Rising LPG price upsets household budgets

The exorbitant rise in the cooking gas price has affected every household. As the LPG cylinder price surged by Rs 225 in a short span of three months, housewives found it hard to make the ends meet.

Hyderabad: Cooking gas is inevitable in the everyday life of common people in India. Wood Mackenzie, popular energy research and consultancy organization, stated about four months ago that India will beat China in cooking gas (LPG) consumption by 2030. Though the current government hesitates to acknowledge publicly, the reality is that India has set a world record of sorts in terms of taxes imposed on fuel.

As a result of these taxes, the price of LPG cylinder too has become unbearable for the common man, along with the price of petrol and diesel. As the LPG cylinder price surged by Rs 225 in a short span of three months, housewives found it hard to make the ends meet. Though the Union Minister for Petroleum has announced that the fuel prices will come down by April, it is estimated that by that time the price of each gas cylinder will shoot up to Rs 1000. It should also be noted that commercial LPG cylinder's price has hiked up to an estimate of Rs 1,800.

There are lakhs of cooking gas connections in every state of the country. The exorbitant rise in the cooking gas price has affected the budget of every household. The Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) provided for subsidy on cooking gas is getting eroded fast. In 2017, the DBT on each cylinder was Rs 535 while the price of each cylinder was Rs 1,000.

Since last month, the subsidy went down below Rs 41 per cylinder. The weekly increase in the price of cooking gas has led the common people to financial constraints. Fuel agencies are of the stance that subsidy is being made applicable to people living far away from gas filling stations. For others, cooking gas is being sold at market rate. Exposing the poorer sections to vicissitudes of market price is nothing but a cruel joke.

In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given a call to the affluent sections to surrender their subsidy on cooking gas. In response to the call, 1.13 crore people gave away their claim to subsidy. It enabled the government to save around Rs 5,000 crore.

Contending that cooking food on the ordinary village hearth amounted to smoking 400 cigarettes per hour, the Central government introduced Pradhan Mantri Ujwala Yojana at a cost of Rs 8,000 crore. The objective of the scheme was to provide cooking gas connections to 5 crore people wallowing below the poverty line, in a span of three years.

Recently, the Union government secretary concerned made an announcement that under the Ujwala Yojana, unveiled with the objective of women empowerment and for providing clean fuel and good health to women, 8 crore people were given LPG connections within a span of 4 years. He also stated that there were altogether 29 crore cooking gas connections in the country today.

The Central government is of the stance that it would further liberalize the Ujwala scheme to provide one crore more connections in the next two years. However, the government is not at all concerned of the struggle poor people are going through in the wake of price hike. Aggravating the burden of 20 crore consumers, the Center’s latest budget has reduced the quantum of annual cooking gas subsidy to Rs 12,995 crore from the earlier Rs 40,915 crore.

People are suffering from dual counts. On the one hand, their cooking gas subsidy has been slashed while on the other taxes on the LPG have been steeply increased. People were nudged to adopt cooking gas as an alternative to fire wood, coal and kerosene. Having done so, the government strategically slashed the cooking gas subsidy. How will the poor people bear this unbearable burden? How will they save their lives from the negative impact of this unbridled inflation?