Clean Cooking, Clean Living: A case study for rural India
The 10th annual GPPN Conference, hosted by the Sciences Po School of Public Affairs, featured students' solution oriented ideas and prototypes to address public policy challenges identified by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To participate, each GPPN member school carefully selected up to five student teams to present their projects and compete for the GPPN prize. The result: 32 teams from around the world met in Paris to showcase their ideas on how to solve some of the most pressing global challenges of today.
As rural electrification is not a viable solution in the short term, it is necessary to envisage shifting the consumption away from fossil fuels such as coal biomass. We propose to divest rural India’s energy consumption from these sources towards less polluting alternatives through two options: (1) increase the Availability of Biogas: India has the largest cattle population in the entire world which is largely present in rural areas. The state of Madhya Pradesh has the maximum of this population. If judiciously used the waste from this cattle population can be the source of not just clean energy but excellent organic fertilizer across homes in India. (2) Providing clean cook stoves to rural households: Providing clean cook stoves to rural households is not a new idea; more efficient, sustainable, and less health damaging technologies exist.
Meet the team
Mariyam Raza Haider is currently pursuing a Master’s in Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Her core interests are international affairs and media, political risks analysis and gender-rights advocacy. At the school, she leads the student group - Bridging GAP, promoting a discourse on gender identity and its social construction; and also works as a contributing international affairs writer for LKY School’s in-house magazine. She has previously worked as a Political Security Analyst with International SOS and Control Risks.
Caroline Brouillette is currently a Master of Public Policy student at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew School, where her research focuses on the political economy of international development. She graduated in International Studies with a Minor in Law from the University of Ottawa, in Canada. After graduation, she led a Millennium Development Goal project for a Canadian NGO in Burkina Faso. She is passionate about social innovation, human-centered design and environmental issues, and has been involved in the startup scene both in Montreal and in Singapore.
Chandan Sarma is currently a student of Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He did his undergrad from National Institute of Technology (NIT) Silchar, India. Apart from 2.5 years of experience in working in corporate India, he has worked extensively at the grassroots with Indigenous people on rural livelihoods, social and gender justice with civil society groups in India. He is a summer research policy assistant at Daawitya.
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