Harnessing social capital to achieve social development goals: collective action for fuel transition among urban poor in India

A significant percentage of the urban population in India, mostly the poor living in slums, still use conventional cooking fuels which have adverse impact on health as well as environment. Though liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for domestic cooking is subsidized, poor households still do not change over to it because of its high upfront cost. A pilot project was initiated to explore the viability of a community-based cooperative solution in pooling financial resources to meet the upfront cost and thereby to enable slum households to make the transition from firewood and kerosene to LPG.