Ujjwala Yojana

Lack of Access and Awareness, High Costs Bar the Poor from Using LPG Cylinders, Finds Study

The study – ‘Barriers to Access, Adoption, and Sustained Use of Cleaner Fuels Among Low-Income Households: An Exploratory Study from Delhi and Jharkhand, India’ – notes that the use of different fuels depends on their ‘ease of access rather than ease of use’.

New Delhi: Ease of access to LPG cylinders, lack of awareness around hazards of indoor pollution, and high prices of cylinders are some of the factors that are discouraging women in rural and poor households from using LPG cylinders as opposed to traditional cooking fuels, a new study has found.

Citing the detrimental effects of traditional cooking fuels on women’s health as well as the environment, the Union government launched its flagship scheme the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) in 2016 with an aim to make clean cooking fuel available to rural and low-income households.

The objective of the scheme was to make clean cooking fuel such as LPG “available to the rural and deprived households which were otherwise using traditional cooking fuels such as firewood, coal, cow-dung cakes, etc”.

A study conducted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in collaboration with ASAR (Asar Social Impact Advisors Pvt Ltd), a social and environmental impact start-up in India, was published on Monday, August 21, that assesses and identifies strategies to reduce household air pollution and mitigate the damage to health and environment.

The study titled Barriers to Access, Adoption, and Sustained Use of Cleaner Fuels Among Low-Income Households: An Exploratory Study from Delhi and Jharkhand, India was conducted using 10 focus group discussions and nine in-depth interviews in five urban slums of Delhi (both notified and non-notified bastis) and five in villages in rural Jharkhand with women above 18 years of age, who are primary fuel users.

Findings of the study

The study found that the use of different fuels depends on their “ease of access rather than ease of use”.

It stated that in the notified bastis of Delhi for instance, “women are primarily using LPG, whereas those in non-notified bastis rely on biomass as they are unable to access LPG. In Jharkhand, women largely use biomass as it is easily available to them, and only women with regular incomes use LPG as the primary fuel”.

The study said that Jharkhand and Delhi were chosen for the study as the two states with the highest and lowest use of solid fuel for cooking in India (as per the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey) – Jharkhand (67.8%) and Delhi (0.8%) respectively.

The study also found that while schemes like Ujjwala Yojana have been undertaken by the government to reduce the impact of cooking fuels on women’s health, women are not aware of the adverse health impacts of household air pollution.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi distributes the free LPG connections to the beneficiaries, under PM Ujjwala Yojana in Ballia on May 1, 2016. Union Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Kalraj Mishra is also seen. Photo: PTI

“They do not consider indoor smoke due to biomass burning as pollution, but rather see it as a temporary discomfort which does not have long-term health implications,” the study said.

In a reply given to Rajya Sabha during the monsoon session, minister of state of the ministry of petroleum and natural gas Rameswar Teli said that as on July 1, 2023, there were 9.59 crore beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY).

The study said that the high price of LPG cylinders coupled with the fact that they need to be paid for in one go makes it unaffordable for people from low-income households.

Teli had also told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply that under the scheme the Union government bears an expenditure of upto Rs 1,600 per connection for Security Deposit (SD) of Cylinder, Pressure Regulator, Suraksha Hose, DGCC booklet, and installation charges.

Also read: Since 2016, PMUY Beneficiaries Consuming Less LPG Than Non-Ujjwala Consumers: RTI Data

“PMUY beneficiaries have an option to choose from 14.2kg Single Bottle Connection(SBC)/ 5kg SBC/ 5kg Double Bottle Connection (DBC). Further, government has started a targeted subsidy of Rs. 200 per 14.2 Kg cylinder for Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) beneficiaries for upto 12 refills for year 2022-23 and 2023-24,” he further said.

In recent months, the price of LPG cylinders have skyrocketed.

In a separate reply on the increasing prices of LPG cylinders, Teli said that the price of “domestic LPG (at Delhi) was Rs. 1053 w.e.f. 6th July 2022 and is Rs. 1103 in July 2023. For PMUY consumers effective price is Rs. 903 after a targeted subsidy of Rs. 200 per cylinder”.

According to a report in The Financial Express FY19 and FY20, the average number of LPG refills per year was three bottles, which rose to 4.4 bottles in FY21. In the subsequent two years, it dropped to around 3.7 refills per year.

The report also noted that this decrease reflects the stagnant income levels among the beneficiaries. However, it added that some smaller households may not require more than four refills annually.

In August 2022, Teli told the Rajya Sabha that 9.2 million customers did not take any refill in 2021-22. The Union government had admitted that the PMUY beneficiaries had not been able to fill cylinders due to the high prices of LPG.

The study said that women face other systemic issues in accessing LPG.

This includes “the inability to furnish documents to apply for gas connections (especially in non-notified bastis in Delhi where people struggle to provide address proof), delays in processing applications, lack of doorstep delivery in rural Jharkhand and non- notified bastis of Delhi, and poor grievance redressal which makes their transition to cleaner fuels tougher.”

In addition, women were also found to be reluctant in using LPG fuel as perceptions and social norms act as deterrents. The study said that women were found to believe food cooked on LPG “causes gastric issues, it does not taste good, and that LPG is unsafe to use.”

Recommendations

The study has recommended the implementation of behaviour change and awareness campaigns along with building local-level baseline data on the households’ pattern of fuel usage to identify groups of people who should be targeted for interventions to promote the shift to clean cooking fuels.

In addition it has also recommended doorstep delivery of LPG cylinders as well as support with documentation to extremely vulnerable households.

“This study, supported by USAID’s Cleaner Air and Better Health project, will enable us to frame

policies and programs to match the needs of target populations, with a focus on gender inclusion,” said USAID/India’s Environmental Advisor, Soumitri Das in a press release.

