Impact of Ujjwala Yojana Scheme and Its Effect on Behavioural Changes Among Rural Women

Delivering multiple roles every single day, women are undoubtedly the backbone of any society. However, they have also been an ignored segment of the society in many parts of the world. To re-establish their rightful and distinguished status, empowerment programmes need to be started to provide a compact groundwork to encourage the inner strength and self-esteem for the rural women. This research contirubute to weaker section of the women in rural areas which uplift there standard of living through PMUJ scheme in Inida. The Government of India has initiated and implemented the scheme namely Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUJ)-Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) connection helping in a big way to rural women through empowering their livelihood and transforming behavioural changes from using cow dung cake, wood, kerosene to LPG in terms of improvement in health and increase the economic productivity by saving time spent on arranging cooking needs. The Ujjwala Yojana is aimed at substituting the unclean cooking fuels regularly used in the rural India with the clean LPG. It has been stated that nearly 38% of the world's population is still dependent on traditional biomass for cooking. But, in India, the women in rural area have limited access to cooking gas. According to experts, having an open fire in the kitchen by using biomass fuels is like burning 400 cigarettes an hour. Based on this background, this descriptive research paper analyses the impact of Ujjwala Yojana scheme and its effect on transforming the livelihood and behavioural changes among rural women in three select districts in Tamil Nadu, India. The sample unit in this study consist of rural women from eight villages covering six Taluk, who received LPG connection under PMUJ for cooking their food at home. The findings of the study revealed that, there is a positive impact and behavioural changes among rural women due to PMUY scheme.