Bramhapuri, Maharashtra: A nippy November night in 2019. Kishor Bansod is circled by a rapt audience of more than hundred. A mic in one hand and a bucket of water in another, he pours into a 3.5 feet high black, cylindrical vessel. The burner, at the bottom, fuelled by two handfuls of toor dal stems, some cow dung, and a little bit of firewood, soon begins to heat the water. Bansod invites people from the crowd to come forward and touch the hot iron surface of the vessel. Hot water soon pours from the release pipe, into another bucket. A volunteer takes the bucket around. Everyone takes turns to dip their fingers. It’s hot, perfect for bathing.

Heater of Hope: A typical forest-bordering village in the Central Indian Landscape.
A typical forest-bordering village in the Central Indian Landscape. Photo: Prathamesh Shirsat/WCT

Offered by the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT) at a 75% subsidy, the heater, locally known as bumbb, consumes just one-third of the firewood consumed by the traditional stove to heat the same quantity of water, and heats the water at least four times faster. But most importantly, it heats water perfectly even when fuelled with crop residue, cow dung cakes and dried leaves, combined with negligible quantities of firewood, thus greatly reducing the need to collect wood from the forest.

The Bramhapuri Forest Division is contiguous with one of the India’s finest tiger-bearing Protected Areas, the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra, and harbours a healthy population of tigers and other wildlife. It also has over 600 villages. People here share the landscape with wild animals, and depend on the forest for their daily needs, most importantly, firewood. The act of heating water for bathing is singularly responsible for 31.8 percent of daily firewood usage time in Bramhapuri’s villages.

From two pilot villages in September 2019, WCT has now equipped nearly 2500 households from ten villages. The bumbb has reduced fuelwood collection visits to the forest by 28 percent, thereby also reducing the drudgery of women who carry firewood on their heads, in addition to reducing their exposure to wild animals. Looking at the successful and widespread acceptance and adoption of the water heater by the people, in January 2022, the Maharashtra Forest Department partnered with WCT to take the water heater to even more forest-bordering villages around Tadoba.

But what does it take to achieve widespread acceptance and adoption of an intervention like this, especially when it is not offered free of cost? To understand the research that went into it, I sat down with WCT’s interdisciplinary Conservation Behaviour team including economist Aniket Bhatkhande, who heads the team, economists Pooja Dewoolkar and Gauri Atre, social psychologists Prachi Paranjpye and Pragya Acholia, development scientist Tamanna Ahmad who is responsible for the implementation of the project, and Kishor Bansod who looks after the on-ground execution.

Q.: How did it all begin? What was the first question or set of questions that all of you, as researchers, set out to answer?

Aniket: It all began on the solid foundation of camera trapping and GIS work that our colleague Aditya Joshi had done in Bramhapuri. The camera trap data identified vulnerable villages but also frequent and high risk behaviours that affect the community and the environment. We chose firewood usage as our initial inquiry as nearly 99% of the households depend on firewood and continue to face the problems that accompany it, like air pollution and drudgery. The Land Use Land Cover Change detected through satellite imagery revealed a constant reduction in forest cover that increased the vulnerability of the community dependent on it. For a holistic understanding of firewood usage, we collected data on the community’s positive and negative interactions with their environment. This is the approach that our President Dr. Anish Andheria has nurtured at WCT, which entails long-term transdisciplinary inquiries with the aim of contributing to policy and management of ecosystems.

We must also mention HT Parekh Foundation thatsupported the research as well as the intervention in its formativephase. KCT Group contributed in scaling up the project, and BNP Paribas India Foundation is now supporting the expansion of the project across the district.

A woman uses the water heater and the fuel (crop residue) is seen in the background.
A woman uses the water heater and the fuel (crop residue) is seen in the background. Photo: Tamanna Ahmad/WCT
A girl uses a firewood-fuelled chulha to heat water. Firewood burning has adverse health effects.
A girl uses a firewood-fuelled chulha to heat water. Firewood burning has adverse health effects. Photo: Prathamesh Shirsat/WCT

Q.: How did concepts of economics come into play in understanding why and how people collect and use firewood?

Aniket: Economics is the science of allocation of resources. Put simply, it helps figure out the best way to use resources so that everyone benefits. Microeconomics involves studying these decisions for a household. Firewood collection and usage are decisions of the household that are influenced by factors such as incomes, access, availability of alternatives, taste preferences for food, and attitudes towards the resource. Also, firewood collection and usage primarily being a woman’s task, it is important to understand its gendered aspects. An economic model measures the influence that thesefactors have on firewood usage. We also tried to model the factors influencing alternatives to firewood like cooking gas (LPG).

