Delhi’s poor return to dirty fuel in COVID-19 lockdown

[新德里] Covid-19锁定揭露了许多真相，但没有一个像印度首都新德里存在的贫困那样鲜明，因为绝望的城市贫困家庭被迫切换到伍德和粪便来保持房屋大火。

Astudyreleased this month by theenvironmental非政府组织Chintan暗示城市贫困可能比印度的农村地区更糟，因为不卫生的生活条件，包括高室内pollutionlevels generated by burning biomass in confined living spaces.

According to the study 36 per cent of low-income housing groups in New Delhi rely on ‘unclean’ sources of fuel for their cooking needs. About a third of Delhi’s population of 20 million people live in sub-standard housing, according to an official planning document released this year.

Chintan’s study, based on a two-phase survey to study the impact ofCOVID-19锁定表明，减少收入驱动了近49％的低收入住房集团（超过500万人），以放弃更清洁的液体石油气体（LPG）并使用固体燃料。

Chintan tracked eight communities across Delhi during the lockdown and for five weeks after it was lifted to assess fuel usage. A second dataset was drawn up using 61 waste picker households that were given LPG gas cylinders.

Interestingly, less than 24 per cent of households were using LPG for cooking before Chintan stepped in with a relief programme. So, households in both the experimental and control groups were equally unlikely to have been using LPG for cooking. It also means that unless LPG is provided free or subsidised to poor urban households they were not likely to use it despite being exposed to high levels of indoor air pollution from complete or partial reliance on unclean fuels.

According to Shaily Jha, aresearchanalyst at theCouncil on Energy, Environment and Water, the urban poor just cannot pay upfront for clean cooking gas but must wait for subsidies.

“I prefer to use LPG but I cannot afford it and use whatever I can get hold of to cook meals for my family,” says Suman Devi, a housemaid. “This makes me cough incessantly but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Clearly, income was a major factor in the choice of fuels — many returned to using LPG once the lockdown was lifted, the survey shows.

Bharati Chaturvedi, Chintan’s founder-director, estimates that poor urban households in Delhi cannot afford to spend more than $US5 a month on clean cooking fuel and that they will need assistance fromgovernment或其他方案。

“COVID-19 lockdowns have so weakened the economy that LPG prices have been going through the roof and no one is stepping in with an intervention to improve Delhi’s reputation as the world’s smoggiest capital”

Ranjit Devraj*

The problem though is that COVID-19 lockdowns have so weakened the economy that LPG prices have been going through the roof and no one is stepping in with an intervention to improve Delhi’s reputation as the世界上最昏迷的首都.

对于像Devi这样的人来说，严酷的现实是，对于液化石油气的圆柱体来说，最多只能持续两个月的液化石油气缸来说太贵了。似乎没有什么比贫穷那样肮脏。

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Asia & Pacific desk.

*This article has been amended on 10 May 2021 to correct the attribution of the quote, which was earlier misattributed to Jonathan Cushing, Transparency International’s global health team.