“We need continuous and sustained interventions at both demand and supply levels to address the issue,” said Neha Saigal, Head of the Gender and Climate Programme at Asar Social Impact Advisors.

Govt Stalls Payments to 26 Lakh TB Patients Over Suspicious Transactions

The Union health ministry has stopped transferring money under the cash for nutrition scheme over the past few weeks and has written to all states asking them to submit reports of any cases of fraudulent transfers.

New Delhi: Across India, over the last few weeks, lakhs of tuberculosis patients have been unable to access the Rs 500 that is due to them for their nutrition from the government.

As The Wire found out, the government stalled all bank transfers to about 26 lakh TB patients when it began to notice suspicious transactions. One official said that the system was restored by September 13 “after removal of software bugs”.

In 2018, the Modi government had introduced the cash for nutrition scheme – the ‘Nikshay Poshan Yojana’. Under it, the government said that all TB patients would get the Rs 500 upon submitting their Aadhaar numbers. It was thought that giving TB patients food directly was prone to corruption, thus the government surmised that giving them cash via bank accounts linked to Aadhaar numbers would make the system fool-proof.

Many public health watchers said that in their unwell state, TB patients would find it very difficult to get an Aadhaar, withdraw money from a bank and then go and buy food with the money. Some public health practitioners proposed that TB patients should simply be given the food in kind – perhaps at hospitals itself when they come for treatment.

Also read: Tuberculosis Has ‘Profound Financial Implications’ for India: Health Minister Nadda

The Wire has found that the Union health ministry has stopped transferring the money over the past few weeks and has written to all states asking them to study their data and submit reports if they suspect there are any cases of fraudulent or improper transfers of money. The Wire confirmed various details of this story with health officials from Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Manipur.

“What we have observed is there are a few bank accounts which are linked with more than one beneficiary,” said a senior official in the Union health ministry. He explained that the money that is to be sent to several different patients is landing up in accounts of one person instead of reaching each person separately. This raised a red flag with government authorities as it could indicate that either the patients are false, or that they are not getting their money due to a middle-man.

“Money is disbursed via states. We have written to them to enquire and let us know if any issues. I have not heard back from the states yet,” says Kuldeep Sachdeva, deputy director general for TB in the Union health ministry.

It is important for TB patients to receive adequate nutrition during their treatment as it speeds up their recovery. Well-nourished people are also less likely to get TB. India has the world’s highest burden of TB in the world and the Modi government has pledged to eliminate the disease by 2025 despite the global goal being 2030.

Also read: ‘Incompatible With Life’, TB Patients Struggle with Modi Government’s Policy on Nutrition

A government official said that this situation of the money of different TB patients landing up in the same bank account has happened in about 2,300 cases out of the approximately 26 lakh patients eligible under the scheme. “So the total amount of these transactions is less than 0.1% of the total amount paid to patients for their nutrition supplement,” he said.

According to government data, between April 2018 and July 2019, Rs 377.25 crore was given to 24.46 lakh TB patients for their nutritional support. In the 2018-2019 budget, Rs 600 crore was allocated in the union budget for the Nikshay Poshan Yojana.

As of January 2019, only about 52% of all registered TB patients have actually submitted their valid bank account details for the transfer of money and 45% of patients (9.47 lakh) have received benefits under this scheme. This means that many are not getting money for nutritional support. Patients who are getting the money and those who are not, may both be struggling to get nutrition and recover from TB.

“In the public sector, 90-95% TB patients are getting their money for nutrition supplements,” claims the government official.

The bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the cause of TB. Credit: niaid/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

The official said that they are not sure as of now whether this manipulation has occurred because of fake patients, or because government staff were involved in the manipulation, or because data was duplicated and then not cleaned up – or a combination of multiple factors. The tip-off about these anomalies came from various sources.

Also read: And Now, Aadhaar Is Mandatory for TB Patients Seeking Government Cash Benefits

One medical officer in a Delhi TB clinic said that part of this problem is occurring because many economically marginalised TB patients thought they had bank accounts via the government’s Jan Dhan scheme – but because those were empty bank accounts, they were soon closed. The health ministry official said that this used to be a problem with Jan Dhan accounts but there are not too many cases of this anymore. The government also used to see cases where patients did not have bank accounts at all, but this problem has also reduced.

Government officials in various states also confirmed to The Wire that TB patients have not been able to access money. A senior official in Chhattisgarh said that they have been asked to submit reports of any suspicious transactions but have not found any so far in the state.

Also read: In Rajasthan, Duplication Plagues Centre’s Scheme for Nutritional Support to TB Patients

One official in Manipur said that even when the government is able to transfer money, patients in hilly and remote areas have been unable to access banks and withdraw it. So in some cases, the state government officials take the money into their accounts and distribute the cash when they visit these patients once every few weeks.

It is not clear whether this is permissible according to the government’s ‘Revised National Tuberculosis Plan’ as it could be misused. However, the lack of access for TB patients in remote parts of India is very much a reality.

The cash benefit of Rs 500 was also envisioned by the government to be an incentive for TB patients and doctors to report cases of TB – largely because it was found a few years ago that India was under-reporting TB by many millions.

Note: This article was updated on September 16 with an official quote that the system was restored on September 13.

Demonising Modi All the Time Won’t Help: Jairam Ramesh

The Congress leader said the opposition must confront the reasons for the electorate voting the BJP back to power.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governance model is not a “complete negative story” and not recognising his work and demonising him “all the time” is not going to help, said Congress leader Jairam Ramesh.

“It is time we recognise Modi’s work and what he did between 2014 and 2019 due to which he was voted back to power by over 30% of the electorate,” said Ramesh on Wednesday.

The BJP received 37.4% of votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The NDA, as a whole, secured nearly 45% of the votes.

