Theory, meet reality...

...Not fired with logic

The broader point is not at all that new technologies never work or that the poor cannot adapt to them — no one who has seen the cellphone sneaking in and out of the ghunghat in rural Rajasthan can believe that. It is not even that such a stove cannot be made to work — there might even be one already somewhere that does. But it does remind us that technology works best when it sits lightly on the lives of its users. And most importantly, it warns us not to declare victory too soon — the fact that we think something should work is not enough — it needs to work for the people who use them.