Deflating outlook: Households must prepare for hefty rise in LPG prices

Urban households will shortly feel the pinch of rising prices

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman cut fuel subsidies while slapping additional fuel taxes on unblended transport fuels in the latest Union Budget.

The former will hit the rural poor, households that secured a subsidised LPG connection under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a programme that was partly instrumental in helping the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win the 2019 general elections. The latter will pretty much hurt the entire population after it kicks in from October.

That's what it looks like. Or, perhaps, it’s not as it appears to be, at least on the subsidy front. First, the government stopped giving