Forest to flame: Why rural India still cooks on firewood despite LPG access

On our way to Mandla district in Madhya Pradesh from Jabalpur on February 9, 2026, we stopped at a village called Chirai Dongri at around 5.30 pm. It is is nestled in a dense forest along River Narmada. We wanted to speak with local headloaders, who carry forest produce on foot to sell in nearby towns.

We did not have to wait long. As we entered the village, a group of women emerged from the forest on a dirtroad, each balancing bundles of twigs and firewood on their heads. Curious, I approached them to ask from where they sourced the wood and how they will be using it. One of them, Saraswati Bairagi, smiled and replied, “We get firewood from the forest every evening after work for cooking, heating and other purposes.”

Bairagi works as a sahayika (helper) at the village anganwadi centre. She owns a private liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) connection and is aware of the health risks associated with smoke from a traditional chulha (mud / clay stove). Yet, economics dictates her choices.

At her home, with brown boundary walls in the yard were freshly plastered with cow dung, she explained the trade-offs. “A 14.2 kg cylinder now costs about Rs 920 and does not last two months for my family of two if I use it for cooking meals. Besides, refills are not always reliable. When a refill coincides with other expenses, such as school fees or medical visits, I have to adjust elsewhere. So I try to economise,” she said.

Her neighbour, Jharna Bai, depended even more heavily on biomass. She earns a livelihood through occasional fishing, selling her catch at the local haat (market) with her son. A beneficiary of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), she receives LPG refills at a subsidised rate of Rs 620. She recalled the pride her family felt when government officials delivered the LPG stove and cylinder just before the COVID-19 pandemic. But that optimism faded quickly.

“Paying for refills became difficult,” Bai said. “When we received the cylinder, my husband was alive. He worked as a daily-wage labourer and together, we earned about Rs 5,000 a month. Now my son works with me. What we earn from occasional fishing and sale in the local haat is barely enough for two meals a day. We cannot afford even the subsidised cylinder.”

The empty cylinder lay in a corner of her home, neatly covered and repurposed as a stand for utensils. Bai now cooks on a traditional chulha. Each afternoon, after returning from the market and preparing lunch, she joins other women to forage for firewood in the forest, returning by evening.

Launched in May 2016, PMUY aims to provide clean cooking fuel, such as LPG, to rural and deprived households that would otherwise rely on polluting alternatives like firewood, coal and cow-dung cakes. Beneficiaries receive an LPG stove and their first cylinder free of cost; subsequent refills are subsidised. For 2025-26, a targeted subsidy of Rs 300 per 14.2 kg cylinder was provided for up to nine refills annually.

Our next stop was Chhattisgarh. But before that, on the evening of February 12, we visited another forested village, Tintni, further into Mandla district, where the story repeated itself in a slightly different form. Most of the residents of this village are headloaders living in kaccha houses without LPG access. For instance, Kumar Lal Uladhi (72), a headloader by trade, gathers firewood from nearby forests and walks nearly 10 kilometres to Mandla town to sell it — often barefoot. By avoiding transport, he saves about Rs 40 a day, nearly half the daily expenses of his five-member household. Some days, his bundles go unsold; on better days, he earns Rs 100-150 per bundle. On average, he sells three to four bundles a week, earning Rs 400-500.

Firewood collection, for Uladhi, is both livelihood and lifeline. Since his son’s death three years ago, he has supported the family, while his widowed daughter-in-law, Ramkali Uladhi (31), supplements income through daily-wage labour. Still, LPG remains out of reach. “A private LPG connection is unthinkable for us,” he said, adding that he applied for one under PMUY three years ago but has yet to receive it.

As the escalating war in West Asia wreaks havoc on energy prices, LPG cylinders have become unaffordable for Bai, whose reliance has shifted completely to her chulha. Prices of firewood and dung cakes have started registering an upward trend, too. In Madhya Pradesh’s Tintni village of Mandla, Ramkali, said firewood prices are up 25 per cent, and dung cakes have become twice as expensive. “This will, hopefully, earn us a decent income and we can afford an LPG cylinder,” she added.

According to the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell under the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, about 103.4 million beneficiaries were covered under PMUY as of January 1, 2026. Yet, access has not translated into sustained use.

Two key questions emerged upon analysis of household consumption data. First, why does 56.1 per cent of rural India still rely on firewood, dung cakes and other biomass despite the wide reach of PMUY? The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) 78th round Multiple Indicator Survey (2020–21) showed that more than 46 per cent of rural households continue to cook with biomass.

Second, why have energy- and mobility-related expenses risen in rural household budgets, even as overall consumption remains modest? NSSO’s Household Consumption-Expenditure Surveys (HCES) revealed that spending on energy-related items (fuel, lighting and conveyance) has grown faster than food expenditure. Monthly per capita consumption expenditure (MPCE) on energy rose from Rs 174 (12 per cent of total expenditure) in 2011–12 to Rs 565 (13.7 per cent) in 2023–24, marking a 224 per cent increase. In comparison, food expenditure rose by 156 per cent over the same period.

In rural Madhya Pradesh, the average monthly per capita consumption expenditure was Rs 3,113, as per NSSO’s HCES 2022-23 data. Energy-related expenses accounted for roughly a quarter of non-food expenditure. Despite this, over 75 per cent of rural households in the state still depend on traditional biomass for cooking.

State-level data further underscored the persistence of fuelwood use: Chhattisgarh (84.2 per cent), Odisha (76 per cent), West Bengal (76 per cent) and Madhya Pradesh (72.5 per cent) showed extremely high dependence on biomass. According to NFHS-5, 41 per cent of households in India rely on solid fuels, with the share rising sharply to 56.1 per cent in rural areas, compared to just 9.5 per cent in urban India.

Despite earlier LPG expansion efforts such as the Rajiv Gandhi Gramin LPG Vitrak Yojana (2009) and the more recent PMUY, the gap between access and sustained usage remains stark.

To examine these contradictions, Down To Earth travelled through 15 villages across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh over a fortnight in February.

In villages like Chirai Dongri and Tintni, the daily rhythm of gathering firewood continues, DTE found. This underscores that energy access, in rural India, is as much about affordability and reliability as it is about infrastructure.

Part of a Down To Earth series based on field reporting across rural India.