Part of a Down To Earth series based on field reporting across rural India
In February 2026, Down To Earth (DTE) travelled across at least 20 villages in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh to examine how India’s broader energy transition intersects with the everyday realities of electricity supply, transport costs and cooking fuels in village households.
The global energy system is facing renewed turbulence. Escalating conflict in West Asia, after Israel and the United States launched attacks on Iran before dawn on February 28, has disrupted one of the world’s most critical energy corridors. The Strait of Hormuz, a 33-kilometre-wide maritime passage between Iran and Oman that carries roughly one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows, has been witnessing shipping disruptions, raising concerns over supply shortages and price spikes.
In countries like India, the ripple effects are already being felt in the form of tighter availability and rising costs of fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The Indian government has taken a slew of measures to respond to the latest energy crisis after the 1970s. These include cutting central excise duty on petrol and diesel, imposing export duties on aviation turbine fuel, mandating a temporary shift from LPG cylinders to piped natural gas for households in areas where PNG infrastructure already exists, and reintroducing kerosene through the Public Distribution System (PDS) in 21 States and Union Territories, including regions that had previously been declared kerosene-free, for 60 days to address LPG shortages.
Against this global backdrop, DTE’s reporting turns to rural India, where energy use is shaped less by international geopolitics and more by household income, infrastructure gaps and proximity to natural resources. In many villages, electricity supply remains unreliable, transport costs take up a growing share of earnings and traditional fuels such as firewood continue to underpin daily life, revealing a complex and uneven energy transition unfolding far from policy debates.
Data from the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23 of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) points to a gradual but notable shift in rural spending patterns, with energy taking up a larger share of household consumption.
Rural monthly per capita consumption expenditure (MPCE) on energy and energy services (which includes fuel and light as well as conveyance) was at Rs 536 in 2022-23, accounting for 13.8 per cent of total consumption expenditure. In comparison, the figure was Rs 174, or about 12 per cent of total spending, in 2011-12. This suggests that expenditure on energy and energy services has grown faster than spending on food and several other non-food items.
Three broad trends emerge.
First, electricity expenditure has increased. Expansion of rural electrification and near-universal household connections have led to greater appliance use. Even modest rural homes now commonly use fans, mobile chargers, televisions and, increasingly, coolers. However, reliability and quality of power supply remain inconsistent.
Electrification in India may have crossed 99 per cent, but the quality of electricity varies widely. Field observations across villages visited by DTE show that even a single bulb often struggles to illuminate a small room. Despite having only basic appliances, some households report electricity bills rising sharply.
Second, LPG spending has emerged as a recurring component of household budgets. While LPG connections have expanded rapidly over the past decade, refill frequency varies widely depending on income levels, with many households continuing to rely partly on traditional fuels.
Third, non-food essentials such as transport have also grown as expenditure items, adding pressure on limited rural incomes. The NSSO survey also shows that the share of food in total household expenditure has declined. In rural India, the MPCE share of food fell to about 46 per cent in 2022-23 from 52.9 per cent in 2011-12.
This decline broadly aligns with Engel’s law, which states that as incomes rise, the proportion of expenditure devoted to food tends to fall, even if absolute food spending increases. However, in the rural context, the shift also reflects rising spending on non-food essentials such as energy and mobility.
In other words, while rural households may be spending more in absolute terms on food than before, energy and other recurring costs are taking up a larger share of the consumption basket —a pattern that mirrors the pressures observed in village budgets during DTE’s field visits.
National surveys also show that traditional fuels continue to play a major role in rural energy use despite rapid expansion of LPG connections over the past decade.
Data from the NSS 78th Round Multiple Indicator Survey (2019-21) shows that 33.8 per cent of households in India still rely primarily on firewood, chips and crop residue for cooking. In rural areas, this share rises sharply to 46.7 per cent. LPG is the dominant cooking fuel nationally, used by about 62 per cent of households, but rural usage remains lower at around 49.4 per cent.
The persistence of fuelwood becomes even clearer when examined at the state level. States such as Chhattisgarh (84.2 per cent), Odisha (76 per cent), West Bengal (76 per cent) and Madhya Pradesh (72.5 per cent) continue to show extremely high dependence on biomass, reflecting deep regional disparities shaped by affordability, access and local practices.
The Fifth National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) also highlights the scale of this dependence. According to the survey, 41 per cent of households in India still use solid fuels for cooking, primarily firewood and dung cakes. The dependence is much higher in rural India, where 56.1 per cent of households rely on solid fuels compared to just 9.5 per cent in urban areas.
This reliance has major health implications. Traditional cooking methods using chulhas remain widespread and account for about 94.8 per cent of solid-fuel stoves, exposing households to high levels of indoor air pollution.
Despite major policy interventions such as the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana launched in 2016 (earlier LPG expansion programmes such as the Rajiv Gandhi Gram LPG Vitrak Yojana introduced in 2009) to expand clean cooking access among poor households, access has not always translated into sustained usage.
A 2023 report by the Centre for Science and Environment says that although more than 10 crore (100 million) households have received LPG connections, over half did not refill their cylinders even once, largely because of affordability constraints. With refill costs around Rs 1,100 per cylinder, relying entirely on LPG can take up a substantial share of the income of low-income households.
As a result, many households continue to practise “fuel stacking”, combining LPG with traditional biomass depending on availability and cost.
