The University of Arizona Press
July 9, 2026
Why do so many Indian women in India continue to use their wood-burning, smoke-spewing stoves called “chulhas” when they have other options? In the latest University of Arizona podcast, Miranda Melcher interviews Meena Khandelwal, author of Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India about women’s local low-tech technology as well as craft and work in Rajasthan, India.
In the interview, Khandelwal, an anthropologist and women’s studies scholar, explains how environmentalists have blamed deforestation on the use of chulhas: “These stoves were mostly used by women, and they cut wood to use as fuel for daily cooking. So my engineering colleague and his students designed a solar cooker. These prototype stoves were abandoned after a couple years in the villages. My colleague realized that he had to better understand women’s cooking practices.” Khandelwal’s colleague invited her to collaborate, but before she went to Rajasthan to do field work, she noted, “I had to learn a whole lot about the region, and the social and environmental history, before I could even have an an opinion about cookstove improvement projects.”
Listen to the entire podcast here.
About the book:
Based on anthropological research in Rajasthan, Cookstove Chronicles 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 technology.
