Pulses, India’s most consumed protein-rich food group, have continued to pressure food inflation upwards even as the prices of most other items have cooled off. The average annual wholesale price inflation (WPI) in pulses in the last 10 years is estimated at 9.4 per cent, well above the overall WPI inflation of 6.3 per cent during this period. The reasons for this are many. The most significant among them is the neglect of pulses vis-à-vis staple cereals like wheat and rice. Developmental strategies have focused primarily on boosting the output of these cereals, notwithstanding the fact that pulses are an integral accompaniment to rice and wheat in the Indian diet. As a result, the cultivation of pulses has been pushed to more and more marginal and unirrigated lands with low fertility. Hardly 15 per cent of the total pulses acreage is irrigated. Numerous high-yielding and quicker-maturing varieties of pulses are now available which can easily fit into multiple cropping cycles commonly followed in irrigated tracts. The inclusion of pulses in such intensive farming systems is imperative also to cash in on their ability to tap nitrogen from air and fix it into the soil for use by subsequent crops. But little has been done to ensure that these seeds and their production technologies reach the farmers.
Besides, the minimum support prices (MSPs) of pulses, which are routinely increased every year, do not benefit the pulses growers for want of their enforcement through market intervention—in other words, through procurement. The government’s import and export policies for pulses, too, are most often aimed at taming domestic prices to protect consumer interests, disregarding those of the producers. Little wonder, therefore, that the production of pulses does not respond to high prices or growing demand. Normally, at times of subnormal monsoon rainfall, the area under crops that require less water should expand. But this is not the case with pulses, though these are also efficient water-users. Pulses acreage has remained static at around 13 million hectares in the last as well as the current year, despite poor rains. Predictably, therefore, output is also expected to stagnate at around 17 million tonnes (mt) while the projected demand has surged from last year’s 22.6 mt to 23.6 mt. The need for imports of pulses has, thus, soared to well above five mt—not easy to meet, given limited availability of pulses in the international market. The government agencies, which have been asked to import pulses, are also finding it difficult to source enough supplies from abroad. Private trade has turned wary of large imports, fearing that the government may confiscate their stocks.
The only way to resolve the lingering pulses crisis is to boost domestic output. For this, the farmers need to be assured of remunerative prices. They also need financial assistance to buy new seeds, fertilisers and plant protection chemicals, which are essential to increase crop yields. The incentives being offered to farmers to dig rainwater harvesting ponds in their fields under the Pradhan Mantri Sinchayee Yojana need to be channelled to pulse growers. If these and other measures and strategies that worked well in wheat and rice are applied to pulses, there is no reason why India can’t be self-sufficient in pulses as well.
