New Delhi, INDIA – At the edge of Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station, the morning feels heavier than usual. Families cluster along the platform, their belongings packed into cloth bundles and plastic sacks.

Children lie half-asleep in their mothers’ laps as announcements echo overhead. Trains heading toward Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and beyond are running full. Over the past few days, railway workers say, the crowds have grown noticeably thicker. Entire families, most of them daily wage laborers, wait with little more than essentials, as if preparing for a longer absence.

“Something is wrong,” says Ab Rahman, thirty-four, a porter, or coolie, who has spent more than a decade navigating these railway platforms. “For four to five days now, there has been a heavy rush — mostly poor workers. They are going back.”

There are no official announcements explaining the surge. No single event has triggered it.

Across the platform, fragments of conversation point to a quieter pressure of rising costs, shrinking work, and the growing difficulty of sustaining even the most basic routines of life in the city.

For many, the crisis is not just about wages or rent. It is about something more immediate: the ability to cook a meal.

Among those waiting at the platform is twenty-seven-year-old Ramesh Varma, a street vendor from Bihar’s Barwan Kala village. He had returned to Delhi barely fifteen days ago, hoping to rebuild his earnings. Now he is leaving again.

“LPG [liquid petroleum gas] refills were not available on time,” he says, sitting on the platform floor. “We kept waiting, going from one gas agency to another. Even when the gas cylinder comes, the cost is too high.”

For many migrant workers, the inability to cook affordably disrupts the fragile economics of city life, where preparing food at home is often the only way to keep daily expenses under control. Varma’s decision captures a growing reality across India’s working-class neighborhoods: as cooking fuel becomes expensive or inaccessible, survival itself becomes uncertain.

Means-Tested LPG and the Crisis

Across India’s cities and industrial belts, a basic act of cooking a meal is becoming increasingly precarious for low-income households.

In the working-class neighborhoods of Delhi and beyond, families report rising LPG refill costs, irregular access, and delays that make everyday cooking uncertain. This is not a sudden breakdown. It is the result of a longer policy shift now intensified by a global supply shock.

Part of that shock reflects spillovers from the conflict in the Middle East. Despite recent ceasefire efforts, geopolitical tensions continue to reverberate through global energy markets, particularly through disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit route for crude oil and LPG.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), these disruptions have tightened global energy supplies and contributed to higher crude and LPG prices, tightening markets for import-dependent countries including India.

India’s LPG subsidy bill, which once exceeded 40,000 crore rupees annually in the mid-2010s, fell sharply by 2020–21 before partial restoration in recent years. Government budget data shows LPG subsidy expenditure has fluctuated sharply over the past decade, reflecting a broader shift toward market-linked pricing.

Today LPG subsidies have become increasingly targeted rather than universal. In 2025–26, the government allocated around 12,000 crore rupees to support Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a program that subsidizes cooking gas for low-income houses, reflecting a narrower approach to welfare support.

For consumers, this translated into a steep rise in refill costs. The price of a standard 14.2 kilogram domestic LPG cylinder, which hovered around 400–500 rupees a decade ago, crossed 1,000 rupees in many cities in the year 2022 before easing slightly to around 850–950 rupees. For low-income households, this remains prohibitively expensive.

India depends heavily on LPG imports, making domestic prices highly sensitive to global energy markets and external supply conditions. Fluctuations in international fuel prices and supply disruptions are increasingly passed on directly to households.

The Numbers Behind the Squeeze

The pressure on working-class households is not anecdotal but is measurable.

While subsidies still exist, many households report receiving little meaningful relief. For a daily wage worker earning 300–500 rupees, a single refill can consume two to three days’ income, making regular use difficult to sustain. Parliamentary data indicates that PMUY beneficiaries use significantly fewer cylinders annually than other consumers, underscoring the affordability constraint.

In Sangam Vihar, one of Delhi’s largest informal settlements, Parveena sits outside her one-room house, an empty LPG cylinder resting beside her like a useless object.

“For the past few days, we have been running from one gas agency to another,” she says. “We are not getting refills on time. Without gas, we cannot even cook one meal.”

