NEW DELHI: Soaring black-market prices of cooking gas in India’s capital are pushing poorer families back to wood and coal, raising health risks and worsening air quality in the highly polluted megacity.
India is the world’s second-largest buyer of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which is used for cooking and predominantly sourced from the Middle East – and supplies have been strangled by the ongoing war.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged states to curb black marketing and avoid panic, stressing that India’s energy supplies remain stable.
In the low-income Madanpur Khadar neighbourhood, 36-year-old domestic helper Sheela Kumari says she has been forced to abandon LPG cooking gas cylinders for cooking after prices more than doubled.
“We used to buy cylinders for 1,800 rupees (S$24.55) – 2,000 rupees, but now on the black market it has gone up to 5,000,” she told AFP, nearly as much as she entire monthly salary of 6,000 rupees.
“It is unimaginable for us,” she said. “The next best option for us was going back to wood and coal.”
Kumari said a 14kg cylinder lasts only 15–20 days for her family of six, even when they stretch its use out.
But she says a 10kg bundle of firewood, lasting several days, costs 30 rupees.
“There are health repercussions, and my children cough,” she said. “But tell me a way out?”
Her neighbour, 45-year-old Munni Bai, who has asthma, had switched to using an electric cooker as well as biogas from cow dung, to help her breathing.
But now she said she was being forced to resume use of alternative fuels.
“Gas is too expensive,” she said. “We cannot depend on it – we moved from coal and wood, due to my health issue, but now it is difficult to sustain.”
But activists say the problem is more about access.
Many migrant workers lack documentation needed for subsidised LPG and rely on informal markets, where hoarding has pushed up prices.
“There is no major shortage yet, but hoarding has increased,” said Deepak, who uses only one name, from the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR).
“Many migrants depend on black-market cylinders, and prices have gone up two to three times”.
New Delhi, and its wider sprawling metropolitan region of 30 million residents, is regularly ranked among the world’s most polluted capitals, due to a deadly mix of emissions from power plants, heavy traffic, as well as the burning of rubbish and crops.
For the past decades, India’s government has pushed its “Ujjwala” or “light” clean-energy scheme, to provide over 100 million LPG connections to poor households.
Burning wood, coal and biomass indoors exposes families to high levels of smoke and toxic particles, increasing the risk of respiratory illnesses.
Women and children, who spend more time near cooking areas, are especially vulnerable. - AFP
