15/10/2020
Compared to electricity access, larger variations can be observed in the access of clean fuel among the Indian states. Meghalaya, West Bengal, and EAG states excluding Uttarakhand still lag in providing universal access to clean cooking fuels, where every second households have no access to clean cooking fuels. A significantly low national average portrays the lack of access to clean cooking fuels posing a core developmental and health challenge. Even Kerala despite high living standards has witnessed glaringly low progress in this aspect. Also, as per NSS-76, there exists a blatant country wide rural-urban divide in the access of clean fuel.
On average, the beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) go for only 3.1 cylinder refills in a year. For the year 2019-2020, around 4.14 crore families never opted for a refill of more than three cylinders. Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan fair the worst in this regard. According to the information stated at the Rajya Sabha recently, since the beginning of the new financial year in April till August 2020, around 1.84 crore families refilled their LPG cylinders only once. This information comes in when the government claimed of providing free cylinders among the poor since the COVID-19 lockdown.
Hence, the challenge further remains to not only increase the access of cleaner fuels to households but to increase the overall consumption per household. Access to cleaner cooking fuels is rather a multi-dimensional issue both in characteristics and implications. The deficiency in access manifests in several forms such as poor health, unequal rural development, poverty, inferior opportunities and a threat to the environment. The stakeholders involved must further consider safety, fuel availability, affordability and quality.