Ramesh made the remarks while launching a book, Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India written by Kapil Satish Komireddi, a political analyst.

“He (Modi) talks in a language that connects him with the people. Unless we recognise that he is doing things which people recognise and which have not been done in the past, we are not going to be able to confront this guy,” said the Congress leader.

“Also, if you are going to demonise him all the time, you are not going to be able to confront him,” warned the former Union minister.

Ramesh sought to clarify that he is not asking anyone to praise or applaud the prime minister, but only wants the political class to at least recognise the traits he has brought to the governance – particularly the “economics of governance”.

“Let me tell you it is not a completely negative story when it comes to economics of the governance, the politics of the governance is completely different,” said the noted economist, adding “the social relations that have been created out of his governance model is also completely different”.

To prove his point, Ramesh gave example of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUJ).

“In 2019, all of us in the political discourse made fun of one or two of his programmes, but it has turned out in all electoral studies that the PMUJ is one single program which has been able to connect him with crores and crores of women and given him the political traction which he didn’t have in 2014,” said the Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka.

“Now if we are going to run this down and say this is all hocus pocus and say these are wrong numbers, we are not going to confront this guy,” he cautioned.

Ballia: Prime Minister Narendra Modi distributes the free LPG connections to the beneficiaries, under PM Ujjwala Yojana in Ballia on Sunday. Union Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Kalraj Mishra is also seen. PTI Photo(PTI5_1_2016_000060B)

Stating that something happened in the last decade, which catapulted Modi from a “non-entity in national politics” in the 2009 general elections to someone who won elections back to back, Ramesh said people of the country – right or wrong – are not relating “current distress to his presence”.

“We talked about farmers distress throughout our entire campaign, people realise there was farmers’ distress but they did not hold Modi responsible for it. You saw what happened in the elections result thereafter. We have to understand what made him respectable,” he said.

Dubbing Komireddi’s book as an “angry, absorbing and exceedingly well-written” one, Ramesh said, “It is persuasive in looking at what happened in the last five years and looking ahead as to what we would expect from what has happened in the last five years.”

Ramesh, however, also expressed disagreement with the author, who sought to blame the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his family for all the prevailing wrongs in the country.

Going 60 years back for something which happened in the last decade does not work out, said Ramesh, questioning the author’s bid to blame Nehru for what ails the country today.

Published by Westland, the book claims to “retell and recount the betrayals of India’s republican promise over the last 70 years and retraces the path that modern India has treaded since 1947”.

The Distressing Situation of Women Entrepreneurs in India

Data show that a majority of the enterprises are run by small proprietors and women hold only a negligible portion of that.

According to the Sixth Economic Census (2013) unit level data, the total number of enterprises engaged in different agricultural and non-agricultural activities in India – excluding crop production, plantation, public administration, defence and compulsory social security – was 58.5 million. Majority of these enterprises – over three quarters – were involved in different non-agricultural activities while retail trade and manufacturing were dominant among them as both of these together constituted 58% of the total non-agricultural enterprises.

These non-agricultural enterprises further provided employment to 108.41 million persons – but among them, only 33.04 million (25%) were women.

It was also observed that most of these enterprises were operated under private ownership and within this, ‘own account establishment’ (i.e. establishment without any hired worker) were foremost. Further, over the period 2005 to 2013, growth of own account establishment was higher relative to the growth of enterprises with hired workers.

But gender disaggregated data provided a disquieting picture because only 8.05 million establishments were run by women entrepreneurs without any hired workers and they were majorly involved in livestock rearing, agricultural and manufacturing industries.

Also read: Where Are Indian Women If Not in the Workforce?

The NSS 73rd round unit level data (July 2015-June 2016), which excluded construction and conducted surveys on all un-incorporated non-agricultural enterprises, estimated the total number of enterprises as 63.4 million and they provided employment to approximately 111.3 million workers. The own account enterprises (OAEs) or the proprietary enterprises accounted for 62% of the workforce and workers in the OAEs outnumbered those engaged by big enterprises in the country.

So, both the economic census and the NSSO round indicated that in India, the majority of the enterprises were run by the small proprietors and women hold only a negligible portion of that.

Types of ownership

The types of ownership can provide further useful insights into understanding the operational and economic characteristics of the enterprises in India. It showed that proprietary enterprises (i.e. enterprises wholly owned by a single individual without any hired help) had the highest share (96%) among the non-agricultural enterprises in 2015-16.

A gender disaggregated data revealed that at the all-India level, nearly one-fifth of the enterprises were run by female entrepreneurs but their concentration was mainly restricted to proprietary enterprises. Among the bigger enterprises (i.e. establishments) women’s share was very low (4-5% only).

It is also interesting to note that apart from agriculture majority, women entrepreneurs (45%) were also involved in the manufacturing industry while their share was lower in trade and other services in 2015-16.

Further, these household-based proprietors were dominantly informal enterprises as their nature of the operation was seasonal depending on the availability of raw materials and demand for the products/services they produced. Most of these enterprises (88%) did not have a proper infrastructural set up as they either operated from within the household or outside it without any fixed structure.

However, women entrepreneurs were largely operating from within the household while men had lower chances of operating inside the house. In addition, while running enterprises, a significant number of women entrepreneurs faced various operational issues, among them shrinkage/fall of demand was one of the biggest challenges in both rural and urban areas.

Availability of basic infrastructure

In terms of the availability of basic infrastructural facilities like toilet and waste management within the enterprises, a gender disaggregated division of enterprises reveal that women-owned enterprises are at a further disadvantageous position relative to their male counterparts. Only 23% of women proprietors had access to toilet facilities in their enterprises – 18% of the women who owned enterprises did not have any solid waste management and only 10% had provision for liquid waste management.