Inside the room is quiet. There is no smell of food, no utensils on the stove, no sign of a meal in preparation, but only the stillness of a kitchen that has stopped functioning.

A mother of two and a daily wage worker, Parveena has already begun cutting back. “For two days, my children have slept hungry,” she says. “Prices are rising every day. Even if we find LPG, it is too costly. We are poor; how can we pay so much just to cook food?”

While India has expanded LPG access significantly over the past decade, sustained usage among low-income households remains uneven. In recent months, that strain has deepened. Reports from multiple states, including Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, point to refill delays, long waiting times, and rising dependence on alternative fuels.

In some areas, households have begun reverting to firewood and kerosene fuels associated with both poverty and long-term health risks.

Parveena’s neighbor notes quietly, “We cannot just leave this place. At least the men find some work here. . . . Somehow we survive with that.”

In neighborhoods like these, leaving is rarely a real option. Work is uncertain, but it exists. Survival depends on staying and adjusting. But adjustment has limits. For women in particular, the burden is immediate and physical. When LPG runs out, it is they who must find alternatives like collecting firewood, managing inefficient stoves, or stretching meals across days.

Cooking With Firewood and Kerosene

In working neighborhoods across India, families report reducing the number of meals they cook, delaying refills, and stretching cylinders beyond their normal use. “We adjust” is how several workers describe it.

Residents say that while LPG connections have expanded significantly over the past decade, sustained usage remains uneven, particularly among low-income households.

Faheem, thirty-two, a migrant worker from Gujarat currently working in Bengaluru, describes the situation as disturbing.

“We can’t get gas here, and now we are being forced to leave our home,” he says. “Cooking has become difficult, sometimes even impossible, and we don’t know how to manage our house and land anymore. Everything has become too hard.”

“Sometimes it’s expensive; sometimes it’s not available at all. Life has really become difficult,” he adds.

For many households, alternatives remain out of reach. Electric cooking is often presented as the next step in India’s clean energy transition, but it requires upfront investment in appliances and a reliable electricity supply.

For precarious urban and rural households, both remain uncertain. As a result, the transition to cleaner energy is unfolding unevenly, shaped as much by income as by infrastructure. In the outskirts of cities, firewood and kerosene are reappearing as fallback options.

Chulhas — traditional Indian stoves once replaced in the name of clean energy — are being used again. Health experts have long warned about the consequences of such reversals.

Prolonged exposure to smoke from firewood and biomass fuels is linked to respiratory illnesses, particularly among women and children who spend the most time near cooking spaces. What appears as a short-term coping strategy can carry long-term health costs.

Anjali, thirty-three, a mother of two and resident of rural Odisha, says, “Since we are not getting refills on time and sometimes have to wait weeks, we are being pushed back to firewood.”

“In our village, most homes once switched to LPG, but nearly 30–40 percent still burn firewood for cooking, even with connections, especially among poorer families.”

“The smoke makes our children cough, and my wife spends hours every day tending the chulha,” Arun Kumar, her husband, adds.

Markets Decide Who Eats

Cooking is often treated as a private act, confined to the household. But in reality, it is shaped by forces far beyond it. Who can afford fuel? Who absorbs price shocks? Who is forced to sacrifice?

Across India, around 60 percent of households use LPG as their primary cooking fuel, according to government data from 2020–21.

Yet in rural areas, a substantial share continues to rely on firewood, dung, or other biomass, even among families with LPG connections. Supply gaps, high refill costs, and erratic delivery make consistent usage difficult, pushing households back toward traditional fuels.

As the train begins to depart from Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station, Ramesh Varma climbs aboard.

“I came here to earn,” he says. “But if I cannot even eat, what is the point?”

What makes this crisis particularly stark is its invisibility. There are no dramatic shortages, no official declarations of emergency. Instead, it unfolds quietly in skipped meals, in empty cylinders, in families stretching survival beyond its limits.

In homes like Parveena’s, the uncertainty continues. Across India, in thousands of kitchens, the same question lingers.

For millions of working-class households, the choice is no longer abstract. It is immediate, daily, and shaped by forces far beyond the kitchen: cook — or skip a meal.