder to bridge the delivery waiting period of 2 to 7 days. Those unable to do so (the complete poor and about a third of the middle income groups in the research population) use alternative fuels during this gasless gap. When asked about the price per cylinder, respondents all answered differently, as could be expected because of the fluctuating price. None of the numbers mentioned corresponded completely with those provided by the two main gas

Farmers’ positions in the household fuel transition Balancing tradition and modernity in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu Blue Bakker