ISSN No. 0976-8602 RNI No. UPENG/2012/42622 VOL.-III, ISSUE-III, JULY-2014 Asian Resonance 1 Ergonomic Evaluation for Dung Collection and Transportation by Rural Women Sudesh Gandhi Dept of Family Resource Management, College of Home Science, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar Mamta Dilbaghi Dept of Family Resource Management, College of Home Science, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar Manju Mehta Dept of Family Resource Management, College of Home Science, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar Keywords: Biomechanical Stress, Musculo- Skeletal Discomfort, Overall Discomfort Score, Postural Variation Introduction Dung is acknowledged as a resource in rural scenario. Cattle dung has a significant place in everyday life in rural North India, thus is managed daily. Dung collection is considered as exclusively women's work. For women there are no developed countries. This statement implies undoubtedly to Haryana woman as she starts her day even before sun rises with cleaning of cattle-shed i.e. collecting and fetching of cattle dung and the same activity is done in the evening too where she spends a lot of time daily. Studies show that women spend 1-5 hours per day for collecting bio-fuels i.e. firewood, dung, agri waste etc (Mahadevia and Shukla 1997). Specifically, on an average a woman spends 89.42 min for collecting dung per day (Bose 1993). Moreover she has to travel a long distance for its disposal carrying heavier loads as head load. Longer treks and heavy head loads put undue strain on the woman’s health. Making dung-cakes can take up to two hours a day, depending on how much dung a woman has access to and the amount of cooking fuel required (Jeffery et al, 1989). As the work involved is for family use, women do not get any acknowledgement of the contribution this work makes to household production. This throws light on some neglected aspects of agrarian society on women’s condition. During dung collection and transportation activity women adopt many unnatural postures adding to the drudgery of women. The situation gets much worse while lifting dung from AbstractAbstract In Haryana, a rural woman starts her day even before sun rises with cleaning of cattle-shed i.e. collecting and fetching of cattle dung. During the activity she adopts unnatural body postures that put undue stress on her body. Hence, the present study aimed at ergonomic evaluation of dung collection and fetching activity. Thirty rural women having average health status were selected from two villages of Hisar district of Haryana state. Rural households possessed 3-5 animals followed by 6-8 animals. An average of 17 kg of dung was produced per animal in 24 hours. On an average they fetched one iron basket/animal as head load having its weight ranging from 18-25 kg. A woman spent 52 minutes in morning and 43 min in the evening for dung collection and transportation. Respondents used to dump the dung in open place away from their home. Physiological stress indicated that average heart rate increased to 127 bpm over the resting HR (84bpm). Squatting and bending posture was adopted during dung collection and then load was lifted from the ground with back bending at more than 90 o and fetched as head load to a distant place. The same activity was repeated in the evening too. Extreme postural deviation was observed while collecting dung and lifting dung as head load. A fetching trolley has been developed (Shraddha, 2005) for dung transportation which would be helpful for the worker to do the activity with lesser efforts. There is a need to educate the rural women to use drudgery reducing technology for dung collection and its transportation that would reduce the muscular stress and increase their efficiency.