What is the issue?
- The country witnesses an excess supply of pulses due to higher production.
- The Centre must appropriately focus on demand side management and procurement, to deal with this.
How is the pulses market?
- Two successively large harvests, large inventories and weak offtake in the market have resulted in excess pulses supply.
- This has naturally kept the pulses prices low.
- Government's policy interventions have had little impact on farm-gate prices.
- Without exception, prices of all major pulses are well below the specified minimum support price.
- Restrictions imposed on imports have failed to exert any meaningful impact on the domestic market.
- These include the quantitative ceiling and customs duties.
- Pulse growers continue to suffer low prices for the second year in a row.
- This is sure to impact planting intentions for the upcoming kharif crop.
How to deal with it?
- Demand - ‘Self-sufficiency’ in pulses could be advantageous only if the demand side is dealt appropriately.
- Gains of the last two years have to be responded with demand side management.
- But policy-makers have made a series of interventions to simply control supplies.
- This was done in the hope that prices would rise closer to MSP, but this has not worked.
- Boost consumption - India suffers pervasive under-nutrition and serious protein deficiency among large sections.
- Excess protein-rich pulse production could be utilised to boost its consumption.
- Legume could be included in the Public Distribution System or under National Food Security Act.
- Supply of even one kilogram of pulses per family per month will go a long way in advancing nutrition security.
- Centre's role - Relying on State governments’ choice to advance nutrition security is less likely to result in tangible outcomes.
- Calorie and protein security should go together.
- This responsibility must largely be assumed by the Centre.
- Burdensome inventory with various stakeholders (growers, government, traders) must be reduced.
- Government agencies themselves are reportedly holding well over a million tonnes of pulses incurring huge carrying costs.
- These need to be liquidated.
- Procurement - There is lack of political will to address the pulses crisis comprehensively.
- Given the present concerns, procurement of pulses deserves to be strengthened.
- Handling a few million tonnes of pulses should not be a formidable challenge.
- There is a risk that pulses planted acreage and production may decline in the upcoming kharif season.
- Growers are likely to shift from pulses to more remunerative crops.
- Appropriate demand-side management and procurement policies would only prevent this.
Source: BusinessLine
