Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) recently released a report on Indian villages’ access to energy.
What does the report say?
The survey was conducted in six of the country’s major energy-deprived states - Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal.
It has found a strong improvement in Indian villages’ access to energy.
Towards Universal Electricity - Electricity through the national grid is now the main lighting source for 75% of India’s rural households.
In 2015, when the last round of the survey was held, most of this population was burning kerosene oil for light.
Cooking Fuel - In the past three years, the number of rural households using LPG as primary cooking fuel has also more than doubled to 39%.
Thus they have shifted from firewood to LPG as cooking fuel and from kerosene oil to electricity for lighting.
The increase in rural energy access shows at least a partial success of the Ujjwala and Saubhagya welfare schemes.
Saubhagya aims to connect every rural household to the national power grid.
Ujjwala provides low-income families with free LPG connections.
However, the survey report highlights several bottlenecks in these missions.
What are the concerns?
Affordability - Traditional biomass such as firewood is available almost for free, and hence is the primary cooking fuel for 61% of the rural households.
However, Indoor pollution from such stoves leads to 4 million premature deaths every year in India.
These people suffer from respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, as well as serious injuries from scalding, burns, and poisoning.
Upfront Cost – Even after Ujjwala scheme, 42% of the rural households have not acquired an LPG connection.
They cite the high costs involved, both in setting up the connection and the recurrent expenses incurred in refills.
Lack of awareness or an implementation gap, wherein local authorities illegally charging households for installing connections could also be the reason.
Gender factor – Apart from a volatile rural income, most rural women do not have a say in determining when a refill is ordered, even though the connection is in their name.
Quality and reliability - Most electrified households cite frequent power cuts, voltage fluctuations, and blackouts as prominent concerns.
Over 80% of the rural households don’t get more than eight hours of electricity a day on average.
However, the poor grid infrastructure is unlikely to be fixed anytime soon, given the state-owned power distribution companies’ financial distress.
What should be done?
People were unwilling to pay upfront Rs.900-1,000 for a 14 kg refill but would pay about Rs.300 for a refill, which is the price of refilling a 5 kg cylinder.
The PMUY rules were thus amended to allow households to opt for two 5 kg cylinders instead of one 14 kg cylinder initially and shift to a 14 kg one after a few months.
This will increase the household’s willingness to pay for the fuel and they will get habituated to the convenience of cooking with LPG in the long run.
