While describing the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) as one of the largest social intervention schemes executed in the world, an IIM-A working paper on the scheme has warned that increase in LPG price could lead many beneficiaries back to traditional fuel.
While describing the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) as one of the largest social intervention schemes executed in the world, an IIM-A working paper on the scheme has warned that increase in LPG price could lead many beneficiaries back to traditional fuel.
The working paper - Lighting up Lives through Cooking Gas and Transforming Society – has been authored by former IIM-A director Samir Barua and faculty member Sobhesh Agarwalla. It was handed over to petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday.
"PMUY is being implemented when crude and LPG prices are benign. If these were to rise in the future, the cost of use of LPG would rise for BPL families, unless subsidy is increased to nullify the rise. Increase in cost may result in these families going back to traditional fuel," the paper said.
The paper said that increase in cost of LPG cylinders could result in beneficiary families going back to traditional fuel.
The authors came across beneficiaries who said that collecting Rs800, the LPG cylinder's price in February last year, was a challenge. In fact, many beneficiaries informed that they had stopped using LPG due to increase in refill price.
The authors interacted with government officials, OMC officials, LPG distributors, beneficiaries, and others for the study.
The paper lauded implementation of Ujjwala scheme, saying the scale and speed were achieved through excellent coordination between the government, oil marketing companies, and banks. It said that lessons from its implementation could be of use for similar large-scale social interventions.
While noting that solar energy is becoming cheaper, and its easy deployment in far-flung areas, the report asked if it could become the alternative source of primary energy into the future, and "what should be the policy path for transition from LPG to solar energy for cooking". "Ujjwala has released considerable amount of time of women as time and effort needed for cooking would be much less. How could this time be productively utilized to enhance rural household incomes? What would be the contours of such extensions arising from Ujjwala?," it asked.
The Ujjwala scheme was launched on May 1, 2016, with a target to provide LPG connection to 5 crore BPL families by March 2019. However, the number was achieved in August 2018. The target was later to revised to 8 crore beneficiaries by March 2020. LPG connection was handed over to the 6th crore beneficiary last month.
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 "V-P M Venkaiah Naidu with some PMUY beneficiaries")
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