Across the enterprises, most of the own account enterprises (98%) did not use computers and only 20% of the big enterprises (i.e. establishments) used a computer for their operation purposes. Similarly, in terms of internet use, only 5% of the total enterprises used it and proprietary enterprises further had lower chances of using internet facilities in 2015-16.

A strict gendered division was also noticed in terms of use of any digital technologies. It is not to deny that for the smooth running of any enterprise, bank account or post office savings account is a compulsory necessity, but in India, 40% of enterprises did not have any bank account/ post office savings account and more than half of the women proprietors did not hold any one of these two. This indicates lower financial inclusion of women entrepreneurs and suggests that most of these enterprises are overwhelmingly dependent on cash.

The recently released Periodic Labour Force Survey (2017-18) further confirms the distressing situation of women entrepreneurs. The report highlights that in spite of the decline in self-employment between 2011-12 and 2017-18, it is the major form of employment for both genders in rural areas.

Also read: What Does the Periodic Labour Force Survey Tell Us?

Self-employment

Within self-employment, while rural men predominantly work as own account workers and employers, among 58% of self-employed women, only 19% are entrepreneurs and rest are unpaid family labourers, helping the household in agriculture and animal husbandry activities in rural areas.

In urban areas, apart from the regular employment – which employs approximately 52% of the women workforce – 35% of women are self-employed and the majority of them are own account workers and employers working in manufacturing and retail trade industry in 2017-18. However, this picture may be misleading, as recording them as directors or working proprietors may create a false impression about their true nature of work. This is because a large proportion of women proprietors are engaged in outsourced manufacturing work (mainly food processing, textile and garment manufacturing) and family-owned retail trade (like local grocery stores).

The document released by NITI Aayog, ‘Strategy for New India @75’, proposes to increase women’s employment by encouraging entrepreneurship among them. However, since women comprise a heterogeneous group and have different requirements, we need to identify policies that assess entrepreneurship from a much broader and diverse framework. Moreover, women’s entrepreneurship in India needs to be looked in the larger context of women’s employment and we need to develop holistic macroeconomic strategies to address this.

Shiney Chakraborty is affiliated to Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi.

Fighting Air Pollution Is Everybody’s Responsibility: UN India Agency Heads

India will need a mix of schemes to incentivise adoption of cleaner technologies and practices, pollution reduction measures, increased monitoring and stringent enforcement of the existing regulations.

There is a silent killer in our midst, and we must act together to stop it.

Air pollution, both indoor and outdoor, as reports from various agencies have highlighted, is the single largest environmental risk to human health. Estimates suggest that as many as 7 million people die prematurely every year from factors attributable to air pollution. Nine out of 10 people in the world today continue to breathe dirty air that damages their lungs.

The India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative led by the Indian Council of Medical Research recognised air pollution as the second highest risk factor affecting disease and mortality. Air pollution kills more people every year than tobacco smoking. What this means is that on a poor day, breathing is like smoking continuously – except that we don’t get to choose not to smoke. And children are even more vulnerable than adults.

We know that toxic gases and nanoscopic particles that slip through our bodies’ defences come from a variety of sources: the burning of fossil fuels such as coal for energy and transport; the use of dirty fuels; construction; home cooking, heating and lighting; the chemicals and mining industries; and the burning of waste, forests and crop residues.

Also read: The Three Kinds of People We Need to Fight India’s Air Pollution Problem

This means it’s not just our health that’s at stake – it’s the earth’s too. The reasons we breathe toxic air are also the reasons behind environmental damage, global warming, and reduced crop growth and agricultural productivity, which in turn reduce food security. Pollutants like black carbon, produced by diesel engines, burning trash and dirty cookstoves, are extremely harmful when inhaled, speed up glacier and mountain snow and ice melt, and exacerbate local weather extremes.

Reducing emissions, therefore, offers a dual opportunity – to improve public health and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next few decades. The good news is we have many solutions and policy options to fight air pollution.

So how can we fix the quality of our air?

India has declared a “war against pollution” to combat poor air quality levels in Indian cities and towns. The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched earlier this year by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), is the country’s first overarching policy framework on air quality. It calls for a 20-30% reduction in particulate pollution over the next five years –a goal that could have significant payoffs when actioned.

One study suggests that successful implementation could mean the average person in India would live 1.3 years longer, and people in very polluted areas would live almost three years longer. The government has taken other steps, too, such as setting up the International Solar Alliance, focusing attention on renewable solar energy, and the Ujjwala Yojana, to connect poor households to green cooking fuels like LPG, which reduces indoor air pollution and protects vulnerable groups like women, children and the elderly.

Also read: Does India Have the Skilled Workforce Needed to Fight Air Pollution?

Because toxic air is attributable to a combination of household, industrial, vehicular and environmental factors, any policy on air pollution must be coordinated across sectors, and address local conditions and sources of pollution.

While the expertise of specialised agencies like the Central Pollution Control Board is invaluable, authorities mandated to deal with urban planning, industry, health, transport, agriculture and waste management must be roped into the effort. India will need a mix of schemes to incentivise adoption of cleaner technologies and practices, pollution reduction measures, increased monitoring and stringent enforcement of the existing regulations.

Other countries have also gone through a rapid growth curve with similar struggles. India can learn from their experience. Five years ago, China launched its own “battle for blue skies” after scenes of heavy smog hanging over Beijing hit the international media.

In response, the central government empowered local officials to enact environmental solutions as they saw fit; small coal-fired boilers in urban areas were phased out; stricter emissions standards for vehicles were rolled out; and households were given incentives to switch to clean heating.

As a result, between 2013 to 2017, China reduced its air pollution by about 32%. Globally, there is momentum and commitment in the form of resolutions passed by United Nations Environment Assembly and the World Health Assembly to encourage national and global action on air pollution.

