Prices Soar, Cylinders Locked: Welfare in India Now Needs Fingerprints

Inflation at 5.54%, onions up 108%, and 3.16 crore households face an LPG lockout unless biometrics work.

Two things happened to Indian kitchens this month, and the government has spoken about only one of them.

The first is well known. On 12 October, the statistics ministry released September's retail inflation. It came in at 5.54%, above what economists had expected, and the highest in about 21 to 22 months. Food inflation was 7.74%. Rural inflation was 6.08%. Onion prices were up by about 108% over the year. Under the new price index, which uses 2024 as its base year, inflation has now risen for a string of months, and the Reserve Bank of India, which raised interest rates on 7 October for the first time in nearly four years, now projects average inflation of 5.2% this financial year and 6% in the October–December quarter.

The second has had far less attention. On 1 October, the government made biometric Aadhaar authentication mandatory for anyone who wants to book a domestic LPG refill at the regulated, subsidised price. A petition before the Delhi High Court says about 3.16 crore domestic consumers had not completed that authentication as of mid-September. If they do not, they cannot buy the standard 14.2 kg cylinder at the regulated price. They can only buy a 5 kg or 10 kg cylinder at the market price.

Put the two together and a clear picture appears. Prices are climbing faster than the government's own comfort zone. And at the same time, the state has placed a new technical test between the poor and their cooking gas. This article follows both stories, checks them against the data, and asks what the government owes the citizen in return.

The price shock: what the numbers say

Start with the price data.

September's retail inflation of 5.54% is a big jump from 3.4% in March. The new Consumer Price Index, rebased to 2024, shows that food prices are rising at 7.74% over the year. Rural inflation, at 6.08%, is higher than the national average. That matters because food takes a bigger share of the budget for rural and poor households. A 7.74% rise in food prices does more damage to a family that spends half its income on food than to one that spends a fifth.

Onions, up about 108%, have become the symbol of the squeeze, but they are not the only item. A report released earlier this month found that the cost of a home-cooked vegetarian thali had risen about 10% over the year, with onion, vegetable oil, rice and LPG as the main causes. And the RBI's own October report says that about 37% of the items in the price basket are now rising by more than 4%. In plain terms, the price pressure is no longer limited to a few items. It is spreading.

There are good reasons for this, and not all are in the government's hands. The monsoon was 12.6% below normal, the weakest in a decade. Farmers around Karnal and Gharaunda in Haryana have reported rice yields 10% to 20% below last year. Reservoir levels in most major wheat-growing states are at three-year lows. Oil is near $100 a barrel because of the war around the Strait of Hormuz. The rupee is close to its record low of 96.96 against the dollar, which makes imported goods costlier. On 1 October, commercial LPG cylinders rose by ₹62.50 and aviation fuel went up about ₹16 a litre.

All of that is true. But a government is judged by what it does in response. And in the face of this, three failures stand out.

### First failure: no public price tracker

The government has said very little about what stock it holds, when it will release it and where. When onion prices doubled, there should have been a clear public statement: how many tonnes the government buffer holds, where they are, and when they will reach markets. Instead, the public has seen reports that the government is "considering" cutting import duties on lentils and yellow peas. That is a discussion, not a plan.

### Second failure: the income side

Inflation hurts most when incomes do not keep up. In rural India, they are under pressure. Tractor sales growth fell to 0.8% in August from 28.1% in July. And the rural job guarantee, VB-G RAM G, shows a troubling gap. Household demand for work rose 34% to 15.64 million in September, but the person-days of work actually provided fell to about 8.65 crore from 11.99 crore a year earlier, a fall of around 28%. So households are asking for more work, being given less, and paying more for food.

### Third failure: no honest accounting

The government's chief economic message has been that growth is strong, at about 7.3% in the second quarter, with healthy tax collections. Those numbers are real. But they sit alongside weak rural demand and rising food costs. A government that wants to be trusted should talk about both.

When prices rise 7.74% on the plate and work falls 28% in the village, "strong growth" is not an answer. It is an avoidance.

The second story: the cylinder and the fingerprint

Now to the LPG order, which deserves a careful reading.

Domestic LPG in India is sold at a regulated price, with a subsidy for eligible consumers. The government says it is concerned about misuse of the subsidy: connections that exist on paper, cylinders diverted to commercial use, duplicate accounts. To check this, from 1 October, anyone booking a refill at the regulated retail price has to complete biometric Aadhaar authentication, either a fingerprint or an iris scan.

