PM Ujjwala Yojana - Glass Half Full or Half Empty

                                               Glass Half Empty

Guest Author

The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) is one of the flagship schemes of the Narendra Modi government. Officially launched on May 1, 2016, the government regards it as one of its greatest success stories. The official claim is that within a short span of 26 months, the scheme has achieved its target – “five crore LPG connections will be provided to BPL families with a support of Rs 1,600 per connection in the next three years”. The latest figure till 5 Sep is “54027085 connections” in 715 districts of India.

Modi’s Government has built upon the success of pre-existing Central Schemes as well as parallel schemes run by state government i.e. in south India. In October 2009, the UPA government launched the RGGLV (Rajiv Gandhi Gramin LPG Vitarak Yojana) with the objective of installing Liquefied Petroleum Gas distributors in remote and inaccessible areas to increase LPG penetration. In 2009, the government also started a programme of one “time financial assistance” for LPG connections to families below the poverty line (BPL). The assistance was provided through corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds of the government’s oil marketing companies (OMCs). Under this scheme, the security deposit for 1 cylinder and 1 pressure regulator is provided from the fund created for this purpose by contributions from CSR budget. IOCL, OIL, HPCL, BPCL are some PSUs which participated in this programme. Under this schemes, total of 69,32,322 free LPG connections were distributed to BPL families as on March 31,2016. It becomes clear that under PMUY, the concept of free connections remains the same as in the earlier schemes of giving the first cylinder and the pressure regulator.

Similar schemes before PMUY

Of course, Modi government pushed PMUY with more seriousness and used some emotional words like health and pollution which were absent before. Similar schemes have been in place before PMUY, run by different state governments which provided LPG connections to BPL Families. Three Southern states and Pondicherry (35,04,653 connections under Deepam Scheme in Andhra Pradesh, Free BPL connection Scheme in Tamil Nadu  with 29,38,907 connections and 85,437 connections in Pondicherry) gave away 87,54,075 free LPG connections. 

The Kerosene Free Delhi scheme was also launched by the Delhi Government in August 2012. In this scheme 1,83,842 eligible LPG Connections were released by the end of 2014. All the state governments schemes put together, a total of 93,05,747 free LPG connections were distributed to BPL families before the launch of PMUY. On 3 March 2016, RGGLV is discontinued to start PMUY. 

Total Free LPG connections given before PMUY

As on March 31,2014, India had 16,932 LPG distributers including 3036 from RGGLY, by the time current government halted new allotments under RGGLVY in August 2015, 4987 RGGLVY were operation in most backward and poorest areas of the country. By the end of March 2017, the number of RGGLVY outlets grew to 5761. And total free LPG connections given to BPL Families stood at 1,62,38,609 before the launch of PMUY.

Interestingly, all the schemes started by state governments and previous central government were subsumed by PMUY and those numbers are now counted under PMUY. Apart from this, government make sure no Central assistance given to any state if they start their own schemes similar to PMUY, Karnataka government scheme known as Mukhya Mantri Anila Bhagya Yojana is the example of the same.

How PMUY is different from all other schemes started well before PMUY

Objectives of all other schemes are more or less same but there are some points which make it different:

1.    The Modi Government had all the infrastructure and logistical support ready in form if 16,932 distributer. They just change the terminology to attracted people emotionally and not taking money from CSR they allocated the funds for this scheme.

2.    They defined the target of 5 crore which is now 8 crore but also includes the 1.62 crore connections which is allotted through other similar types of schemes. The latest PPAC LPG profile take about PMUY Number which is 3,26,02,141 till 1 April 2018. Again if taken PMUY alone, 3.26 Crore connections distributed, which is low as per claimed data on PMUY website of more than 5 Crore.

Objectives of PMUY

1. Enhancing the status of women and caring their health.
2. Help to decrease air pollution due to use of fossil fuel.
3. Lessening the serious health risks related with cooking based on fossil fuels.
4. Reducing the number of deaths due to unclean cooking fuels, which is about 5 lakh every year in India.
5. Preventing young children from acute respiratory illnesses caused due to indoor air pollution by burning the fossil fuels.

Looking at the objective one can very well draw a conclusion that this schemes is very good for people who are cooking their food using fossil fuels and other resources. But these objective also arises some questions like:

a)       Why people using fossil fuels will shift to LPG where they have to pay some money after some period of time.

b)       Is government also informing about health issue to people by using fossil fuels or it’s just a target based scheme.

c)       How government will measure the decrease in death/Illness in future which is currently happening through cooking through fossil fuels.

Stakeholders Analysis in PMUY

Below Poverty Lines Families – Beneficiaries covered are Below Poverty Line, All SC/STs households beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana(PMAY) (Gramin), Antyoday Anna Yojana (AAY), Forest dwellers, Most Backward Classes (MBC), Tea & Ex-Tea Garden Tribes, People residing in Islands and People residing in river islands

 Gas Agencies and PSUs - Gas agency have the responsibility to identify the beneficiaries and distribute the connection. While PSU who provide the Gas Cylinder have to be provided free of cost under this scheme.

 Center Government: All the funds for this schemes is realized by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

 Primary Health Care Center: No one is taking about role of PHC’s in this scheme while one the main objective of this scheme is to decrease the health risks happen to women. Assuming they are also a part of this scheme, they have to visit the households using the LPG under PMUY and take their feedbacks which is missing till date.

