For the past several days, 30-year-old Raj Kumar has been struggling to feed his family of four due to a shortage of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) in India's capital, New Delhi.
For weeks, he's been trying to secure some LPG to keep his kitchen running. However, fuel prices in the city have increased. He has now been forced to move to his hometown, Mahua, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, nearly 650 kilometres from Delhi.
The gas, a mixture of propane and butane, is widely used as a primary cooking fuel in millions of Indian households, making a stable supply critical.
"It is hard to stay here anymore. We were struggling to eat properly. Seeing my children and wife suffering for the past few days was painful,” Kumar told Middle East Eye.
Kumar was a daily-wage worker at a bathware manufacturing unit for 15 years, earning less than $7 per day. His other 40 co-workers have left the city, too, as the company has been forced to shut down operations due to the fuel shortage.
