Friday, October 12, 2012

The mystery of vanishing cylinders

The Bharatiya October 12, 2012

N ever mind the multiple multi-crore scams, the aam aadmi and aurat are worked up because of the cap on subsidised LPG cylinders. The PM and others in his party have often justified this move by saying that this was essential because if it wasn’t done, the Rs 43,000 crore subsidy given on 117 crore cylinders could cross Rs 2 lakh crore next year and bankrupt an already broke government.
But if you compare the data with the latest census figures, the math doesn’t work out. Of the 25 crore families in the country, 17 crore live in rural areas and 8 in urban ones. Census responses show that of these, only 7.5 crore families (5.5 crore families in urban areas and 2 crores in rural areas) use LPG to cook. The remaining 17.5 crore families still cook using coal, kerosene, firewood, dung cakes or bagasse. A large part of these people come from the 9 crore Below Poverty Line (BPL) population.
Petroleum company figures show there are 14 crore gas connections in all. But if they go by the rule book that allows only one gas connection per family, there should be only 7.5 crore gas connections because there are 7.5 crore families who use LPG to cook as per the census records.
As someone who cooks regularly, I can say with confidence that on an average, a family can use about 9 cylinders a month. If you multiply 7.5 crore families into 9 cylinders, you get the total number of cylinders issued which is 67.5 crore. Subsidising that many cylinders should be a bearable burden for the government. But the government says it subsidises 117 crore cylinders that costs it Rs 43,000 crore. So who is using the remaining 49.5 crore cylinders that were subsidised till not very long ago?
The government either cannot or doesn’t want to crack down on the diversion of these cylinders for commercial use.
Dipping into the aam aadmi’s pockets is so much easier. In a season where the number of zeroes in the size of each scam is more mind-boggling than the other, the money they are extracting out of us should obviously seem like small change to the powers-that-be.