The Hindu : Front Page : Poor spend more than others on cooking fuel

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Sunday, May 04, 2008
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Poor spend more than others on cooking fuel

V. Sridhar

Bangalore: It is well known that the poor have to undergo great hardships to get cooking fuel be it firewood or kerosene. But does the middle-class, which typically uses liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), realise it pays less than the poor for its cooking fuel?

For Selvi (35), who works as a domestic help at Jagadishnagar, the monthly trip to the ration shop for the “blue oil” is so important that she is willing to forego a day’s wage to stand in the long queue for her monthly quota of seven litres at a subsidised rate of Rs. 10 a litre.

The kerosene at the ration shop is coloured blue so that the fuel, meant for the public distribution system (PDS), is not diverted for other uses. This diversion occurs ostensibly because it costs Rs. 37 in the open market.

Options

But the seven litres that Ms. Selvi gets from the ration shop, two km away from her one-room tenement, only lasts about 12 days a month for her three-member household.

Once it is exhausted, her options are limited to either firewood or kerosene from the open market, which she calls “the expensive white oil”.

Firewood, the cheaper option, costs Rs. 40 a “mana,” about six pieces of wood that will last three days. But the problem with firewood is that when it rains, it becomes costlier and is not available as easily as kerosene is from the open market.

Even if she manages the remaining days in the month with firewood, her cooking fuel budget for a month comes to Rs. 310 — Rs. 70 for the subsidised fuel and Rs. 240 for firewood.

Ironically, this is what her employers, typically well-heeled middle-class professionals living in apartments not far from her home, also pay for a cylinder of LPG which lasts a little more than a month for a comparable three-member family.

The economics

The “white oil” from the open market costs even more. Quick calculations would show that if Ms. Selvi were to depend on kerosene from the open market, her cooking fuel budget for a month would shoot up to almost Rs. 460.

In that case she would pay 33 per cent more for her cooking fuel than those who have the good fortune of having an LPG connection.

“The prices of foodstuff have shot up in the last year. I am now forced to use firewood even though it takes longer to cook and is generally more tedious. Life would be a little easy if we can get a little more of the blue oil from the ration shop,” Ms. Selvi says.

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