07 Nov Mewar Angithi Deployment – Phase I

After conducting real world cooking tests in ten different households of four villages in Rajasthan, India, we completed the deployment of approximately 1000 Mewar Angithis (MA) in these villages through our ongoing collaboration with the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), Udaipur. The cooking tests showed that, by and large, the women were able to reduce their wood use by 40% using the MAs. They also noted a significant reduction in smoke during the cooking using the MAs. Unfortunately, our particulate measurement hardware failed in the field and we were not able to quantify the reduction in smoke.

Over time, as the women adjust to the more efficient burning of firewood that the MAs facilitate, we expect the savings to asymptotically improve towards what was observed in lab tests at MPUAT.

The four villages were all located in the Kumbalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary of Udaipur district in Rajasthan:

Karech, with 268 households per 2010 census,
Kyarakhet, with 121 households,
Cheetrawas, with 144 households, and
Reechwara, with 368 households

The revenue village of Reechwara includes four villages, Reechwara, Char Ka Khet, Sakariya and PeepalSarai. 

We conducted meetings in each of these villages to seek the blessings of the villagers, especially the elders, for the deployment. And in each and every village, we were told that the deployment would be welcomed by the women of the village.

We also conducted extensive surveys of women heads of households in 100 representative homes in the four villages to assess current economic and social conditions prior to the deployment. We will be conducting follow-up surveys in these households in January 2016 to assess the impact of our deployment and to evaluate the condition of the MAs after roughly six months of use.

The 1000+ MA units for the deployment were manufactured locally in Udaipur by Sagar Metal Fabricators using 2mm thick High Carbon Stainless steel sheets and laser cutting machinery.