Firewood and dung cake
Topic: Energy Resources of India: Conventional and Non-conventional · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 5 "Minerals and Energy Resources"
Meaning
Firewood and cattle dung cake are the main traditional cooking and heating fuels of rural India. Class 10 NCERT estimates that they meet over 70 per cent of rural household energy needs. Both cause problems. Forests are shrinking, so firewood is getting scarce. Burning dung wastes manure that could feed the soil. The smoke also harms the people cooking indoors. Cleaner options are LPG, given under the PM Ujjwala Yojana (2016), and biogas. Clean cooking is still not universal (verify current).
Example
In the villages of central India, women often collect firewood from nearby forests and pat cattle dung into flat cakes to dry for the kitchen fire.
Don't confuse with
- Gobar gas (biogas): This also uses cattle dung, but it does not burn the dung directly. The dung rots in a closed plant and gives off gas for fuel. The leftover slurry is still good manure, so this is the most efficient way to use dung.
Related concepts
- Classification of energy resources
- Conventional energy sources
- Non-conventional energy sources
- Fossil fuel