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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Commercial LPG 'evaporates' in Maharashtra

Mumbai : The short supply of commercial LPG cylinders turned ‘grim’ on Wednesday as hundreds of small and medium eateries – on whom the ordinary working Mumbaikars depend on for daily meals – shut down or drastically trimmed menus, on Wednesday.   With an estimated 50,000-plus hotels, restaurants and small food joints, the crunch is beginning to be felt severely, said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) vice-president and Hotel and Restaurant Association Western...

Commercial LPG 'evaporates' in Maharashtra

Mumbai : The short supply of commercial LPG cylinders turned ‘grim’ on Wednesday as hundreds of small and medium eateries – on whom the ordinary working Mumbaikars depend on for daily meals – shut down or drastically trimmed menus, on Wednesday.   With an estimated 50,000-plus hotels, restaurants and small food joints, the crunch is beginning to be felt severely, said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) vice-president and Hotel and Restaurant Association Western India (HRAWI) spokesperson Pradeep Shetty.   “We are in continuous touch with the concerned authorities, but the situation is very gloomy. There is no response from the Centre or the Ministry of Petroleum on when the situation will ease. We fear that more than 50 pc of all eateries in Mumbai will soon down the shutters. The same will apply to the rest of the state and many other parts of India,” Shetty told  ‘ The Perfect Voice’ .   The shortage of commercial LPG has badly affected multiple sectors, including the hospitality and food industries, mass private or commercial kitchens and even the laundry businesses, industry players said.   At their wits' ends, many restaurateurs resorted to the reliable old iron ‘chulhas’ (stoves) fired by either coal or wood - the prices of which have also shot up and result in pollution - besides delaying the cooking.   Anticipating a larger crisis, even domestic LPG consumers besieged retail dealers in Mumbai, Pune, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Ratnagiri, Kolhapur, Akola, Nagpur to book their second cylinder, with snaky queues in many cities. The stark reality of the 12-days old Gulf war with the disturbed supplies has hit the people and industries in the food supply chains that feed crores daily.   “The ordinary folks leave home in the morning after breakfast, then they rely on the others in the food chain for their lunch or dinner. Many street retailers have also shut down temporarily,” said Shetty.   Dry Snacks A quick survey of some suburban ‘khau gullies’ today revealed that the available items were mostly cold sandwiches, fruit or vegetable salads, cold desserts or ice-creams, cold beverages and packed snacks. Few offered the regular ‘piping hot’ foods that need elaborate cooking, or charging higher than normal menu rates, and even the app-based food delivery system was impacted.   Many people were seen gloomily munching on colorful packets of dry snacks like chips, chivda, sev, gathiya, samosas, etc. for lunch, the usually cheerful ‘chai ki dukaans’ suddenly disappeared from their corners, though soft drinks and tetrapaks were available.   Delay, Scarcity  Maharashtra LPG Dealers Association President Deepak Singh yesterday conceded to “some delays due to supply shortages” of commercial cylinders, but assured that there is no scarcity of domestic cylinders.   “We are adhering to the Centre’s guidelines for a 25 days booking period between 2 cylinders (domestic). The issue is with commercial cylinders but even those are available though less in numbers,” said Singh, adding that guidelines to prioritise educational institutions, hospitals, and defence, are being followed, but others are also getting their supplies.   Despite the assurances, Shetty said that the current status is extremely serious since the past week and the intermittent disruptions have escalated into a near-total halt in supplies in many regions since Monday.   Adding to the dismal picture is the likelihood of local hoteliers associations in different cities like Pune, Palghar, Nagpur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, and more resorting to tough measures from Thursday, including temporary shutdown of their outlets, which have run out of gas stocks.

Farm Loan Waivers A Key

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

Loan Waivers

Farm loan waivers have become a staple promise in Indian elections, particularly in agricultural states. These debt relief schemes, though providing temporary respite, but no permanent solution on agrarian distress. Political leadership is always under tremendous pressure to provide instant relief to the farmers reeling under debt trap, resulting in suicides. Often, suicides by peasants are widely covered in the media which in turn sway the people’s perception about apparent indifference of the government towards the farming communities of the country. However, political parties tend to use farm loan waiver as tactics to come to power in spite of the fact that such populist measures are not good for the economy, nor do they offer a long-term solution. So use this age-old problem to gain political mileage. But looking at the previous instances the farming community many times bolted the doors on the ruling parties.


Maharashtra introduced the first Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj loan waiver scheme for farmers in 2017 when Fadnavis was chief minister of the BJP-Shiv Sena government. In the subsequent elections the BJP failed to get the majority. When the MVA government under Uddhav Thackeray came to power in 2019, one of its first decisions was to introduce the Mahatma Jyotirao Phule loan waiver scheme to put its own imprint on the programme. This scheme was modelled on the previous one but the payout and cut-off dates were different. Under this scheme, the loan write-off amount was increased and farmers who took loans of up to Rs 2 lakh between 2015 and 2019 were eligible for a loan waiver.


In 2022, the government changed again when Eknath Shinde rebelled against the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena with a majority of MLAs in tow and caused a vertical split in the party. Shinde’s Shiv Sena formed a government with the BJP with Shinde as chief minister. Within a month of coming to power, the Shinde government added another layer to the farm loan waiver—an incentive of Rs 50,000 to farmers who had been paying their dues on time.


In spite of this the agrarian community is sulking. Farmers in the state are now dejected due to low crop prices, high input costs, and below MSP rates. Anger may impact forthcoming assembly elections.

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