Schemes important points

1.    LPG connection is released in the name of adult women of the BPL Family subject to that no LPG connection exists in the name of any family member of the household.

2.    Eligible families are identified through the Socio Economic Caste Census.

3.    Under this scheme, RS. 8000 Cr have been reserved by the government for providing 5 Cr LPG connections to Indian families living below poverty line, with 3 years ending 2019. Figure of 5 Cr is increased to 8 Cr now.

4.    LPG Cylinders are available in India since 1960’s but still people are not using it because of several reasons like unawareness, financial burden, and easy availability of free resources. Government is doing this through marketing, creating LPG Panchayat etc which is good move in terms of making people aware.

Challenges in the implementation of PMUY

1.    Correct identification of beneficiaries: Since number is defined for this scheme i.e. 8 Cr (Previously 5 Cr) and identification tool is only Census 2011 data, so Gas agency have to be identify the genuine stakeholders after document verification. It should not be the case that Gas agencies only fulfil the number allotted to them, which is currently going on (Will discuss on this in next section).

2.    Rather than reducing the price of LPG cylinders, the government reduce the subsidy and pass the rest of the burden to oil manufacturing company. As per the report published in “the wire”, these companies now have to hope that beneficiaries under PMUY refilled their cylinders at least 6 times to cover their losses.

3.    Government have change the mind set of people and make aware them about benefits of LPG cylinders, this is similar situation where people are still going out for toilet besides they already have toilets in their home.

Ground Reality about PMUY

If we look at the number achieved in this scheme one can say government has done very good job, Adding 3.6 Cr (Not 5 Cr as mentioned above) new BPL families as subscribers for a costly product like LPG in 2 years is very good.

But did this help in any way to achieve the welfare scheme?  The answer is NO, The success of a welfare scheme is when objective of the scheme met, and not merely target numbers.

1.    As on April 1, 2018, there were an estimated 27.72 Cr households in the country and 25.68 Cr households have an LPG Connection, that is 93% of the coverage (46.4% have double cylinders). But only 80% of households (22.43 Cr) have an active LPG connection as on April 1 2018. I.e. 13% Domestic LPG consumers are inactive. Study done by Prayas explains this better. It Shows that Chandigarh has nearly 40% inactive subscribes and Urban Himachal Pradesh has 157% households that use LPG. The main reason is the huge pressure by the government exerts on OMCs to achieve the targets. Apart from this, there is no local or district level reporting on PMUY, only state level data. This is likely to lead inflation of numbers.

2.    Scroll pointed out in one of the study, while the number of LPG connections across India has increased by an impressive 16.26% since the scheme (PMUY) was launched, the use of gas cylinders increased by only 9.83%. This is even lower than the rate recorded in 2014-’15, when the scheme did not exist”.

Now what is happening here? OMCs pushed their distributers to enrol the maximum number of people under the scheme because of the pressure from government. As the initial payment of 1600 for the cylinder and regulator was waived off, the government asked OMCs to increase the reach.

The Modi government claims that the yearly refill average under PMUY is 4 whereas the normal national average is 7.2 cylinders. The government says that the dropout under PMUY is less than 20% and 60% had four or more refills. But the available data and related reports paint a different picture.

As the government is celebrating the “success” of PMUY by marketing of LPG connection they have released, there is very little discussion on reality behind those numbers.

To arrive at an accurate assessment of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojna, merely counting the number of new gas connections cannot be the only yardstick.

For Counter View - Glass Half Full

 References

1. Assessment report: Primary survey on household cooking fuel usage and willingness to convert to LPG – By Crisil
2. http://vikaspedia.in/energy/policy-support/pradhan-mantri-ujjwala-yojana
3. https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/the-nda-government-s-ujjwala-scheme-is-not-a-failure/story-iAOwdyPhbsFIE4vqgNxyCM.html
4. https://www.wlpga.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/give-it-up-campaign-case-study-final.pdf
5. http://www.pmujjwalayojana.com/
6. https://scroll.in/article/865853/pms-plan-for-free-gas-connections-is-failing-its-objective-as-government-had-been-warned-it-would
7. https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/omcs-make-provisions-for-pmuy-losses/1264022/
8. http://www.pmujjwalayojana.com/about.html
9. http://www.prayaspune.org/peg/index.php
10. https://sarkariyojna.co.in/karnataka-anila-bhagya-scheme-online-application-registration-form/
11. https://www.iocl.com/AboutUs/corporatesocialresponsibility.aspx
12. https://thewire.in/government/pradhan-mantri-ujjwala-yojana-separating-fact-from-fiction
13. https://www.livemint.com/Politics/oqLQDFKNuMdbmLEVL88krN/Indias-poor-are-not-using-LPG-cylinders-they-got-under-Ujjw.html
14. https://upsccurrentaffairsanalysis.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/critique-of-pradhan-mantri-ujjwala-yojana-pmuy/
15. http://www.drishtiias.com/editorial-analysis-The-Pradhan-Mantri-Ujjwala-Yojana
16. https://www.civilserviceindia.com/current-affairs/articles/pradhan-mantri-ujjwala-yojana.html