Also read: Air Pollution Caused Over 1.2 Million Deaths in India in 2017: Report

The UN, through its agencies, is committed to work with the government to promote less polluting industry, transport and domestic fuels, as well as to reduce the burning of crop residue, especially rice straw in north India.

There are also initiatives to adopt cleaner transport, and to clean up home and hearth. The UN supports evidence on the health impacts, shares health advisories and creates awareness to advocate for action and evidence-based policies.

We are also building capacity in in the methodologies for health impact assessments. An inter-agency initiative in partnership with the MoEFCC is underway to develop a strategy on how best to implement the NCAP, leveraging specialised knowledge and outlining a roadmap for effective coordination between institutions.

Fighting air pollution is everybody’s responsibility. We need a coordinated and sustained effort with the active involvement of all sectors, including the government, industry, community-based organisations, academia, communities and individuals. It is in ambitious initiatives such as the NCAP that hope lies. With resolute policy implementation and resolve for strict enforcement and programmatic responses that ensure concerted action, we can, one day soon, again breathe easy.

The writers are heads of agency in India, respectively, for UN Environment, the World Health Organization, UN Industrial Development Organization, UN Development Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

How Can India Reverse Falling Female Workforce Participation?

Unionisation of informal labour and freeing women from unpaid care work are measures that need to be ensured to boost participation and the economy with it.

Last month, I was in Bhubaneshwar for a book release commemorating 19 years of Navin Patnaik as the chief minister. While I prepared for the panel discussion, I was pleasantly surprised to note that the Odisha government had recognised the need to address specific issues faced by women, such as domestic violence and access to government schemes.

A decade ago, the Odisha government set up a ‘Gender Budget Cell’ in the department of women and child development. Its mandate was to provide technical inputs for gender planning, gender budgeting, gender analysis and audit of policies, programmes and outcomes. It was expected to cover all 41 government departments, especially key departments such as panchayati raj, rural development, agriculture and farmer’s empowerment and revenue.

Also Read: Where Are Indian Women If Not in the Workforce?

However, the budget allocated for the cell was a meagre Rs 15 lakh. It has remained at this level for the past three budget cycles. Further, the cell is led by a consultant. Those familiar with the functioning of government departments will know that a consultant does not have much influence. In some ways, the cell has been reduced to a toothless body.

Falling female labour participation

Oxfam India’s new report, ‘Mind the Gap: The State of Employment in India’ brings to focus among other issues, the falling female labour force participation (FLFP) rate. As of 2017, India ranked 20th from bottom out of 187 countries in terms of FLFP. It has slid 18 spots from its rank in 1990s. The report argues that if India’s FLFP reaches the current Chinese levels, the GDP will be boosted by 27%. If it matches the level of participation of men in India, the GDP will rise by over 43%.

According to NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, increasing the FLFP from the current 24% to 48% will translate into a 9-10 % increase in the GDP.

The report attributes the low and falling FLFP to deep set social norms of a patriarchal, ‘family oriented’ society. A range of factors, like decrease in demand for farm work (due to increased mechanisation), decline of the manufacturing sector, lack of jobs commensurate with educational qualifications of women are also forcing them to opt out.

Job seekers line up for interviews at a job fair in Chinchwad, India, February 7, 2019. Credit: REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

Jobs in the informal sector

While their participation in the labour market continues to reduce, there are still many women who need to work, who are seeking work and who find work in certain sectors. Women are employed in the vast unregulated, informal sector, which accounts for 93% of India’s workforce. Wages in this sector are discriminatory and the income is irregular.

According to estimates made by in 2018 by the International Labour Office (ILO), women get paid just two-thirds a man for the same job. Women who work in the unorganised sector are desperate for work and their number is not small. There is a definite case for regulating the informal sector. While labour laws exist to regulate it, employers find creative ways to bypass them. Or, the government simply turns a blind eye.

Also Read: For Women in the Workforce, India Just Better Than Saudi Arabia Among G20 Nations

One way forward could be to promote unionisation to ensure decent work conditions and payment of minimum wages. There are examples of successful unions of domestic workers in Gujarat, Maharashtra and West Bengal.

Unpaid care work

Another area that the report has examined is the issue of unpaid care work such as looking after children and elders, collecting fuel and water for the family and other household tasks. Having access to LPG gas, piped water supply and crèche facilities will free up women’s time. A primary research included in the report has found that schemes like PM Ujjwala – when implemented well – have made it possible for women to take up paid work.

Poor implementation is a challenge that governments, whether state or Centre, must address. It must also focus on creating equal and decent opportunities for women to enter the labour market. There is enough evidence to show that female participation can boost the economy and bring growth.

A Gender Budget Cell is a brilliant idea, but without resources, political will and a steady action plan, it will have little impact. Governments are capable of doing much more. They owe it to the women of this country.

Ranu Kayastha Bhogal is director of policy, research and campaigns, Oxfam India.

In Tribal Hamlets of Raigad, Government Schemes Are Still a Distant Dream

Malwadi is just 60 km from Mumbai and is part of the prosperous Konkan belt region. The hardships locals face are emblematic of the government’s neglect of tribal citizens.

Raigad: For Narmada Naik, a 40-year-old woman belonging to Maharashtra’s particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG), one of the 75 classified tribes, the onset of summer is the harshest. To reach her tribal hamlet Malwadi in Pen taluka, located on a hilltop, it takes a 30-minute trek. With both her knees severely affected by arthritis and no other adult members in the family to help, Naik has to climb up and down the hilly path at least four times every day to fetch eight-ten cauldrons of water. The village, with over 80 houses, all belonging to the extremely impoverished Katkari community, has no access to water.

