For a chronic importer of pulses, it is heartening to see the country’s domestic production hit an all-time-high of 18.45 million tonnes (mt) in 2012-13. Moreover, based on sowing trends so far and a good monsoon, Indian farmers look set to harvest a bumper crop this year as well. The unfortunate part – from their viewpoint – is that open market prices of chana or Bengal gram, at Rs 2,700-2,800 a quintal, are ruling some 40 per cent lower than a year ago and below the Government’s minimum support price (MSP). The reason for this is not only higher production, but also imports, which crossed a record four mt in 2012-13 and were worth a whopping Rs 13,350 crore.
Clearly, this is something that the Government should be concerned about. Farmers need to be incentivised to grow more pulses. It is necessary not only to address the problem of inadequate protein intake among the majority of Indians or save precious foreign exchange. The fact that pulses require less water and can fix atmospheric nitrogen – delivering up to a quarter of nutrient savings for the succeeding crop and thereby reducing the fertiliser subsidy outgo – are no less important reasons for promoting cultivation. The Government should specifically target more production from irrigated areas. Pulse yields are low today mainly because they are raised in marginal lands, prone to moisture stress. Farmers grow them only for lack of an alternative; the moment irrigation is available, they switch to wheat, rice or sugarcane, which fetch assured support prices. After languishing at 13-14 mt for a long time, the last couple of years have seen pulse output rise to 17-18 mt, largely on the back of remunerative prices. But if the recent crash in chana prices gets repeated for the arhar (red gram), moong (green gram) and other kharif pulses, farmers may get discouraged from planting again.
That will be a tragedy. The least the Government can do to avert it is to ensure that farmers get the officially declared MSPs for the crop to be harvested a couple of months from now. In the absence of physical procurement support, these MSPs have meaning only on paper. The new National Food Security legislation may aggravate this, given its sole focus on guaranteeing a minimum quantity of cereals as a legal entitlement to two-thirds of the population. This will, in turn, further skew our public resources and procurement efforts in the direction of rice and wheat. If nutritional security, which goes beyond calorie intake, is what the Government is really bothered about, pulses have to be part of the solution. The present public policy misses this altogether.