Social sector focus: no kitchen smoke, no open defecation

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 29

Among his three Budget speeches so far in this government, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for the first time included social sector focus as one of the nine pillars of his proposals.

Apart from health and education, which make up bulk of the social sector allocation of Rs 1,51,581 crore this year, the BJP government’s big focus is on sanitation and ridding rural households of kitchen smoke in order to give village women healthier lives.

So when FM Jaitley announced today that his social sector push comprises provision of LPG cylinders to five crore BPL households across India over the next two years, all women ministers on the Treasury benches smiled, especially so because Jaitley invoked Swami Vivekananda to stress his message.

“When asked what he intends doing for regeneration of India, Swami Vivekananda had said “no amount of politics would be of any avail until the masses in India are well-educated, well-fed and well-cared for,” FM said before he turned to details.

The LPG scheme would mean end of kitchen smoke in several households which continue to use conventional cooking methods, causing a range of respiratory disorders to the women in the families.

The government’s decision to ensure universal LPG coverage of BPL houses rests on 75 lakh Indians recently giving up their LPG subsidy to help the economically weaker households who cannot afford gas cylinders and still cook on traditional “chulhas”.  A sum of Rs 2,000 crore was allocated in today’s Budget to meet the initial cost of providing these LPG connections which will benefit about 1 crore 50 lakh households below the poverty line in 2016-17. The FM announced Rs 9000 crore for the Swachh Bharat Programme besides saying that villages that manage to become defecation free will be handsomely rewarded.