Clean cooking fuel scheme

The Union Cabinet’s approval of the extension of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) raises hope for addressing the twin objectives of protecting marginalized women and children from household pollution and reducing anthropogenic pressure on wildlife sanctuaries, national parks, and other protected areas. The challenge, however, lies in increasing per capita consumption of LPG cylinders under the scheme to achieve the desired objectives. The government’s decision to provide 75 lakh additional Ujjwala connections over three years, from 2023–24 to 2025–26, will increase the total number of PMUY beneficiaries to 10.35 crore. Although per capita consumption has increased, it has remained limited to only 3.71 cylinders in a year, indicating that for most of the months, the beneficiaries have to depend on biomass such as fuel wood, animal dung, crop waste, or kerosene for cooking. Under the existing norm of Ujjawala, the first refill and stove are provided free of charge to beneficiaries. The provision of a targeted subsidy of Rs. 200 per 14.2 kg LPG cylinder for up to 12 refills per year to PMUY consumers following the cut in subsidised cylinders by Rs. 200 is expected to increase per capita consumption. The effective price of an LPG cylinder for PMUY beneficiaries now stands at Rs 752 in Assam, down from nearly Rs 950. The problem, however, for many beneficiaries is that they were unable to buy refills after the first refill provided with the free connection due to the high price, and many of them discarded the stoves that had been lying unutilized for a prolonged period of time. The beneficiaries of this flagship scheme should stop using traditional fuel that contributes to carbon emissions and shift to cleaner fuel like LPG, which is critical for reducing disease burden. It also reduces the burden on womenfolk from spending hours collecting fuel wood from protected forests or making other biomass cooking fuel and utilises the time saved in other productive and income-generating activities. Increasing demand for fuel wood gives rise to the illegal felling of trees, which in turn leads to more carbon emissions. Besides, the destruction of forests gives rise to human-wildlife conflict as the habitat of wildlife gets destroyed in the process. Incidents of wild animals attacking women and children who go inside the forest areas regularly to collect fuel wood and other non-timber forest produce have increased in most animal corridors. In some states like Assam, wild animals coming out of their fragmented habitats and attacking people in fringe villages have also increased, and increasing human-animal conflict has led to the loss of human lives as well as endangered wildlife species. One way of addressing the conflict is to promote the use of LPG among marginalised households so that their dependence on the forest for fuel wood and other forest produce is reduced. Conservation of forest areas is also crucial for addressing climate change’s impact and preventing global warming from causing catastrophic natural disasters. Forest fringe dwellers are also dependent on water sources originating in forest areas and replenishing water bodies in their villages for agricultural and other household uses. When the forest is destroyed, traditional water bodies also dry up, triggering an agrarian crisis and forcing more and more marginalized families to take up the collection of fuel wood and other forest resources as their primary livelihood. This results in massive destruction of the forest ecosystem, adding to the current climate crisis. Viewed from this perspective, PMUY is not to be seen as a mere government flagship aimed at providing subsidies to targeted beneficiaries, but its role in addressing the larger issue of forest conservation and at the same time addressing the health hazards of marginalised women needs to be recognised in the discourse on the flagship scheme. Removing all bottlenecks to help these families shift fully to LPG cylinders, therefore, warrants greater attention from the perspective of climate goals and merits equal attention as the issue of reducing vehicular pollution to achieve the country’s goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions. Feedback from PMUY beneficiaries can help policymakers identify the financial hardships that are preventing them from shifting fully to cleaner fuels and how these can be addressed by converging the scheme with other schemes for poverty alleviation and augmenting household income. A decision on increasing the subsidy amount can be weighed against the funding requirement for various interventions for forest conservation, climate change mitigation, and recurring health expenditures in providing treatment to women and children suffering from health issues due to the use of traditional and polluting fuels for household cooking to arrive at a realistic decision. Providing subsidies to help them buy LPG cylinders for cooking purposes is only a temporary measure. Increasing household income through the sustainability of their livelihood based on agriculture and allied activities to motivate PMUY beneficiaries to shift to cleaner fuel is the permanent and pragmatic solution.