While the slums in Hyderabad may not look as dilapidated as those in Mumbai, access to cooking fuel is quite dismal. People still use firewood, which gives out black acrid smoke. Sometimes without the wood, they even use plastics and trash to make a fire. An economist from Berlin’s Humbolt University joined hands with India’s TERI to understand the problems as these women spent the same on wood as they would have to on cleaner LPG stoves. Apparently, cost was just one of the factors. Using innovative methods to build a collective credit pool withint the society, Christine Werthmann helped prove a model which was working, but cannot be scaled without the cooperation of local authorities and gas companies. Read more here.