Energy access for education, health and livelihoods: does local culture mediate who wins and who loses?

Energy access projects often give importance to particular development activities like education, health and livelihoods. Looking through case studies of two energy access projects in rural India, this paper focuses on these three aspects. It tracks on how these purposes are made practical and operationalised into everyday context, and in doing so reworked, disrupted and contested. This paper is based on a 9 month ethnographic research carried out in 5 villages in Bihar, an eastern state of India. The fieldwork involved participant observations, home tours, interviews and group discussions.

This paper argues that education, health and livelihoods are often mediated by the culture of the villages and the roles of gender and social groups are vital in understanding their links with energy. It discusses the importance of education and the role of electricity in mobilising education for various sections of the society. It looks at the role of energy access projects in people’s everyday economies, both commercial and domestic. The paper looks at health impacts of these projects.

The paper argues that due to the complex energy and social and cultural landscape that villagers interact with in their everyday life, the effects and spaces of these projects become gendered. The role of electric lights in livelihoods is linked more to cost saving and socialisation than raising incomes or market development. Indeed, the key beneficiaries in terms of livelihood are the some entrepreneurs of energy access projects rather than the users themselves. Another important claim of energy access projects is that of removing kerosene and replacing it with alternatives through which health conditions will improve. However, this research shows that this too is a complicated argument, and that new problems may arise.