New Delhi: Around 63 percent households in India use clean fuel, including LPG or natural gas, for cooking, with urban areas surpassing rural, according to a new survey released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) Wednesday.
Data indicates that despite the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), Modi government’s flagship initiative launched in May 2016 with an objective to provide poor households with free LPG connections, there is a need to push for adoption of clean fuel in rural areas by further subsidising LPG cylinders. The PMUY 2.0 was launched in August 2021.
The Comprehensive Annual Modular (CAM) Survey 2022-23, conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) under MoSPI, highlights that just 49.3 percent of households in rural areas use clean fuel for cooking as compared to 92.9 percent in urban areas.
The survey covered 3.02 lakh households in urban and rural areas between July 2022 and June 2023.
In several states including Rajasthan, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya, the percentage of households in rural areas using clean fuel for cooking is less than 30 percent.
Environment experts say the data shows that in rural areas people still can’t afford LPG cylinders. “The data for rural areas shows that little effort has been made to push for adoption of clean fuel for cooking. It clearly indicates that people still can’t afford LPG cylinders in rural areas. There is a need to further subsidise the cylinders,” Nivit Yadav, programme director, renewable energy, Centre for Science and Environment, told ThePrint.
One of the key focus areas of the Modi government has been to provide clean fuel for cooking to poor households, especially in rural areas. While launching PMUY in 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said: “This scheme will benefit poor families and particularly poor women.”
A government press release of March this year stated that the number of LPG consumers across the country has more than doubled from 14.52 crore in 2014 to 32.17 crore earlier this year.
Till 1 July, 10.33 crore LPG connections have been provided under PMUY, according to information provided by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas in the Lok Sabha on 8 August this year.
According to the CAM Survey report, released Wednesday, usage of clean fuel for cooking in several states is below 50 percent. These include Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tripura and West Bengal.
Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal are the only states where usage of clean fuel in urban areas is less than 80 percent, the report shows.
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Improved access to toilets, other essential facilities
In the past decade, the Modi government launched several schemes to improve essential facilities such as drinking water and access to toilets. The survey thus also looked at parameters such as access to public transport, drinking water, toilets etc., in urban and rural areas.
Its report highlights that 97.8 percent of surveyed households have access to toilets, and access in rural areas is almost on a par with that in urban areas—97.1 percent households in rural areas have access to toilets, compared to 98.9 percent in urban areas.
In terms of access to drinking water, there is a marginal difference between rural areas (94.9 percent) and urban areas (97.5 percent).
When it comes to transport connectivity, the report points out that 93.7 percent households in urban areas have access to low-capacity public transport such as taxis, buses, autos etc. within a 500-metre radius.
Under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, launched in 2000, the Centre pushed for construction of all-weather roads to improve rural connectivity. According to the rural development ministry, 7.8 lakh km of road network was developed in over two decades.
The survey report states that nearly 94 percent of rural households have access to all-weather roads within 2 km of the place of residence.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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