‘The Wire’ which is known as a propaganda peddler did a story on how the success of Ujjwala scheme (to provide LPG connection to poor households) has made pot makers jobless. A report which deals with Tikamgarh, a town of Madhya Pradesh, indirectly acknowledges the success of the government in providing LPG gas connections to the poor but also adds that without LPG Gas connections, the families would have been better off. The story is bizarre and reaches no conclusion.
Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana is basically a scheme of NDA government launched with an aim of providing five-crore free LPG connections to the families below the poverty line till 2019. It has empowered women, improved their basic health condition, reduced drudgery and the overall time that is otherwise spent on cooking food. Even the rural youth, engaged in the supply chain of cooking gas, are able to spot better employment opportunities via the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana. In last one and a half year, state governments of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar have released the maximum number of LPG connections which stand at 97,75,486, 51,90,802, 68,70,618 respectively.
The PMUY has successfully transformed the lives of people. The rural population has been freed from conventional wood burning stoves as almost everybody has got the gas connection.
The Wire report reads “Cooking in clay pots has become a thing of the past, quickly traded up for the cost-effective and time-saving gas cylinders and shining steel pans. As a result, this tiny Tikamgarh community struggles to find buyers for their wares and earn their daily bread.”
Hence, the wire ultimately in its report acknowledges the success of Ujjwala scheme in the initial part of the report quoted while the false propaganda that people of Tikamgarh have lost their job has to be looked with two aspects.
One, as of 2011 India census, the population of Tikamgarh was 79,106 with an average literacy rate of 85.02%, higher than the state average of 69.32%: male literacy being 89.98%, and female literacy notches 79.59% mark. These data show that the people of Tikamgarh are literate and poses a counter to the Wire’s stand that people of this place completely depend on pot making. Before the advent of electricity and refrigerators, people used clay pots for storage but now largely prefer the technology-driven techniques.
The story of wire shows the desperation and its twisting prowess coupled with its incipient hatred for Modi government. It is going to an extra length in order to malign the scheme which has fulfilled the desired goals and made the life easier for people. The Ujjwala scheme has empowered women and has given them extra time to work in other employment schemes like MGNREGA to earn extra money. The LPG gas connection has truly empowered the women and their families. As a result, women can also focus on the education of their children. The Ujjwala Scheme has lived up to its aim of the overall development of families across the country.