Q.: What did the research on the alternatives reveal?

Pooja: While the firewood study was underway, we also tried to understand what drives the demand for LPG, as it was being offered at a subsidised rate as a firewood alternative. While it is a cleaner alternative with a positive impact on the environment and women’s health, it is way more expensive than firewood, which is virtually free (barring the energy and time cost of collecting it). As expected, income levels were the biggest deciding factor. However, there were morefactors at play. With an LPG connection, the cost of refilling includes not just cost of the cylinder but also the cost of transportation. Also, LPG being expensive, it is rationed and used sparingly for cooking,and never for water heating. We also enquired about other alternatives like electric water heating rods – but yet again, electricity consumption and safety concerns were raised by the community.

Q.: So LPG has no effect on firewood consumption for water heating because it is expensive. And firewood is a ‘common’, available free of cost. Would it help if the communities are provided more profitable livelihoods? Would they then be able to afford and switch to alternatives?

Pooja: The effect of increasing incomes is not that straightforward. We tried to understand energy consumption across different income groups and found that LPG adoption was indeed higher (as much as 100%) in the higher income groups. But that did not translate in lowering their firewood consumption. As incomes increase, so does consumption – and energy consumption is no different!

Therefore, addressing affordability concerns for cleaner fuels is only half the battle won.To bring about a behavioral change that guarantees a long-term switch,we need a more nuanced understanding of on-ground practices.

Q.: How did the team study water heating practices in the households in these villages? What were the critical insights from those surveys?

Tamanna: We did qualitative interviews to study fuel collection and usage patterns, and perceptions towards LPG and fuelwood across social groups. Once the area of intervention was finalised, we carried out rapid ethnography where we lived with families in the villages to understand their fuel usage for cooking and water heating, along with water usage.

We observed that the chulha for water heating is lit at dawn, and it keeps burning slowly for hours till everyone in the household is done bathing as the vessel is emptied and refilled several times. (This is one of the areas our water heater manages to save fuel on, because once the water is heated, it can easily provide for a family of four and does not require burning fuel for each individual.) Despite the temperature in summer, hot water continued to be used for bathing. We also observed that due to the strenuous nature of fuelwood collection, it was a precious resource and was not shared.Even in the same household, everyone had their individual pile. This behaviour has underlying psychological factors such as individualism at play.

Besides these, one of the findings was that there was preference for goods that make life convenient. Hence, convenience was a key point used in designing the promotion campaign for the water heater.

Q.: The project aims to influence a shift in behaviour. How did applying psychology help in the research and in designing the intervention? What were the revelations?

Prachi: The first step is to understand behavior, and social psychological constructs help us do that. Understanding psychological constructs like group behaviour, and the attitudes and perceptions of the communities towards their surroundings, helped in understanding the situation better.

If we make the desired behavioural change complicated, adoption takes longer. For instance, because bumbb is easy and efficient to use, transition from chulha to bumbb was smoother. People initially did use some amount of firewood in the bumbb, but now they largely use crop residue.

Data also revealed the community’s ire towards the forest department, a deep-rooted feeling of experiencing injustice at the hands of the government machinery, and fondness for their own village. While the aim of the intervention is to reduce firewood extraction, we did not go on to tell the communities that they have to protect the forest. We simply wanted the community to adopt the water heating solution only if they felt it was beneficial to them at multiple levels.

Q.: How did you understand the community’s relationship with their environment and landscape, and their perception of their place in it? How did it help in designing the intervention?

Prachi: You can’t separate the communities and the forest. Living around the forest comes with its set of challenges and benefits. Psychological factors like attachment, identity and aspiration are part and parcel of their lives.

One of the questions that arise is, that in spite of experiencing trouble and limitation because of the forest, why do these communities continue to live there? One of the reasons is of course the economic constraint, but another thing that plays an important role is how they look at the forest and the attachment they have with the place. I got responses like “Given a choice or an opportunity to move to a city, I’d still choose living in a village but would want my children to move to a city”. Here we can see the explicit attachment towards the place and the forest but we can also see how they aspire a better life for their children. This may come across as dissonance but this very thing was observed along with a slight increase in individualism over collectivism. We used this factor while designing the intervention. The data suggested how people are leaning towards an individualistic lifestyle and that independently owned water heaters would be preferred over community-based ones.

