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Budget 2025-26: Centre announces six-year pulses mission for self-sufficiency
A key target handed down to Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is to end India’s dependence on imports to meet the country’s pulses demand by 2029.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a new six-year mission in the Union budget 2025-26 to boost the output and help achieve self-sufficiency in pulses, with special focus on three key widely consumed varieties.
The programme will see the development of climate-resilient seeds, remunerative prices for growers and post-harvest management as well as storage, according to the mission’s key objective laid out in the Budget.
“Our government will now launch a six-year Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses with a special focus on tur (pigeon pea), Urad (black gram) and masoor (yellow lentils)...central agencies will be ready to procure these three pulses, as much as offered during the next four years from farmers who register with these agencies and enter into agreements,” Sitharaman said while presenting her eighth budget in a row and the first in the third Modi government term.
A key target handed down to Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is to end India’s dependence on imports to meet the country’s pulses demand by 2029.
On January 4 last year, Union home and cooperation minister Amit Shah had declared an ambitious goal that India will stop importing pulses by 2028-29.
“By December 2027, the country should try to become self-reliant in pulses. We will not import even one kilo of pulses from January 2028,” Shah had said, while launching a programme to procure tur (pigeon pea) by the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (Nafed).
An El Nino weather pattern last year stoked prices of pulses, a common source of protein for most Indians, despite a 37% jump in overall domestic production since 2015-16, which has helped India cut down on imports already.
Yet, the goal of self-sufficiency in pulses has been elusive, keeping prices high. Rising protein-led prices can be a significant driver of inflation and household expenses. Inflation in pulses rose nearly 17% last year, primarily because of lower production for two consecutive years due to extreme weather and a patchy monsoon.
To ramp up output of key deficit pulses, such as tur (pigeon pea), urad (black matpe) and chana (chickpea), the government will need to ensure remunerative prices, experts say. According to the Situation Assessment Survey of agriculture (2018-19), nearly 45% of cultivators of pulses said they got lower than market prices for urad (black matpe), tur (pigeon pea) and moong (green gram).
In the last financial year, imports went up 84% higher year-on-year to 4.65 million tonne, the most in six years. In value terms, the country’s spending on imports rose 93% to $3.75 billion. India largely imports from Canada, Australia, Myanmar, Mozambique, Tanzania, Sudan and Malawi.
According to the agriculture ministry’s plan to achieve self-sufficiency, model pulses villages will be set up from the current kharif or summer-sown season. The ministry is also working with states to bring fallow land for cultivation of lentils. It is set to create 150 hubs to distribute high-yielding seeds. Alongside, the farm department will collaborate with the department of agricultural research to promote climate-resilient varieties.
Shortly after the Modi government assumed office during its first term in 2014, it focused on farm and trade policies to raise pulses output to cut down on imports. According to the agriculture ministry’s data, a campaign to distribute improved seeds raised pulses productivity by 34.8%, from 727 kg/hectare in 2018-19 to 980 kg/hectare in 2021-22. This led to a fall in imports, but extreme weather can still ruin crops and stoke prices.
“Pulses are a group of crops. They are not a single crop. The government will have to ensure crop diversification and incentivize farmers sufficiently across varieties to stop imports. At times, shortage of one variety increases demand for other varieties,” said Avishek Agrawal, an analyst with Comtrade.
