Gender and Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform in India

The research focused around two main research questions: “How do existing LPG subsidy policies affect the welfare, productivity and empowerment of women and girls in low-income households?” and “How might the welfare, productivity and empowerment of women and girls in low-income households change as a result of specific, nationally relevant proposals for the reform of existing LPG subsidies?” Simi [...] This two-stage approach reflected the facts that: a) the literature review found a paucity of research on the impacts of subsidies themselves on gender; and b) the policy agenda in many countries is focused on the reform of fossil fuel subsidies, such as the phasing out of kerosene, as well as policies to support decentralized renewable energy generation. [...] In India, policy changes were introduced during the lifetime of the research project: the introduction of a connection subsidy (PMUY) in 2016, some efforts to improving the targeting of existing subsidies and a series of staged price increases. [...] India-specific research questions How do existing LPG subsidy policies affect How might the welfare, productivity and the welfare, productivity and empowerment of empowerment of women in low-income women and girls in urban and rural low-income households change as a result of the following households in two districts—Ranchi (in the policy reforms: state of Jharkhand) and Raipur (in the state of • [...] The PAHAL (DBTL) system of transfers with authentication had been introduced to reduce illegal connections and diversion, and it succeeded in significantly reducing the number of registered beneficiaries—but some of the savings were due to households being unable to qualify under the new criteria for registering, and there was no clear national data on the scale of this problem (GSI, 2018).