3 min readBhopalApr 1, 2026 09:05 AM IST
Amchakala is a village of around 60-70 homes nestled amidst the famous Bhimbetka rock caves, in Madhya Pradesh’s Raisen district. It was five years ago that its residents came under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, a scheme aimed at bringing LPG connections to rural households. With that, its kitchens moved from firewood to gas stoves, offering women a smoke-free, dignified way of cooking.
But now, the chulha has returned to Amchakala. The smoke from their clay stoves, fed with cow dung cakes and firewood, rises before 5 am now, an hour earlier because the women have to accommodate the extra effort and time it takes to cook on the chulha.
While a senior official in the Food and Civil Supplies Department claimed there was “adequate supply”, LPG bookings have surged across Madhya Pradesh, leading to delays. Amchakala, at the end of a fragile last-mile supply chain, simply waits longer.
The smoke rises from Anuprekha Jaiswal’s house. She has to cook for 12 people in the Jaiswal household, a joint family where the men farm on 5 acres and double up as factory workers.
By the time the first light touches the Bhimbetka ridge, Anuprekha is already on her knees at the chulha, arranging cow dung cakes in a specific geometry. It’s a skill the 65-year-old learned from her mother, but had fallen into disuse since she started cooking on gas. Dried grass goes in next and then, the firewood, balanced across the top of the clay hearth. It takes 10 minutes of coaxing before the flame picks up — 10 minutes in which the smoke, finding no adequate exit from the low kitchen ceiling, pools and descends.
Anuprekha’s eyes are already watering. The day has barely begun. “On gas, rice and dal cook in 15 minutes,” she says, wiping her face with her dupatta. “Now it takes over an hour. You cannot rush a chulha.”
Most women in Amchakala have LPG connections. For nearly a decade, as they got used to the cylinders, the chulhas were pushed to corners, used occasionally for winter warmth or festival cooking. Women also stopped stacking cow dung cakes outside their doors. Now, the dung cakes are back. It burns hotter and dirtier than wood, releasing a smoke that settles into the lungs and stays.
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When the family ran out of gas two weeks ago, the men walked into the forest to collect firewood. The Ratapani Tiger Reserve begins exactly where Amchakala’s fields end. Now, every morning, men with axes and ropes walk across that boundary. “We risk our lives to collect firewood,” says Sunil Jaiswal, Anuprekha’s nephew who works at a local factory as a labourer.
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