Opinion | A Decade Of Ujjwala: The Scheme That Changed Rural Women’s Lives |
Opinion | A Decade Of Ujjwala: The Scheme That Changed Rural Women’s Lives
The flame Ujjwala lit a decade ago still burns in over ten crore kitchens.
Ballia is not a city anyone visits on purpose. A district town in eastern Uttar Pradesh, unremarkable in most respects. It became the unlikely launchpad for one of India’s more consequential welfare schemes when Narendra Modi lit a gas stove there on May 1, 2016. Nearly a decade later, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana has produced 10.33 crore active LPG connections — more kitchens supplied with LPG cylinders than there are people in France and Australia combined.
Though that comparison probably says more about the scale of rural India’s energy deficit than it does about the scheme’s achievement.
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The timing of its tenth anniversary is uncomfortable. The war in West Asia has been squeezing global LPG supply for months, and India sources a significant share of its cooking gas from the Gulf. Delhi has committed Rs 12,000 crore in FY 2025–26 to hold the line at Rs 300 per 14.2 kg cylinder, for up to nine refills a year. Those numbers were based on a range of international prices. A prolonged supply shock would be difficult to sustain.
Ujjwala’s map broadly follows India’s poverty map. Uttar Pradesh has over 1.85 crore connections. West Bengal sits at roughly 1.23 crore, Bihar at 1.16 crore, and Madhya........