Also, the communities have been dependent on the forest for so many years, that in their perception, they are not harming the forest; they are just doing what is necessary to live. When people have such strong perceptions about their surroundings, one cannot tell them to ‘not harm’ or ‘protect’ the forest because they don’t bear malice.

Q.: Why did the team choose an independent water heater for each household and not a community-owned and shared heater? What research went into making this choice?

Tamanna: We assessed the two models, individual and community-owned, based on our findings from the various qualitative and quantitative studies. We also evaluated existing community-based initiatives such as the water ATMs, and observed the challenges in their adoption and maintenance. In terms of daily water usage, collection and heating practices, a community model had several limitations, such as the mode of carrying hot water back from the water booth, and the willingness of households located further from the unit to put in the effort of fetching it instead of simply lighting a chulha at home. The individual water heater on other hand simply replaces the existing chulha, and is much easier to operate, making it more favorable to shift to as a new everyday behaviour.

Prachi: Our research showed a consistent shift towards individualism over collectivism. In qualitative enquiries, we also checked willingness to pay for a community water heating system. We found people not being in favour of using any community-based resource. We observed facilities like water ATMs in Chandrapur, where you pay INR 5 for 20 litres of filtered water. It looks like a great solution but when asked, there are a lot of reservations with new technology making it harder for people to adapt.

Tamanna and I stayed in the village to see what all a woman does in a day, and how much water she uses. We observed that they are extremely busy through the day. Under such circumstances, there is an obvious preference for an independent chulha at home rather than standing in long queues to collect hot water.

Looking at all these factors, the independent bumbb was considered the best fit.

The thousandth beneficiary receives her water heater as the Conservation Behaviour team comes together for the distribution.
The thousandth beneficiary receives her water heater as the Conservation Behaviour team comes together for the distribution. Photo: WCT

Q.: A lot of times, NGOs offer solutions to marginalized communities as freebies. You offered a solution that would not just make their lives easier but also help arrest the degradation of forests. And you did not offer it completely free. Yet the community adopted it, and paid for it, even during the pandemic. How and why?

Pooja: We rarely value something we have free access to – firewood is an example. The objective of shifting some amount of cost on to the communities was twofold – one, they must value the product and its use, and remain invested in its upkeep and maintenance. Two, the price is a reminder that they have paid upfront for a service that is supposed to reduce their efforts of firewood collection – an activity that was cited to be a chronic problem (both from the perspective of expenditure of energy/time and exposure to potentially dangerous wildlife) for the women and therefore it must be used to its fullest capacity.

Most interventions focus on improving adoption rates. Our focus was on not just adoption but long-term usage of the intervention as well. The best way to ensure that was to attach value to the product.

Aniket: Also, we wanted to look at the bigger picture and the constraints of the government, to allow for easier scalability later. We did not want the intervention to just be a pilot experiment but something every household could benefit from. We provided a 75% subsidy which is the subsidy provided under the Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Jan Van Vikas Yojana. This is important, since had we provided a 100% subsidy, the government would have found it difficult to convince the community to pay 25% of the cost under the scheme. This would have been counterproductive since the trust between the forest department and the community is critical in ensuring better management of forest and conflict. This also allowed us to partner with the Forest Department (FD) since the scheme is exactly the same for the community. The Forest Department, under the leadership of the Chief Conservator of Forest, Chandrapur, Mr. N.R. Praveen (IFS), was instrumental in this partnership.

Q.: How did the team communicate the idea to the community and win their confidence?

Prachi: We never said ‘don’t use firewood’ in the campaign, and always spoke about alternatives. Here the principle of not saying anything negative while promoting the intervention was used. Our psychology data revealed ‘place attachment’; so, in the campaign, we used phrases like ‘your village’ and ‘bumbb is coming to our village’. Professor Vivek Belhekar, my mentor and our technical advisor for psychology, took the lead in converting the insights into campaign slogans.

The planning of the bumbb distribution was done in such a way that people got enough time to see the banners and posters and hear the promotional announcements, process what was being offered, and make an informed decision. During village visits, villagers were given an opportunity to talk and demand what they wanted. This ensured that the communities felt heard.

Kishor: We started with putting posters, circulating WhatsApp messages, and making loudspeaker announcements using jingles in the villages. After that, we conducted meetings with important people like the sarpanch and upsarpanch, and Self Help Groups, where we informed people about the bumbb and cleared their doubts. We ensured maximum participation during the bumbb demos. Before the pandemic started, we also went to schools for promotion.