The Attorney General, R Venkataramani, told the Delhi High Court on 14 October that the decision was taken to check "abuse" of the subsidy, adding that there had been "complete abuse of the subsidy given under the schemes," and assured the Court that persons with disabilities would be looked after.

That aim is legitimate. Nobody wants subsidised gas stolen or sold on the black market. And the guidelines do include an exception: if a person cannot give a fingerprint or an iris scan, an Aadhaar enrolment centre supervisor can validate the enrolment as an exception after taking other details, under the Biometric Exception Enrolment Guidelines.

But here is the problem. The petition before the Delhi High Court says the way the rule works is very different from the way it is described.

### What the petition says

The petitioner, who has a 75% permanent visual disability, says the mandatory process, which includes iris authentication, caused serious difficulty to him and others with visual impairments. The petition says the move affects about 3.16 crore consumers who had not completed authentication as of 14 September. It argues that the mandate goes beyond what the Aadhaar Act of 2016 permits, that it is arbitrary and disproportionate, and that it violates Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. It also relies on the Supreme Court's Puttaswamy judgments, which upheld Aadhaar with limits.

Its senior advocate told the Court that "LPG supply has stopped" for people who had not authenticated since 1 October, and asked for interim relief. The petition says that the cost to these 3.16 crore consumers, for being unable to authenticate, would be that supply of the 14.2 kg cylinder would stop. They would be forced to buy the 5 kg or 10 kg cylinder at the market selling price, "subject to availability".

The Delhi High Court asked the Centre for a reply on 14 October. It listed the matter for 18 November. That means that, unless the Court acts sooner, the mandate stays in force for at least another month, through the festival season, with no interim relief.

### The size of the number

3.16 crore is not a small number. These are households, not individuals. If the average household has four members, it stands for about 12.6 crore people, close to the population of Japan. If they are told they cannot buy a cylinder at the regulated price, it is not a minor inconvenience. For a poor household, the gap between a subsidised 14.2 kg cylinder and market-priced small cylinders can mean choosing between a meal cooked on gas and one cooked on firewood.

It is also important to be careful. The petition's figure is about people who had not completed authentication as of 14 September. Some, probably many, will have completed it since. We do not have an official figure on how many are still pending. That is itself a problem. The government should publish it.

Why biometrics fail

Every government that links welfare to biometrics faces the same issue: the technology does not always work.

Fingerprints wear off. Manual labourers, farmers and construction workers often have worn-down fingerprints. Older people's fingerprints fade. Iris scans can fail in poor light, with cataracts or other eye conditions, and are difficult for people with visual impairments. Rural connectivity is patchy. Machines at distributors fail.

The data on this is not new. A Centre for Internet and Society analysis estimated that between 2% and 5% of India's population could be excluded from services because of biometric failures alone. Economist Reetika Khera of IIT Delhi has found significant exclusion of genuine beneficiaries in welfare schemes that require biometric checks. And data from January to April 2025 showed a success rate of about 76% for fingerprint authentication and about 69% for facial authentication. That means roughly one in four fingerprint attempts, and almost one in three face attempts, did not succeed.

Apply even the lowest estimate to 3.16 crore households and the numbers are large. If 2% of that group cannot authenticate, that is more than 6 lakh households. If 5% cannot, it is nearly 16 lakh. And if the real failure rate is closer to a quarter, as the national figure suggests, the number could be far higher before exceptions are made.

These calculations are estimates, not facts. But they show why the question cannot be left to the courts alone. The government has the actual data on how many authentications have succeeded and failed. It should publish it.

A welfare scheme should be judged by how many eligible people it reaches, not by how many fakes it catches.

The "abuse" argument, tested

The government's central argument is that there has been abuse. It is a serious claim, and it deserves to be tested the way all serious claims should be: with numbers.

How many fake or duplicate connections did the government find? How much money was lost to them? What was the cost of those losses compared with the cost of the exclusion of genuine users? The Attorney General's reference to "complete abuse" was a statement in court, not a data release.

India has used Aadhaar-linked LPG subsidies before. The PAHAL scheme, started in 2014, moved subsidies to direct bank transfers and was credited by the government with removing a large number of bogus connections. If that is so, the current step has to be justified on additional grounds. What new problem does mandatory biometric authentication at the time of booking solve that the earlier steps did not?

Without that justification, the order looks like something familiar in Indian governance: a rule set up to catch the few cheats that places the burden of proof on the many honest. The person who has to prove she is who she says she is, with a fingerprint that may not read, is the poorest person in the queue. The government is asking its weakest citizens to carry the cost of its own weak records.

