Union budget 2016-17: Rs2,000 crore for rural cooking gas connections

New Delhi: The government will provide cooking gas connections to every rural household to protect women from the “curse of smoke.”

In the Union budget 2016-17, finance minister Arun Jaitley set aside ₹ 2,000 crore to meet the initial cost of providing these gas connections.

According to the 2011 Census, 142 million rural Indian households—that’s almost 85% of total rural households—use firewood and other solid fuels such as animal dung, charcoal, crop waste and coal as the primary source of household energy. They use wood and kerosene to light up homes.

“Women in rural India face the curse of smoke. Open fire in the kitchen is akin to burning 400 cigarettes. We’ve decided to embark upon a massive mission to provide LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) connections in the name of women members of poor households,” Jaitley said.

Data from the World Health Organization states that 4.3 million deaths occur globally from indoor air pollution each year. Every year, around 1.3 million deaths occur in India due to indoor air pollution caused by smoke from cooking, heating and lighting.

According to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves 2013, around 400 million people in India (of which 90% are women) are vulnerable to the negative health impact associated with indoor air pollution, resulting in respiratory, pulmonary and sight problems.

In addition to that, women end up spending up to 5-8 hours per day on cooking, with 20% of that time devoted to the collection of fuel.