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After days spent navigating forest-fringed settlements in Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh, the journey curved south. On February 12, 2026, we drove roughly 235-240 km into Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh—a district known for rice and oilseed milling, cotton textiles and timber, but also shaped by a history of Naxalite-Maoist insurgency along its forested edges.
As we entered what locals call the “rice bowl of central India,” we paused at a roadside dhaba for lunch. A plate of steaming aromatic IR 64 rice with dal, vegetables and fish arrived—simple and familiar after three days in Madhya Pradesh. Refreshed, we continued through stretches of forest, hills and meadows, scanning for villages near forest areas where the pressures of energy access is most visible.
About 70 km from Rajnandgaon, Malpuri, an Adivasi-dominated village with 128 families, according to the 2011 census, offered the first clear window into this reality in this state. We spotted Madhu Mandavi, a 36-year-old daily wage labourer, plastering her courtyard with cow dung. The practice, she says, is inherited.
Madhu and her husband work at Raja Ram Maize, a starch factory in Rajnandgaon. She depends on a personal liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) connection, spending about Rs 1,000 per refill, which lasts less than a month for a family of four. But the economics of cooking have shifted sharply. After the February 28, 2026, geopolitical conflict disrupted supply chains, prices of fuel, including LPG, rose across the board. In Malpuri, firewood now costs Rs 1,400-Rs 1,500 per quintal, a 40-50 per cent increase, while dung cakes cost Rs 2 per piece. A 14.2 kg LPG cylinder is Rs 200-Rs 300 costlier than its earlier price of Rs 920.
A few houses away, Kuleswar Sahu, a 30-year-old electrician, makes a different calculation. His five-member family primarily uses a chulha, even though they have access to the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), launched in 2016 to expand access to clean cooking fuel among rural and low-income households that would otherwise depend on polluting sources such as firewood and dung. Beneficiaries are provided a stove and an initial LPG cylinder free of cost, with subsequent refills subsidised.
For 2025–26, the government has set a targeted subsidy of Rs 300 per 14.2 kg cylinder, applicable for up to nine refills annually. Data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) under the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas show that the scheme covered around 105.4 million beneficiaries as of April 23, 2026.
However, a persistent gap remains between access and sustained usage on the ground.
PMUY provides free LPG connections to adult women (aged 18 and above) from poor households that do not already have an LPG connection. In practice, however, discrepancies persist. In the case of the two families, the only distinguishing factor was that Kuleswar had secured a subsidised connection in his mother’s name despite already having a personal LPG connection, highlighting gaps in targeting and verification.
“We have to think several times before spending a rupee. With rising prices of everything, expenditure has gone up, but income hasn’t increased substantially,” Kuleswar tells Down To Earth (DTE). His monthly expenses include about Rs 3,000 on petrol for daily travel of 40-60 km (to and from Rajnandgaon and Arjuni) and Rs 5,000-Rs 6,000 on household needs. His electricity bill is around Rs 400-Rs 500 per month.
Madhu’s household, by comparison, spends Rs 200-Rs 350 on electricity, rising to Rs 700 or more in summer, and Rs 2,000-Rs 2,500 on groceries and staples. Daily wages have increased to Rs 200 from Rs 160-Rs 170 about five years ago, but the gains are modest against rising living costs.
In nearby Dhamansara village, Vishweswar Mandavi, a 45-year-old rajmistri (master mason), reflects a similar balancing act. He earns Rs 400-Rs 500 a day, while his sons together earn about Rs 20,000 per month. His electricity bill is Rs 500-Rs 600. Transport costs have doubled to Rs 20-Rs 30 per trip from Rs 10 earlier, prompting him to walk to work and save up to Rs 60 daily. His household relies largely on firewood and dung cakes, using LPG sparingly. He buys those because he lacks farmland and time to collect logs from the forest; a two-course meal requires two logs and two to three dung cakes.
These village-level realities mirror broader trends in Chhattisgarh. According to the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) 78th round Multiple Indicator Survey (2020-21), 84.2 per cent of households rely on biomass such as firewood, crop residue and dung cake, while only 14.8 per cent use cleaner fuels like LPG, natural gas or biogas. As of April 20, 2026, about 72,000 LPG cylinders are supplied daily in the state, according to a Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas statement. Despite high connection rates, rural Chhattisgarh is among the states with lowest LPG usage (under 30-35 per cent), often falling behind in sustaining regular refills.
The continued reliance on biomass comes at a cost that extends beyond household budgets. Cooking over inefficient stoves exposes families, especially women and children, to household air pollution (HAP). Globally, HAP caused an estimated 3.2 million premature deaths in 2020, according to the World Health Organization. Indoor fine particulate matter (PM2.5) levels can reach 106-512 μg/m³, far exceeding rural ambient levels of 22-112 μg/m³, and contributed to about 0.6 million deaths in India in 2019.
“Indoor air pollution is a well-recognised problem, yet we have not been able to solve it at the scale required,” says Anumita Roychowdhury of the Centre for Science and Environment. Indoor emissions also contribute nearly 30 per cent to outdoor air pollution in India, blurring the line between the two.
The burden is deeply gendered. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, women account for 43-85 per cent of fuelwood-related work in homegardens and 45-74 per cent in fences and hedges. In 105 surveyed households, women handled fuelwood tasks in all cases, with only 33 reporting male participation. They typically store fuelwood for 8-10 months and spend about five hours daily—two hours collecting fuel and three hours cooking, often stretching their total workday to 11-14 hours, compared to about 10 hours for men.
Over a fortnight, DTE travelled through 15 villages to examine two persistent questions. First, why despite the reach of PMUY, 56.1 per cent of rural India still relies on biomass, according to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019-21). Second, why energy-related expenses are rising faster than food.
Data from the NSSO’s Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (2022-23) show monthly per capita consumption expenditure 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, an increase of 224 per cent. In comparison, food expenditure rose by 156 per cent.
In Chhattisgarh, rural monthly per capita consumption expenditure stands at Rs 2,466. Of this, 8.77 per cent is spent on fuel and lighting and 8.13 per cent on conveyance. Together, energy-related expenses account for 31 per cent of non-food expenditure and 16.9 per cent of total expenditure.
Part of a Down To Earth series based on field reporting across rural India.