What the law says about alternatives

Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act allows the government to require Aadhaar for subsidies, benefits and services paid from public funds. But it also says that if a person does not have an Aadhaar number, they must be offered an alternate, viable means of identification. The petition argues that the alternative channels the government points to do not amount to a real alternative, because the underlying requirement of successful biometric authentication remains.

This is a legal question the Court will decide. But the principle behind it is simple and long-standing. In 2015, in an interim order, the Supreme Court said that no citizen should be denied a service or subsidy for want of Aadhaar. The 2018 judgment upheld Aadhaar, but struck down parts that extended it to private firms. It did not say the poor can be locked out of food, fuel or income because a machine fails.

The government says people with disabilities will be looked after. That is a promise, and it should be put in writing, in a circular that says exactly how a person with a disability, a worn fingerprint or a failed iris scan gets her cylinder, within what time, and at what price.

The festival season and the winter

The timing makes all this worse. Diwali falls in early November. Winter is close. Demand for cooking gas rises. Households are already paying more for food. And the next hearing in the Delhi High Court is on 18 November, after the festival.

If a household is turned away at the distributor this week, there is nothing in the system that tells her where to go. She is told to complete her authentication. If the machine fails, she is told to visit an enrolment centre. The nearest centre may be a long bus ride away. If she cannot go, she buys a small cylinder at market price, or goes back to wood or kerosene.

That is not an abstract risk. It is a direct cost to health, because cooking on firewood in a closed kitchen harms lungs, especially for women and children. It is a cost to time, because collecting wood takes hours. And it is a step backwards for a programme that the government has celebrated for years as a success in clean cooking.

The connection between the two stories

At first, the price shock and the LPG order look like separate stories. They are not.

A household feels both at once. Food costs 7.74% more than last year. Work in the village is harder to get. And gas, the one item that was supposed to be protected, comes with a new test. Each of these is a cost, and each lands on the same people.

The common thread is a style of governance that puts the burden on the citizen. The citizen must prove her identity to the machine. The citizen must absorb the price rise. The citizen must wait for the monsoon, for the court, for the circular. The state, meanwhile, announces growth figures and describes the rules as a success.

What the government must do

The remedy is not complicated, and none of it needs a court order.

1. Pause the mandate. Suspend the biometric condition for the regulated price until at least the end of the winter, or until the Delhi High Court decides. If a government is confident that the order is lawful, it can afford to wait a month. 2. Publish the numbers. Release, state by state, how many LPG consumers have completed authentication, how many attempts have failed, and how many households were turned away since 1 October. 3. Offer real alternatives. Allow other proof, such as one-time passwords, a verified ration card, or a distributor's confirmation in cases of failure, so that no household loses supply because of a machine. 4. Show the abuse data. Publish what was found, how much it cost and how many fake connections were removed under earlier steps, so the public can judge whether this order is needed. 5. Protect people with disabilities and the elderly. Issue a clear circular on exceptions, with a deadline for resolving each case. 6. Publish price stocks. Release weekly data on government stocks of onion, pulses, edible oil and grain, and where and when they will be released. 7. Link relief to rural distress. Explain how the government will match its work guarantee to rising demand, and publish the gap between work asked for and work given each month. 8. Explain the LPG price path. Show how much of the increase comes from global costs, how much from taxes and margins, and what support is planned for low-income households through the winter.

What the other side says

It is fair to repeat the government's strongest response.

It would say that inflation is a global problem, caused by a war that India did not start, and that the RBI has acted. It would say that its growth is among the fastest in the world and that its fiscal position is sound. It would say that digital identity has helped India cut leaks in welfare and that biometric checks are a proven tool. And it would say that the LPG order includes exceptions and that no deserving household will be left behind.

These are reasonable points. India has indeed saved money, and plugged leaks, by linking benefits to identity. The question is not whether the goal is right. It is whether the way chosen fits the people it is applied to, and whether it is being honest about the cost.

The bottom line

A 5.54% inflation rate, a 7.74% rise in food prices and onions that have more than doubled show that the cost of living is now the most pressing issue in most Indian homes. A 3.16 crore-household question mark over the cooking gas supply shows that, at the same time, the state has added a new hurdle for families who are already stretched.

A government that asks its citizens to trust it with their identity owes them something in return: reliability, transparency and a way out when the machine fails. Right now, citizens are being asked for a fingerprint, and are not being shown the numbers.

If the system works, publish the data and prove it. If it does not, stop the order. Either way, no family should have to find out at the distributor's counter, in the middle of a festival, that a worn thumb has cost it its cylinder.