Malwadi, in the Ambivali panchayat of Raigad district – around 61 kilometres from Mumbai – is one of the many Adivasi hamlets in the region neglected by the state administration. Women here are seen juggling buckets, washing clothes and carrying children all day long. Most men travel to neighbouring villages in the taluka to work in brick kilns. These tribal families are mostly landless. Scarcity of water prevents those who own small patches of land from cultivating. Water, or rather the lack of it, looms large in their lives.

Narmada Naik, 40, has to walk up and down the hill at least four times a day to fetch water. Credit: Sukanya Shantha

“Until I was 15, I lived in a nearby hamlet where water was never an issue. After getting married, I came here. Since then, I haven’t spent a day without lifting gallons of water on my head,” says 30-year-old Manisha Waghmare. She is returning home at 12:30 pm, after spending over five hours at a public tap on the Goa-Mumbai highway, which cuts past the access road leading to their village.

Women are expected to fetch water since the men go out looking for daily wage labour. Most women set out in pairs, with buckets and cauldrons and clothes to be washed at the public taps. The taps are 2 km away and provide water to the bastis along the Mumbai-Goa highway. “There are very few taps and many who depend on them. Frustrating, long waits in the queue sometimes end in bitter fights,” says Waghmare.

Also Read: In Model Gujarat, These Hamlets Still Wait for Bijli, Sadak, Pani

Most women are malnourished and look much older than their age. Their wilted, bony structures struggle to carry the load, but they do not have a choice. “Besides the three months of rains, we have to drag ourselves up and down the hill, each day without fail. Quite often, we lose balance and skid on our way up. It is a precarious affair,” explains Radhika Naik.

The only handpump in the village is perennially dry. Credit: Sukanya Shantha

Children left out of mid-day meal scheme

The water problem is acute and the terrain difficult to manoeuvre. Children do not have anganwadi (rural child care centre) facilities. Almost 25 children in the village, between 0-6 years of age, can’t avail the mid-day meal scheme since the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers are not willing to come here.

“If they agree, they will have to trek each day with food prepared for 25 kids. There is no water to cook food here,” tells Naik, whose children are left out of the mid-day meal scheme. “We were asked to send our children to the nearest village, which is 3 km away, for an anganwadi. Imagine a six-month-old being made to travel every day on the muddy path just to eat that khichdi and puffed rice,” adds an exasperated Naik.

The only school here, until Class IV, has five students. Two male teachers come here every day – one from Pen taluka and another from Panvel.

Just five children are enrolled in the school. Nearly 25 children, between 0-6 years, do not have access to an Aanganwadi in the village since ASHA workers refuse to walk up the hill. Credit: Sukanya Shantha

Unlike the Vidarbha and Marathwada regions of Maharashtra, the Konkan belt (covering 30,746 sq km) is the state’s most prosperous — and water rich. There is abundant rainfall here. That a hamlet like Malwadi still struggles to access water is only symptomatic of how tribal citizens are neglected.

The villagers here say they are tired of petitioning the local governing body and the state government. “Every election, you will find local activists of every party climbing up to the village to tell us who to vote for. But they go missing as soon as the elections are over. We exist only as their vote bank. Our problem has never moved the MP or the MLA of this region,” says 30-year-old Sudhir Naik, who works as a security guard in a nearby school run for poor and orphaned children.

District declared ODF, but none of the houses have toilets

In 2014, Anant Geete, sitting member of parliament, and Shiv Sena’s lone member in the Union cabinet. was one of the first politicians to have aggressively promoted the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). The SBM’s dashboard shows that in 2014-15, only 14.95% households in Raigad district had toilets. However, in 2017-18, the district apparently attained open defecation free (ODF) status.

Also Read: Tandoors That Burn on the Backs of Katkari Adivasis

When Naik showed this reporter around the village, not a single house has a toilet attached. The only toilet structure built here is for the school. “But that too was never used due to water scarcity,” Sudhir says. The plastic door has come off and there is no attached tap. Children use the space to play hide and seek.

The only toilet in the village is built next to the school, but could never be put to use due to water scarcity. Credit: Sukanya Shantha

Geete is seeking a seventh term as the member of parliament from Raigad district. He has been elected since 1996. His strongest opponent, Sunil Tatkare of the NCP, lost in 2014 by a mere 2,100 votes. This election, the third strongest party, the Peasants and Workers Party of India (PWPI), has decided to extend its support to the NCP candidate. But villagers here say neither of the candidates have paid attention to their most basic needs, forget the overall development of the community.

Vaishali Patil, a social activist working on land and Adivasi rights in the region, says the Katkari community is the most neglected in the region. “The community is lagging behind on every human development index. The socio-economic condition is poor and even the most basic state schemes take forever to reach here,” she says. Patil’s assessment seems accurate. Several villagers are trying to avail food grains under the Antyodaya scheme. Only two old and widowed women have managed to get money under the pension scheme.

Ujjwala Yojana yet to reach the hamlet

Similarly, under the NDA government’s flagship Pradhanmatri Ujjwala Yojana, only two houses in the village have got LPG connections. But they have abandoned the cylinders, returning to firewood. They say the cylinders, which cost around Rs 700, are beyond their reach. “When we got the connection, we assumed a cylinder would last several months. But with seven persons in the family, the cylinder lasted less than a month. We don’t have the money to refill it,” said Pramila Waghmare.

Also Read: Four Years in, How Successful Are Modi Government’s Schemes?

The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana aims at safeguarding the health of citizens, specifically women, by providing clean cooking fuel. The scheme, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 1, 2016 in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district, aims to cover over five crore below poverty line families under it. Even though Rs 8,000 crore was allocated towards its implementation, several villagers in the region have ditched using LPG cylinders, mainly because it is unaffordable.

