Why PM Modi’s Ujjwala Yojana, Targeted To Improve Lives Of Rural Women, Was A Massive Failure.
Sure his intentions were gold but his research was brass, and it’s execution was yellow plastic.
Rural India is still underdeveloped. There are crores of Indian families that still use wood, coal and dry cow dung cakes as fuel to cook food for their families. This is a major problem because dry fuel emits harmful gases and micro particles that affect lungs of people who spend hours in the kitchen every day 365 days and decrease their life expectancy. Mostly it’s the women of a family that have to take the bullet because every rural family’s kitchen department is looked after by its women.
Yes, the taste of charred food, cooked on a wood fire cooktop is amazing because of its nostalgic & smoky flavor, but in rural areas that experience comes with a price that mostly women have to pay.
Ujjwala Yojana was launched by PM Modi in the year 2016 with an objective of improving living conditions of these rural women. Beneficiaries of this scheme would get LPG gas cylinders and a gas stove for a subsidy of ₹1,600.00 per below-poverty-line family along with some free refills every year. In just 4 years of its launch, GOI claimed that they were able to provide over 8 crore such LPG gas connections to rural families.
Great idea, and results, right?
No.
To explain where they were wrong, here’s an example:
Hypothetically imagine you’re a janitor/ office boy, the sole earning member of a family, who has to reach from Andheri Station to Veera Desai Road (approximately 2.5 kilometres) at his office every day. There’s no bus or auto-rikshaw that takes you there. The only way to reach Veera Desai is to either walk, which is free, or book an Ola/UBER cab that may cost you ₹80.00-₹100.00 for every trip. Obviously, you would walk because your job does not pay you that much to pay for Ola/UBER daily.
One fine day while driving around, Modiji spots you on your usual route. To see a thin, basic man wearing ₹100.00 worth of chappal and walking in the intense summer heat of Mumbai to reach theoffice is something no one would want to see. Our PM is not an exception, he feels bad for you. So what do you think he should do? He should ideally start a bus service on your route so that just for ₹5.00-₹6.00 you would reach your office quickly, without getting tired.
But no, Modiji was so moved after watching your suffer that he insisted people that you deserve the best. Hence, instead of starting a bus service, he started an Auto-Rikshaw stand at Andheri Station. Mind you, it’s not a shared auto rikshaw stand but a private rikshaw stand, so that you can sit comfortably and a private rikshaw will take you to your destination. Our PM CARES (pun intended) about you so much that he also decided to pay for the first few trip fares for you. The only problem is now instead of paying ₹80.00-₹100.00 in an Ola/UBER cab, you’re required to pay ₹40.00-₹50.00 in the auto rikshaw, which is again, something you cannot afford because your salary won’t allow you the luxury of sitting in a private auto rikshaw. Therefore, you travel by rikshaw for the first few days and then again start walking.
Now coming back to Ujjwala Yojana; I want you to replace walking with using woodstove cooktop; Dedicated public bus with a cheaper alternative to wood and cow dung cakes; And auto rikshaw to LPG gas cylinders. The part where I told about free rides, yeah, under this scheme every family is entitled to 3 cylinders every year, free of cost.
Exactly. Wood, coal and Cow Dung costs almost as little as ₹60.00-₹100.00 / month in rural India because both of them are available in an abundant quantity in rural India. A basic domestic 14.2KG LPG gas cylinder (enough to cook food for 1 family every month) without subsidy costs around ₹850.00 and with subsidy costs around ₹550.00-₹600.00 in rural India. That difference is almost 4 to 6 times. (Numbers sourced from my maternal uncle living in Rajauli Block, Nawada District, Bihar).
What Modiji should have ideally done was, he should have gone from 1 to 2, and then from 2 to 3, instead of directly jumping from 1 to 3.
For example: My parents hailed from Nawada District of Bihar and my mother cooked food on a wood fire cooktop till she migrated with my father to Mumbai in 1970s when she used a kerosene based gas stove that was provided to her at subsidized rates at ration shop, (because it was the only kind of fuel in slums they could afford) till our family income finally increased in 1990s where we switched to LPG gas cylinder because it was then, we could finally afford a gas cylinder. The switch did not happen straight up from solid fuel to gas cylinder. It took time and it had various factors.
Modiji should have done something similar here. He should have focused on shifting people from the 1st stage (woodfire cooktop) to the2nd stage (liquid based cooktop like kerosene / diesel) through massive awareness programs while parallelly introducing schemes that would have increased family incomes of BPL and rural marginalized population so that in the next decade or so, they could be shifted to the 3rd stage. Various state governments are already provides kerosene at subsidized rates of ₹15.00/Liter.
Currently lakhs of families in rural India are switching back to wood, cow dung cakes and coal because shifting from ₹80.00-₹100.00 worth of fuel to ₹550.00-₹600.00 is something a rural family would not do.
Hence, Ujjwala Yojana remains a failure. Unless GOI finds a way to increase income of BPL or provide additional slab of Subsidy 2X to BPL.
