Women Empowerment through Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) Scheme in Rajasthan: A Study on Rural Households in Selected Region

Abstract

In India, cooking is one of the chores that capture most of the time in women's day to day life. Women in rural India do not get time to look beyond these chores and hardly get time for some other productive work. According to Census, 2011, nearly 121 million families in India are still cooking food using traditional fuels. In India, around 40 percent of households still deprived of clean energy for cooking food. Recognizing such facts, Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) launched by Hon'ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2016. This scheme aims to provide a clean energy fuel of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) to 80 million rural women in India who belong below the poverty line family. The present study attempted to analyze the impact of the PMUY scheme on the socio-economic status of women in the rural sector in India and thereby assess the effectiveness of Yojana on women empowerment in the rural sector. The objectives of PMUY, namely, sustainability, energy affordability, efficiency, safety, and clean environment, selected as dependent variables in the study. The socio-economic factors of women empowerment, namely, accessibility, executive power, awareness, financial independence, and behavioural change in herself, chose as independent variables in the study. The present study is a survey-based approach and survey responses obtained from 187 women living in the rural sector in India. The Correlation, regression, and ANOVA statistical tools applied for analysis. The study's findings showed that all the dimensions of PMUY significantly influence the socio-economic aspects of women empowerment. The study also proposed a new conceptual model that may assist the government in framing new policies and strategies to enhance the effectiveness of PMUY in India.  

Keywords: LPG, PMUY, socio-economic, women, women empowerment.