Ujjwala gave poor Indian women a free LPG connection; refills stay paid

Hundreds of millions of Indian households cooked on firewood, coal and cow-dung cakes, and the smoke fell hardest on the women who spent hours over the chulha. LPG was widely available, but a poor household had to pay a connection deposit and hardware up front - a lump sum that kept clean cooking out of reach even where cylinders were sold down the road.

Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana launched in Ballia, Uttar Pradesh, on May 1, 2016, with a target of 8 crore free LPG connections to deprived households by March 2020. The connection was issued in the woman's name, shifting both the asset and the entitlement to the person doing the cooking. The 8-crore target was crossed on September 7, 2019, months early; by March 2025 the scheme had issued more than 10.33 crore connections.

The design deliberately left refills user-paid, softened by a Rs 300 per-cylinder targeted subsidy that put PMUY's effective Delhi price at Rs 642. Consumption per connection rose from 3.68 cylinders a year in FY22 to 4.71 in FY26, but a CEEW survey found only 23% of rural households use LPG exclusively: at a Rs 400 refill, about 80% say they would - the gap between Rs 400 and Rs 642 is the scheme's remaining distance.

Waive the entry cost; subsidise per refill after

The one-time connection cost was the wall between poor households and LPG, not the fuel itself - cylinders were already sold in their towns.

Putting the connection in the woman's name aimed the benefit at the person doing the cooking, rather than the household head.

Zero entry price converts households in bulk, while a per-refill subsidy scales only with actual usage: the state pays for consumption, not registration.

Existing LPG distributor networks did the delivery, so the scheme needed policy and subsidy money, not new infrastructure.

Entry price and running price are different products. Free the first and millions sign up; usage then tracks willingness to pay. At Rs 400 most go exclusive; at Rs 642 firewood still wins.

PMUY refills rose to 4.71 cylinders per connection in FY26 from 3.68 in FY22, the government told Parliament; 2025-26 carries Rs 12,000 crore of subsidy at Rs 300 per cylinder. Sustained use is the frontier: CEEW's 2026 survey found 73% of rural households used LPG recently but only 23% exclusively, with refill cost the binding constraint and a Rs 400 price point suggested. Amid Rs 60,000 crore of FY26 under-recoveries, subsidised refills were cut from nine to four in June 2026. IEA chief Fatih Birol credits the scheme with changing rural women's lives.