Eco-friendly stoves for a Maharashtrian village

Rotary Club of Panvel Elite, RID 3131, has embarked on a transformative mission to distribute unique smokeless stoves to ten Adivasi families in the hill village Varavane, near Panvel, Maharashtra. These stoves, called Panval Rocket Stoves (PRS), use twigs instead of wood to burn, and cook food in record time. “PDG Deepak Shikarpur introduced this model to us and we found it a perfect solution to save trees which were being felled indiscriminately for wood to be used in the traditional chulhaas,” says club president Swati Likhite.

Six women from the club, along with technicians from Applinnova, the stove manufacturers, visited the village to demonstrate its working to 50 women assembled in a school. The technicians gathered a few fallen twigs from under a Gulmohar tree in the school campus, assembled the stove, and lit it up with the twigs. “The audience was impressed with the entire process and was awed to see how rice, sufficient for six people, was cooked in just 15 minutes. The best part, they commented, was the absence of the stiffling smoke,” smiles Swati.

The club had undertaken this eco-friendly project on a pilot basis, but “we were surprised to be flooded with requests from other families too. However, we want to assess its success in the village before moving on to the next phase.” The stoves have earlier been distributed to households by Rotary clubs in Uttarakhand and Hubli, “and we have received positive feedback about their impact and sustainability from the clubs there.” Each stove which originally costs ` 3,080 was procured at ` 2,500. It takes 21 days to manufacture each lot, she adds. The technicians from the company