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What is the issue?
- Recent government announced to withdraw LPG subsidies.
- This move is likely to aggravate household air pollution, and impact the health bills.
How significant id household air pollution?
- The household air pollution is largely due to improper ventilation combined with the use of biomass fuels for cooking and lighting.
- The biomass emits pollutants such as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, particulate matter, benzene, and metals including lead and copper.
- Household air pollution leads to a range of diseases among women, who are the primary cooks in most Indian households.
- There are many reported cases of chronic bronchitis, cataract and various adverse pregnancy outcomes among Indian women.
- Pollution from such fuels contribute to 12% of still births in the country.
What is the role of LPG in Rural households?
- To tackle the use of biomass the government introduced the Pradhan Mantri Ujwal Yojana (PMUY) in 2016 to promote the use of LPG for cooking.
- LPG connections to households have steadily and significantly increased over the past few years.
- It assists the poor in ensuring that this clean cooking fuel remains within the budget of many poor households.
- It keeping them healthy and saving on time spent on collecting wood.
What are the negative impacts of LPG subsidy elimination?
- This will impact marginal households and keep many households trapped in biomass use for daily cooking.
- There will be an undeniable impact of air pollution on both public and personal health expenditures.
- The affordability of LPG cylinders will be dubious, and people may turn towards biomass fuels and kerosene.
- LPG vendors may face job loses if rural households turn back to biomass fuels.
Source: Business Standard
