Why isn't gas connection enough in India?

Akshara (0:04)

In today's episode, we'll do one deep dive and cover another story for the day. First, we'll talk about where the last mile of India's LPG revolution is, and then we'll talk about why airlines are opposing the move from Mumbai to Navi Mumbai. Welcome back to The Daily Brief by Zerodha, where we cut through the noise to help you understand what's actually happening in the most important stories from business and markets. I'm your host Akshara. Today is Tuesday, 6th October. Coming to the first story.

So imagine the gas cylinder in your kitchen runs out tonight. For most households that use LPG, what happens next is almost automatic. You book a refill, pay when it arrives, and go back to cooking. But that decision looks very different when you move down the income ladder. There's food to buy, rent to pay, medicines and school fees to cover. And in fact, many would prefer to cook food using firewood, which is far cheaper than LPG. And it could cook you the night's dinner without costing you anything right now. That small decision, repeated across millions of kitchens, sits at the heart of India's clean cooking problem. Over the last decade, India has worked hard to make LPG available to poorer households. And under the Pradhan Mantri Ujwala Yojana, more than 10.5 crore women have received gas connections. LPG coverage rose from 62% of households in 2016 to, on paper, more than 100% by 2024

But owning a cylinder is not the same as cooking with it every day. An average Ujwala household uses fewer than 5 cylinders a year, while a household cooking entirely on LPG would typically need 7-8.

In many homes, the chulha comes back on for cooking.

In June, the government reduced the annual number of refills on which an Ujwala household gets a Rs. 300 subsidy from 9 to 4

And as per the logic of the Petroleum Ministry, 4 refills are broadly what a typical household uses in a year. On those 4, a 14.2 kg cylinder in Delhi costs Rs. 642 instead of Rs. 942 And from the 5th refill onwards, the household pays full price.

Now, there's a strange loop here. Poorer households use less LPG partly because refills are expensive. But now, that low usage is also being used to decide how many refills should get support.

And the alternative is not harmless. Household air pollution from burning wood, dung and crop waste was linked to more than 9 lakh deaths in India in 2023

So why, after getting LPG into so many poorer homes, are so many families still lighting a truja?

Three new studies from the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, or CEEW, help answer that question. Together, they surveyed more than 4,000 people across rural households, urban informal settlements and migrant workers. Our story is an amalgamation of their findings. Now, the headline Ujwala connection numbers can be misleading. Ujwala made it easier to enter the LPG system, but after the first connection, gas becomes a purchase the family has to make again and again.

And you can see this most clearly in rural India. Nearly 75% of the rural households CEEW surveyed across six states had used LPG in the previous three months. But fewer than a quarter cooked only with it. Half still relied mainly on firewood. Now, these families hadn't really substituted one fuel for another, but merely added LPG to a kitchen that continued burning wood and dunk alongside it. And researchers call this fuel stacking. From a rural household's perspective, collecting firewood is far cheaper than the alternative. So think about when income arrives seasonally from a harvest or unpredictably through daily wage work. If the cylinder empties during a bad week, another LPG refill has to compete with groceries, medicines and other critical expenses. And that's also why 70% of the rural households surveyed that didn't use LPG, named refill cost as a major barrier. And these families stretch one cylinder for as long as possible. LPG might handle a quick meal, while the chulha handles food that takes much longer. And forget ordering another cylinder. Even picking it up from a centre adds to the cost. Only 47% of rural LPG users surveyed had cylinders delivered home. And everyone else had to travel to a distributor or pick up point, and that added to the bill beyond the cost of refill. Now how does the picture change when you move from a village to a city?

In a city, many poorer families live in what are called informal settlements. These are neighbourhoods that have grown outside the city's formal housing system, where residents may not have recognised addresses, secure property rights, or the same access to basic services as people in formal areas. However, lighting a smoky chulha in a crowded neighbourhood is far less practical, and that's assuming the city is close to a forest area.