After the demonstrations, we kept one unit back in the village, so people could use and check it for themselves. At the time of distribution, we kept the demo unit and the new unit next to each other, so people could be convinced that they were getting the exact same product. Also, we collected money only at the time of distribution. Mutual trust was sustained through absolute transparency.

Q. What were your monitoring and evaluation methods to assess the outcomes?

Pooja: In order to be able isolate the effect that the heater had on water heating, we used an evaluation technique called the difference-in-differences method. We collected data of all the households from villages where the intervention was rolled out (‘treatment’ villages) as well as one village where it hadn’t been rolled out yet (‘control’ village). The data revealed that the usage of cow dung cakes (locally called ‘govrya’) had nearly doubled. While these cakes were used as fuel earlier as well, their usage in the bumbb results in the water being hot for a longer time due to the slow-burning nature of the fuel. Additionally, the frequency of visits to the forest to collect firewood also reduced.

Q.: Apart from reducing visits to the forest, which clearly reduces firewood collection and the probability of human-wildlife interactions, how has the bumbb changed the lives of the families?

Tamanna: Reaching a high threshold of adoption has led to the evolution of community behaviours adapted to the water heater. In one of the villages, in the third round of distribution, by when over 50% households in the village had adopted the water heater, one of the women who was there to receive her unit said that her friends have stopped going for fuelwood collection because they all have the bumbb, and so she does not have anyone to go along with.

Several families in these villages buy firewood by the cartload. Now, because of the bumbb, people have reported that theirfirewood requirement has reduced, saving them money. Besides this, the water heater has really impacted the chore of water heating itself, which was largely borne by women.The women point out that unlike before, children and men have started heating their water themselves.

Kishor: Earlier, people would often burn crop residue, and leave cow dung as is; but because of the bumbb,both of these waste products are being used for heating water. I have also heard that people from other villages borrow these heaters when they have social gatherings.

In summers, people just store water in the bumbb and because of the heat the water gets heated automatically, without any fuel.

A sarpanch told me that the village now looks cleaner because people collect the dry waste and use it as fuel for the bumbb.

Q. As the newest members of the team, Gauri and Pragya, you went to Bramhapuri much after the project was implemented. What were the differences you observed in villages where the intervention has been rolled out, compared to those where it isn’t?

Gauri: The key differences between the two kinds of villages were observed both at the institutional and individual level. Villages with the water heater had a proactive panchayat committee, driven enough to introduce and promote an intervention like this. Given that a panchayat institution is present in every village, it was inherently the incentives and motivations of the members which determined successful adoption. At the individual level, there was a perceived betterment of life amongst those who had adopted the water heater. This was evident through conversations wherein users themselves listed the many benefits of owning the heater.

Any moments that gave you a field perspective of the theoretical insights you gained in the classroom?
Pragya: A lively interaction with a group of women in the Kitali village served as an example of the idea of conformity, which indicates the influence society and individuals have on each other, which leads to impacting people’s actions and behaviors in order to fit in with the group. They specifically singled out a fellow woman for not owning and using the water heater. The woman herself mentioned an interest in buying the heater since everyone she knew, owned one. The demand for the heater was organically created amongst individuals, even in villages without the intervention, through experience sharing. The heater, therefore, assumed the status of a necessity and became an aspirational commodity.

Q.: Where does it go from here? What are the next plans?

Aniket: As I mentioned earlier, this is a part of the long-term transdisciplinary inquiry that we have initiated. We will continue to monitor the impact of the bumbb at not only the household but also village and landscape levels. Our aim will be that no woman should undergo the drudgery of carrying firewood and face the air pollution that comes with burning it. We have already worked with Google Research India on identifying sensitive areas for conflict in Bramhapuri. We will explore behavioural aspects of other interactions between the community and the forest, ensuring that the aspirations of the communities that live around ecosystemsare met in a way that improvestheir environment. We are also catalysing the spread of this intervention through other NGOs such as Junglescapes, who have distributed over 1500 units of the water heater in several villages around, and anti-poaching camps within, the Bandipur Tiger Reserve. The idea is to scale-up this intervention to achieve a win-win for communities and forested ecosystems.

About the author: Rizwan Mithawala is a Conservation Writer with the Wildlife Conservation Trust and a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Writers. He has previously worked as an environment journalist with a national newspaper.

Disclaimer: The author is associated with Wildlife Conservation Trust. The views and opinions expressed in the article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Wildlife Conservation Trust.

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