According to the International Energy Agency’s India Energy Outlook 2021, around 650 million people in India still rely primarily on traditional biomass for cooking. Although the share of biomass in India’s overall energy mix has declined, from about one-fourth in 2000 to roughly 12 per cent in 2019, it remains a significant part of the country’s energy reality.
One such village is Manki in Madhya Pradesh’s Panna district. This tribal village saw electricity for the first time only in March 2016. Even today, headloaders, people who collect, carry and sell firewood for domestic or commercial energy use, depend on nearby forests for their livelihoods.
Barely 10 kilometres from the “diamond city” of Panna and located in a high-risk wildlife conflict zone near the Panna Tiger Reserve, Manki has a population of more than 1,100 people belonging largely to the Sour tribal community, spread across about 250 households.
Around 75 per cent of households still lack access to clean fuel such as LPG, claims Surya Pratap Yadav, brother-in-law of the village sarpanch (head), Anju Yadav. Even households that have LPG connections rarely rely on them for everyday use.
“A clay stove or chulha is used for almost everything: cooking, heating, lighting and boiling water, because it is cheaper and the forest is accessible,” he says.
For many families, the choice reflects a fragile income balance. Kumarji Gaur, a 25-year-old daily wage labourer, supports a family of seven on a monthly income of Rs 8,000-10,000. His household purchases most essentials but gathers fuel from the forest.
Despite applying for an LPG connection under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) in 2020, his family has yet to receive one.
His parents earlier contributed to the household income as firewood headloaders. But an accident left his father injured and his mother fell ill, leaving him the sole earner.
Although Manki is home largely to marginal farmers and agricultural labourers, agriculture offers little relief. The family owns two acres of land, but falling groundwater levels have made cultivation uncertain.
“Only those who have micro-irrigation can grow seasonal crops,” Gaur says. As a result, the family’s monthly expenditure often exceeds income, forcing them to borrow money. A significant share of spending goes toward energy and mobility. The household spends Rs 2,000-3,000 per month on shared auto rides for commuting to work and Rs 200-300 on electricity, which residents say remains unreliable.
Although the village is electrified, residents complain about daily power cuts of two to three hours, and occasionally outages lasting up to a week before repairs are carried out. Basic infrastructure remains limited. DTE spotted only two handpumps across the entire village, while sanitation connections and running water are scarce. Yet nearly every household has a clay stove.
In one such home lives Meena, who cooks for a family of eleven. Her kachha house has only one bulb, which she says “does not shine as bright as the ones in cities.” She has an LPG connection issued under her mother-in-law’s name but rarely uses it.
“Cooking two meals a day for eleven people on LPG is expensive,” she says. “Refilling the cylinder takes a large part of our money, which two daily wage earners cannot afford.”
Like many households in the village, meals remain simple—typically either dal or a vegetable curry with rice or roti.
Unlike in some rural regions where cow dung cakes are widely used, residents here rarely depend on them. The reason again is cost: dung cakes must be purchased, while firewood collected from nearby forests is free.
Five kilometres away, Kunjwan village in the broader Bundelkhand region, inhabited largely by the Pardhi tribal community, presents a slightly different energy picture.
Here, Krishna Das, a 47-year-old taxi driver, was seen returning home with a bundle of twigs tied to his motorbike. He had collected them from the Kerwan beat, a forest administrative unit within the Panna Tiger Reserve and part of the dry deciduous forest ecosystem along the Ken river.
Most households in Kunjwan (around 90 per cent), according to residents, have LPG connections, though many are not under PMUY. Yet firewood remains the main cooking fuel.
“Because the forest is nearby and refilling cylinders costs money, we prefer firewood,” Das says. “LPG is used only during emergencies or when guests arrive and we need to cook quickly.” He says he applied for a PMUY connection in 2021 but has yet to receive one.
In the meantime, he collects around 20 kilograms of firewood once a week. When the forest does not yield enough, he buys two or three bundles (gattas) of firewood (1 bundle = 10-12 sticks/twigs) at Rs 150 per bundle, which lasts about two days. Das says firewood use in his home has declined somewhat since he obtained a personal LPG connection with a Rs 350 subsidy per cylinder, which lasts roughly 1.5 months for his family of five.
Compared to Manki, incomes in Kunjwan are somewhat higher. Das earns Rs 15,000-20,000 a month, depending on taxi rides, and estimates his monthly household expenditure at around Rs 10,000, including Rs 5,000-6,000 on essentials and Rs 500-600 on commuting.
His electricity bill averages Rs 300-500 per month, reflecting the use of a cooler, two fans and several LED bulbs in his pucca house. Still, electricity reliability remains an issue.
“There are power cuts of about one to one-and-a-half hours,” he says. “Earlier, when Kunjwan was just a village, it wasn’t like this. After it became part of the nagar palika, outages became more frequent. Whenever lights go off in Panna town, we are left in the dark.”
Across both villages, however, one fuel has largely disappeared: kerosene. Residents say they no longer use it for cooking or lighting because its price has become unaffordable. Instead, rural energy use in these forest-fringe communities reflects a hybrid reality — LPG cylinders present in many homes, electricity connections in most households, but firewood, unreliable power supply and rising mobility costs continue to shape everyday energy choices.
For policymakers focused on India’s clean energy transition, these kitchens and village budgets offer a reminder that access alone does not define energy security. Affordability, reliability and local resources continue to determine how rural households power their lives.