After 95%: What Comes Next For India’s Welfare State? - Hema Yadav

India as a welfare state has spent the past decade solving a fundamental problem: access. Electricity, LPG, sanitation, bank accounts and tap water have moved from being scarce household amenities to widely available public services. But as coverage approaches saturation, welfare policy faces a different test. It is no longer enough to ask, who has been connected? The more consequential questions are: Can the household afford the service? Does it continue to use it? Is delivery convenient? And does the benefit retain its value over time?

Clean cooking provides a particularly useful lens for this transition. India has made remarkable progress as household access to clean cooking fuel (LPG and PNG) stood at 96.35% in 2024, up from 92.02% in 2020, according to NITI Aayog’s SDG India Index 2023-24. This indicates towards a mature-access sector and there is a need of policy tweak to move from connections to consumption. The progression must be in a sequence- from access to Affordability to Continuity, equal focus on Quality and Actual Usage.

The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) is a case in point as it extends beyond the number of connections issued. Launched on May 1, 2016, at Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, PMUY was designed to bring LPG to women in deprived households that depended on traditional cooking fuels. The official PMUY portal now records over 10.5 crore connections released, supported by a wider ecosystem where national LPG coverage rose from 55.9% in April 2014 to 107.2% in April 2026, while total LPG consumption nearly doubled from 17.6 million tonnes in FY2014-15 to 34 million tonnes in FY2025-26.

It is widely admitted that a connection is an asset; regular refilling is actual usage. It is encouraging to note that average annual refill consumption among PMUY beneficiaries rose from 3.68 cylinders in FY2021-22 to 4.71 in FY2025-26, as per official data. Moreover, PMUY beneficiaries received about 49.21 crore cylinder deliveries during FY2025-26. Numbers are promising, however, they also underline why affordability remains central to the future of clean cooking.

This is precisely where Goa offers an interesting small-state case study. Goa had already travelled much of the access curve before its latest state intervention. According to NFHS-5, 96.5% of households in Goa used clean fuel for cooking, compared with 84.1% in NFHS-4. The official NFHS-5 Goa fact sheet records clean-fuel use at 98.8% in urban households and 93.1% in rural households. NITI Aayog’s SDG framework also places Goa in the high-performance category on Affordable and Clean Energy.

The interesting question, therefore, is not whether Goa needs to create basic LPG access on the scale required in states where large populations remain underserved. It is what happens after access is already high. The Goa government’s Goa Ujjwala Yojana, launched on September 5, 2026, shifts the emphasis towards recurring affordability. The announced design provides Rs 3,000 annually through Direct Benefit Transfer, described by the government as support equivalent to three domestic LPG refills. On the launch occasion Goa Chief Minister Dr. Pramod Sawant, emphasises, “Our government has consistently delivered on its promises to the people and the Goa Ujjwala Yojana, 2026 is another promise fulfilled. With Rs 100 crore allocated for the scheme, eligible beneficiaries will receive support towards the cost of three LPG cylinders, bringing meaningful savings to families. The Yojna aims at empowering people, supporting families and strengthening household financial security.”

This Yojna should not be confused with the Union government’s PMUY. The two are distinct interventions. But Goa’s scheme raises a larger national policy question: when access is approaching universal levels, should welfare policy increasingly support continued use?

Goa's more interesting innovation lies in how it is delivering the benefit. Existing beneficiaries of the Griha Aadhar and Dayanand Social Security Scheme were put on an accelerated route using existing beneficiary information. About 2.5 lakh women from these schemes were identified for the first payment process, while other applicants were to receive the benefit after verification of bank and other details. Forms were made available through panchayats, municipal councils and MLAs, with authorised local functionaries assisting verification.

This is more than an administrative detail. It points towards an emerging model of reusable welfare infrastructure. Goa had already demonstrated the ability to use digital and institutional rails for recurring transfers: in March 2026, the state credited Rs 45.26 crore to more than 2.24 lakh beneficiaries under Griha Aadhar and the Dayanand Social Security Scheme.

For India's larger welfare architecture, that may be the more important lesson. Once a government has verified beneficiary databases, bank linkages, and local delivery networks, each new intervention need not begin by identifying beneficiaries from scratch. Existing welfare systems can become public infrastructure for the next generation of welfare delivery.

Small states can be particularly useful laboratories for such approaches, not because they inherently govern better, but because compact administrative geographies make policy design and implementation easier to observe. Goa's experience raises the possibility that once universal or near-universal access has been achieved, states can experiment with different combinations of DBT, broader eligibility, local verification and recurring support. A policy push to move from last mile to the next mile is now visible.

As India moves closer to saturation in clean cooking, electricity, sanitation, financial inclusion and other essential services, the policy frontier will increasingly lie beyond the last mile. It will be about the next mile with inclusion of key components of affordability, continuity, quality and ease of use.

The above information is the author's own; Outlook India is not involved in the creation of this article.