About four years back I had the opportunity to live adjacent to a village in the Western Part of Uttar Pradesh (India). Each household had bovine animals. The households I interacted with had bovine animals ranging between two to ten in number. Agriculture is the primary occupation of that village.   

A group of households, generally about eight to ten, collect the cattle dung outside the residential area of the village. They further dry the dung and convert them into dung cakes ( also called Kandas or Uplas). The households then use these dung cakes as cooking fuel. Generally, most meals are prepared using dung cakes as cooking fuel in traditional mud stoves.  

Almost all the households in the village had formed small groups to pool the cattle dung in one place. The prepared dung cakes are distributed among the group members and used as cooking fuel. Usually, the women in groups of two or three visit these sites in turn to prepare the dung cakes. For them, these sites are also the place for some chit-chat and interaction during the evening times.  

Resource pooling for cooking fuel has been a tradition in this village since ages. The communities have their own way of pooling resources and use it.

(Views are Personal)