The gas connection lies abandoned in Pramila Waghmare’s house. Under the PM Ujjwala Yojana, Waghmare’s family had availed the connection, but have not been able to use it due to its unaffordability. Credit: Sukanya Shantha

The Waghmares are now negotiating with the district administration to revert to the public distribution system (PDS) scheme which earlier provided them with two litres of kerosene every month. “Modi promised that lives of rural women would improve because of his schemes. Here I am, struggling to cook two meals every day. At the end of five years (Modi government’s tenure), I am left without a gas connection or kerosene to run my family,” she laments.

Where Are Indian Women If Not in the Workforce?

While the participation of women in the workforce is declining, their involvement in unpaid but essential activities remains unrecognised.

While a majority of South Asian countries (except Afghanistan and Pakistan) have reported high women labour force participation rate, in India, the labour force participation rate of women has been declining over the period 1993 to 2016.

With an objective to rectify this, NITI Aayog, in its recently released document ‘Strategy for New India @ 75’, has pressed the need to enhance current female labour force participation rate by at least 7% by 2022-23.

However, it is important to note that the labour force statistics in India does not take into account a significant proportion of women who are involved in unpaid but essential activities, which include water collection, collection of goods like vegetables, roots, firewood, cattle feed and sewing, tailoring, weaving for household use.

Though each of these unpaid and allied activities are economic activities and help the household in numerous ways, a significant and increasing proportion of women engaged in them are left outside the purview of labour force statistics.

The contribution of these activities to household income and the living condition of their families cannot be undermined. Lack of policy intervention to ensure adequate provisioning along with patriarchal norms which view these activities as part of domestic chores to be done by women only, brings negligible difference to the burden of work and time poverty that women struggle with on daily basis.

Job seekers line up for interviews at a job fair in Chinchwad, India, February 7, 2019. Credit: REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

Accessing water

Consider women’s work linked to accessing water for household purposes. The 2011 Census showed that the total share of households with access to water within 500 metres of their household premises reduced from 56% to 36% between 2001 to 2011. Owing to the resultant water scarcity, 36% of households (read women of the household) had to travel long distances to fetch water.

According to NSSO (2012), women in rural areas spend on an average 20 minutes a day to travel to the source of water and wait for up to 15 minutes to collect it. Similarly, in urban areas, travelling took 15 minutes a day and waiting was 16 minutes. Usually, women had to make several trips to satisfy the household need of water. If they failed to do so, the household had to spend Rs 93 per month for water.

Also Read: For Women in the Workforce, India Just Better Than Saudi Arabia Among G20 Nations

Interstate variations in terms of time taken to collect water is also visible. In states like Rajasthan and Jharkhand, women had to walk for more than 30 minutes to reach the source of water and wait for more than 20 minutes to fill a bucket.

Water remains one of the most essential commodities for most household activities. However, the effort and time that goes into accessing it on daily basis and the economic impact that not doing so may have on household income is not given any heed while calculating women’s work.

Collecting energy sources

Similarly, women are involved in collection of cooking energy sources (firewood and cattle dung) to reduce out-of-pocket costs. This is in spite of the fact that usage of these fuels increases health problems amongst women and also their time poverty. Though the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana was launched with the aim of providing a free first cooking gas cylinder to BPL households, it has been superficially successful in reducing the drudgery of women, as the refilling cost of the second cylinder is too high. Families are also discouraged from opting for this scheme as they fear that their BPL status will be removed once they choose the scheme.

Further, India’s loss of an estimated 728 sq km of forest cover between 2003 and 2005 has increased the time and effort that rural women have to put in collection of these energy sources. Now, they are forced to walk longer and search harder to access fodder for cattle and collect the brush and twigs to cook family meals.

Women carrying headloads of firewood. Credit: Janaki Lenin

Apart from water and fuel, NSS data (2012) also shows that over time, there has been an increase in women’s involvement in sewing, tailoring and weaving activities for household purposes. This could be to substitute household consumption expenditure on market purchases. In addition to allied work, women spend a longer time in childcare and care of the old, sick, or disabled in the household. The only available Time Use Survey (1998-99) showed that women spend 4.47 hours per week against 0.88 hours per week by men on care activities. Clearly, this is a major constraint for women who want to participate in the job market.

Outsourcing domestic activities

While women belonging to high economic strata, are able to outsource their domestic activities by purchasing time of other people (usually women of lower strata), poorer women remain marginalised and invisible and the tasks that she performs receive negligible attention. They are victim of the ill-effects of deforestation in terms of growing food insecurity, water crisis, loss of livelihood and environmental degradation. Apart from their enormous unpaid work, significant proportion of women continue to work part-time on regular basis in the informal sector in ways that makes it feasible for them to balance their domestic duties with their necessity to earn.

It is important to keep in mind that this unpaid work of women is absolutely necessary for the effective functioning of the formal sector which directly and indirectly rely on the goods and services produced by them.

Also Read: If India Really Wants More Women in the Workforce, We Need to Think More About Migration

So, instead of focusing more on growth figures it is important to emphasise on efforts to bring improvement in basic social services and infrastructure so that the time spent on unpaid work is reduced and women are able to move into the labour market. Effective public provisioning of child care will also ease their burden of work of paid employment and reduce their time poverty.

Public expenditure on creche is essentially required along with an initiative to increase the drinking water supply within the household premises, and provision of affordable cooking fuel. Sustainable initiatives such as these will go a long way in enabling women to participate in the labour force by reducing their burden of care work and time required to perform daily household chores.

Shiney Chakraborty is affiliated to the Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi.

Tuberculosis Has ‘Profound Financial Implications’ for India: Health Minister Nadda

India has 27% of the world’s TB population but aims to eliminate TB by 2025.

New Delhi: Writing in the international medical journal The Lancet, India’s health minister has said that tuberculosis (TB) “not only exacts a terrible mortality toll in India, it also has profound financial implications”.

