Which one of the following is the name of the scheme introduced as a well-targeted system of service delivery to LPG customers ?

Correct — A, (a) SAHAJ. SAHAJ is the online route to a new domestic cooking gas connection, introduced by the public sector oil marketing companies. A household that wants a connection registers on the LPG portal, chooses a distributor, pays online and receives an electronic subscription voucher by email — the e-SV — after which the cylinder, regulator and documents are delivered at the door; the facility was piloted from May 2015 and formally launched at a set of cities at the end of August that year, and extended as the network of distributors and the de-duplication check across companies allowed. What the stem describes is exactly that: a system of service delivery to customers, targeted in the sense that the applicant is identified and de-duplicated so that one household does not hold connections with more than one company, and delivered without the visits, forms and waiting that a connection used to require. Read the ask closely, because it is the phrase 'service delivery' that carries the answer. The oil ministry's reforms of this period came in two distinct kinds. One kind changed how the subsidy reaches the consumer, and that is PAHAL, the direct benefit transfer of the LPG subsidy. The other changed how the service itself reaches the consumer — booking, refills, new connections, portability between distributors — and SAHAJ belongs to that second family. A candidate who has learnt the LPG reforms as a single block will find the two hard to separate here, and the safeguard is to ask what is being delivered in each case: money, or the connection itself.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)PAHAL — The Commission's key does not take this option, and it is worth learning properly rather than dismissing, because PAHAL is the better-known of the two schemes and its own description uses the language of targeting. PAHAL — Pratyaksh Hanstantrit Labh, also called direct benefit transfer for LPG or DBTL — was launched in 54 districts in November 2014 and extended across the country from 1 January 2015. Under it the consumer buys the cylinder at market price and the subsidy is credited directly into a bank account linked to Aadhaar or to the consumer number, which removes the subsidy from the transaction at the distributor's counter and with it the incentive to divert subsidised cylinders. It was recognised as the largest direct benefit transfer programme in the world by number of beneficiaries. What PAHAL delivers, however, is the subsidy; what this question describes is the delivery of service to the customer.
• (c)UDAY — A different ministry and a different sector. UDAY is the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana, announced by the Ministry of Power in November 2015 to deal with the accumulated losses and debt of state electricity distribution companies. Under it participating states took over a large share of the discoms' debt, and the discoms committed themselves to operational improvements — reducing transmission and distribution losses, metering, feeder separation and tariff revision. It has nothing to do with cooking gas; the only thing it shares with the answer is the habit of giving schemes short Hindi names.
• (d)UDAN — Also from another sector. UDAN — Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik — is the regional connectivity scheme of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, launched in 2016 to bring unserved and underserved airports and airstrips into use and to make short flights affordable through capped fares on a proportion of seats, funded by a viability gap arrangement and a levy on other routes. The name's resemblance to UDAY is itself part of the trap in this option set, and neither belongs to the petroleum ministry.

Cooking gas policy is a good example of how one subsidy programme can generate a family of schemes, each attacking a different part of the same problem, and examination questions turn on keeping them apart. The subsidy problem was leakage and mis-targeting: subsidised domestic cylinders were being diverted to commercial use, and multiple connections were held in one household. The answer to that was PAHAL, which pays the subsidy into the consumer's bank account instead of discounting the cylinder, together with the de-duplication of consumer records across the three public oil marketing companies and the 'Give It Up' campaign asking better-off consumers to surrender the subsidy voluntarily. The access problem was different: millions of households, particularly poor and rural ones, had no connection at all and cooked on biomass. The answer to that was the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, launched in 2016, which gave deposit-free connections to women from poor households. The service problem was a third thing: getting a connection or a refill meant visits to a distributor, paper forms and long waits. The answers there were the online booking and payment systems, distributor portability, the mobile applications, and SAHAJ, the online release of a new connection with an electronic subscription voucher. Subsidy, access, service — three problems, three families of measures, and a question that names one of them is naming a family rather than a slogan.

Key facts

• SAHAJ is the facility for the online release of a new LPG connection, under which a customer registers and pays online and receives an electronic subscription voucher, the e-SV, by email.
• It was piloted from May 2015 by the public sector oil marketing companies and formally launched at a group of cities at the end of August 2015 through the LPG portal.
• PAHAL, or Pratyaksh Hanstantrit Labh, is the direct benefit transfer of the LPG subsidy; it began in 54 districts in November 2014 and went nationwide from 1 January 2015.
• Under PAHAL the consumer pays the market price for a cylinder and the subsidy is credited to a bank account linked to Aadhaar or the consumer number; it has been recognised as the world's largest direct benefit transfer programme by beneficiary numbers.
• The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, launched in 2016, provides deposit-free LPG connections to women from poor households and addresses access rather than subsidy or service.
• UDAY, the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana, was announced by the Ministry of Power in November 2015 for the financial and operational turnaround of state distribution companies.
• UDAN, Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik, is the Ministry of Civil Aviation's regional connectivity scheme launched in 2016, with capped fares on a share of seats and viability gap funding.
• The name Sahaj is also used in the rural electrification scheme Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana, known as Saubhagya, which belongs to the Ministry of Power.

Common traps

• Treating every LPG scheme as PAHAL. PAHAL delivers the subsidy; SAHAJ delivers the connection; Ujjwala provides connections to poor households.
• Identifying a scheme from its acronym alone. Sahaj, Uday and Udan are ordinary words reused across sectors and ministries.
• Confusing UDAY, an electricity distribution scheme, with UDAN, an aviation scheme.
• Assuming the newest or most famous scheme is always the answer; the stem's own words are the discriminator.
• Forgetting to attach a ministry to each scheme, which is what separates options drawn from different sectors in a single list.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under which one of the following schemes is the LPG subsidy transferred directly into the consumer's bank account ?

  • (a)SAHAJ
  • (b)PAHAL
  • (c)Ujjwala
  • (d)Saubhagya

  Answer(b) PAHAL

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The UDAN scheme of the Government of India is associated with which one of the following ministries ?

  • (a)Ministry of Power
  • (b)Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas
  • (c)Ministry of Civil Aviation
  • (d)Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

  Answer(c) Ministry of Civil Aviation