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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | PM's plan for free gas connections is failing its objective - as government had been warned it would -Nitin Sethi & Aroon Deep

PM's plan for free gas connections is failing its objective - as government had been warned it would -Nitin Sethi & Aroon Deep

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published Published on Jan 24, 2018   modified Modified on Jan 24, 2018
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A study commissioned in 2015 said that for the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana to succeed, the price of gas cylinders would have to be reduced.

In an interview to TimesNow on the weekend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi extolled the virtues of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which offers free gas connections to the rural poor. “What will be the ease of living for a poor woman, who uses a stove to cook food and spends her entire life in that smoke?” he asked. “According to me, her ease of living is possible if I free her from that smoke. I took the big step of Ujjwala and provided gas to 3,30,00,000 families. I may even complete the target of 5 crore families before the deadline. This, in itself, is our step in the direction of ease of living.”

Modi was right – and he was wrong. Eighteen months after the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana was launched, the scheme is achieving its targets magnificently. It is, however, failing in its objective of persuading households to stop using firewood and traditional biomass fuels that have the potential to cause respiratory diseases.

In fact, soon after the scheme was launched, the Union government knew it had shortcomings, official documents show. The government launched the scheme in haste, without waiting for the results of a study it had commissioned to understand how exactly poor households could be induced to use LPG gas as kitchen fuel. The month after Modi launched the scheme in May 2016, the results of the study were submitted, showing important flaws.

On the face of it, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana is an excellent idea. Every year, more than 100,000 Indians die prematurely from diseases caused by inhaling smoke from firewood and other biomass used as fuel in traditional chullahs, or stoves, said a study in Lancet in 2015. Other studies put the number of premature deaths much higher. Besides, the extraction of firewood from forests has intensified India’s environmental problems.

When the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana was launched, it aimed to provide 50 million free gas connections by 2019. By September 2017, about 30 million connections had been delivered.

Under the scheme, the government provides a subsidy of Rs 1,600 to government-owned oil manufacturing companies for every free LPG gas connection that they install in poor rural households without one. This subsidy is intended to cover the security fee for the cylinder and the fitting charges. The beneficiary has to buy her own cooking stove. To reduce the burden, the scheme allows beneficiaries to pay for the stove and the first refill in monthly installments. However, the cost of all subsequent refills has to be borne by the beneficiary household.

This is where the scheme is failing. While the number of LPG connections across India has increased by an impressive 16.26% since the scheme was launched, the use of gas cylinders increased by only 9.83%. This is even lower than the rate recorded in 2014-’15, when the scheme did not exist, according to data from the government’s Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell and other data accessed by Scroll.in. This difference between the increase in the number of connections and the sale of cylinders is a consequence of the fact that many people with new connections are not buying refilled cylinders after their first one runs out.

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The Hindu, 23 January, 2018, https://scroll.in/article/865853/pms-plan-for-free-gas-connections-is-failing-its-objective-as-government-had-been-warned-it-would


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