Millions of women face health risks from LPG subsidy cuts

Five years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government offered Indian women a chance to dramatically improve their lives with cooking fuel subsidies in what became one of his administration’s most celebrated campaigns.

Now, hamstrung by a widening fiscal deficit, New Delhi has been slowly reducing the size of those handouts — a shift that risks upsetting women voters and potentially exposing millions to heavier levels of pollution.

In Allauddinnagar, a village in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, Laxmi Kishore, a 35-year-old homemaker, is worried. Cooking food for her family used to be an ordeal that involved using cheap fuels like cow dung, crops and wood,