What kind of stove is this?  Wood burning?

The trouble they are having sounds indicative of government funding.  Is it?  Just curious.

A simple stove.  For cooking.  The problem is that the toxins emitted are actually causing millions of deaths.  I will find the article in the magazine and get a url after dinner and post it here.  It was extremely interesting.  No, don't think it is government funding.  Some stoves would burn wood, some dung, some coal.

Here is the url for the article I read in the Economist

Uh, how about electricity? It works for the rest of the world. Here is a good article from the American Conservative Union Foundation on the subject.

Now that is a pretty riveting article!  Encapsulate the uranium.  And use it all as opposed to only being able to use less than 100%  of the uranium rods.  Imagine that!  What a great idea.   And I like the idea of smaller as far as the actual source of the power is concerned.  smaller is better sometimes.  And more controllable, and more portable.  But I still say in the meantime, you would think with all our technology someone could have designed a cheaper, more efficient, less toxic producing stove (whether it burns grass, wood, dung, etc).   There are lots of possibilities out there to bring some of the third world population out of some of their misery, as well as protecting the environment, etc.  What's the problem?  Progress (and I mean the good kind) is not happening fast enough.

I've never cooked over grass or dung, but I've cooked Pelewan style over a very small and efficient wood fire.  They don't burn any more than they need to cook their rice, and it's extremely portable because it's just three pieces of wood to burn.  I confess, I haven't taken the time to read the article yet, but what's wrong with this approach?

The Economist article is poorly written and begs several questions.  After reading the second paragraph I was wondering if any of the people involved in this work are familiar with the concept of ventilation.  The article makes only a passing reference to a stove that includes an exhaust --  "a simple design that diverts the smoke outside."  Whoa, dude, like, no way.  It also appears that the people responsible for installing new stoves and chimneys may not have explained their uses well to those who would be implementing them:

"The original stoves had been designed to boil water, but researchers found that for each meal, two-thirds of the fuel was used to make sauces by frying onions, a process that requires a more intense, continuous heat."  

C'mon.  If you're going to put in the time, effort, and money to implement something like this, make sure people know how to use it and for what.  Some education regarding the fumes and particles that result from stove use when not properly vented might also be in order for the stoves' users.
Dr Willson says just 3% of chimneys provided as part of one project in India were being used, according to a later survey: the rest had been either sold or reused as irrigation channels.

For the stove issue in particular, solar stoves are another option: http://journeytoforever.org/sc.html

For the broader and more long term issue of the availability of fuel, that nuclear technology discussed in the article "Nuclear Third World" sounds like a winner.  

From the website of Envirofit, one of the organizations mentioned in the Economist article that is developing stoves for use in India:

In all our talk about a stove for poor countries I don't think this type was discussed.  I saw an interesting article in the Parade magazine section of the paper today.   The article is online here (which can lead to another interesting site,  JewishWorldWatch.org).  This seems like a partial fix for a specific problem, but when there is no sun there is no way to cook or boil water.