India has 27% of the world’s TB population. This is the highest concentration of TB-affected people in any single country.

One financial implication of TB is poverty. J.P. Nadda, India’s health minister, quotes new analysis from The Lancet and says that TB in India keeps people from escaping poverty for seven years even after they have completed the TB treatment.

Also read: To Tackle the Tuberculosis Crisis, Diagnostics Must Be Brought Closer to Patients

Another way of looking at this financial implication is public loss. The Lancet’s analysis says that “unavoidable TB deaths will cost the economy at least $32 billion each year over the next 30 years.”

Nadda’s comments come as part of a 62-page report by the Lancet Commission on Tuberculosis titled, ‘Building a TB free world.’

India scores high on political will

In the Lancet Commission’s report card for India, the only parameter on which India has been given a top score on is “political will,” which it says is “high”. Seven other parameters “needs improvement,” three parameters are “approaching target” and one is “on target.”

Political will, intent and claim has indeed been “high” under the Narendra Modi government, with the government pledging to eliminate TB by 2025 even as the global goal has been set to 2030.

However one of the papers part of the Lancet Commission report says it would take until 2100 to reach India’s “End TB” goals, even with “extreme measures.”

India notified 2 million new cases of TB last year

A doctor checks for tuberculosis at a health camp. Credit: cdcglobal/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Nadda also published some important statistics on India’s TB burden in The Lancet.

India’s National Strategic Plan for TB has been budgeted $2 billion, which is now “fully funded and operational”. Apart from this, India allocates $100 million annually, to provide nutrition to TB patients.

India has also been working hard to detect new cases of TB and Nadda published an alarming figure in The Lancet – in 2018, there were 2.15 million new cases of TB notified in India. This is an increase of 3,00,000 cases in a single year, or an increase by 16%.

Also read: The Standards and Double Standards of Dealing With Tuberculosis in India

India has been struggling to trace and then track TB patients and this is largely because the patients mostly go for treatment via the private sector. Nadda says India now notifies over 5,40,000 cases annually from just the private sector.

The Lancet Commission has paid special attention to the private sector’s role in India’s TB crisis. In 2016, new research showed that India had been under-estimating TB cases by over a million, because TB patients in the private sector were not being counted in the government’s official data.

Other high burden countries have been studied for the most stark features of their own respective TB situations. For example, Kenya has been studied for their high HIV burden, and Moldova has been studied for its high levels of multi drug resistance.

Also read: ‘Incompatible With Life’, TB Patients Struggle with Modi Government’s Policy on Nutrition

The Lancet says India will need to optimise its private sector engagement and this alone could avert eight million TB deaths by 2045.

Nadda also listed out a number of Indian programmes and schemes that can all go some way in helping India reach its elimination goal. In his article he says the Ayushman Bharat insurance scheme and wellness centres, Swachh Bharat Mission, Nutrition Mission, Ujjwala Yojana, Housing for All by 2022, Skill Development Programmes etc, can all help.

He also flagged other issues that drive tuberculosis which the government will need to attend to, such as overcrowding, rapid urbanisation, diabetes and under nutrition.

In Bundelkhand Villages, Women Still Waiting for Ujjwala Yojana Benefits

With no cylinders sanctioned, traditional cooking techniques are still used.

The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, the flagship programme under the aegis of the Central government and promoted as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiative, is a much celebrated policy. It garnered praise in the WHO pollution report just last month, and a National Geographic documentary – chronicling the impact of the yojana on the lives of four women across India – is nearing release.

The scheme, undertaken by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, was launched in 2016 with the express aim of providing clean fuel – LPG connections – to households that fall below the poverty line in the country. Moreover, the connections were to be established only in the names of women – a radical idea and a much-lauded aspect of the proposed policy. The policy’s official website showcases the success of the scheme over two years, with its ‘media kit’ link capable of leaving any researcher suitably impressed.

But when it comes to the ground realities, the story is starkly different, many instances of which can be found in Chatarpur district’s Ikara village, in Madhya Pradesh’s Bundelkhand, where a largely Adivasi population resides.

Speaking to the women of this village, one would think the policy was never formed. Traditional cooking techniques are still followed here, evidence of which lies on the walls and floors of homes.

Manta talked about the “kala dhooan (black smoke)” that dirties her house, and of the long walks she undertakes every day to the jungles of Chaukaha, foraging for firewood.

Laad Kunwaar spoke of how she awaited the gas connection she had been hearing about, “Abhi nikla nahi cylinder hamara”, she said, and added, “jaane kab niklega. (My cylinder hasn’t been sanctioned yet, don’t know when it will happen).”

Perhaps the awareness drives are what call for the real applause with this policy, whereas the actual entitlements are missing. Here are 60-odd families in the remote hamlet of Bundelkhand who have heard of the yojana, but have not yet been covered in the eight-crore connections target slated for the end of 2019.

The WHO estimates that there are approximately five lakh deaths in India solely due to unclean cooking fuels. These include deaths caused due to diseases like lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other heart and lung related diseases.

When we visited Kunwar bai, sarpanch of Ikara village, accountable to the many women like her who spend hours and lung power on the chulha, risking their lives and their children’s – who are mostly the ones around when the women cook – she only had a million excuses for us. After she was done with the usual “will be done in 15 days” response, she blamed the families that had been travelling out of the village for weddings, and had missed out on the connections.

Meanwhile, in February this year, the Union cabinet approved an additional allocation of Rs 4,800 crore to the Ujjwala Yojana, in another much-lauded, ambitious-sounding effort to scale up the connection from five to eight crores by the end of 2019.

Perhaps Manta and others like her in Ikara need to wait it out some more. Until then, black lungs and black walls continue to be their fate.

Khabar Lahariya is a rural, video-first digital news organisation with an all-women network of reporters in eight districts of Uttar Pradesh.