Greener Pastures

A WAY FROM THE buzz and animated discussions about reduced taxes on income, the continued push for capital expenditure and maintaining fiscal discipline, the Narendra Modi government has laid the founda­tions of a “quiet revolution”, one that will potentially benefit 1.7 crore people. Under a newly minted plan, the Pradhan Mantri Dhan-Dhanya Krishi Yojana (PM-DDKY), the government is planning to reinvigorate agriculture in 200 low-productivity districts across the country by converging various schemes and introducing new measures. This “concentrated” application of efforts can alter the landscape of Indian agriculture marked by dualities between rich farmers and those barely eking out an existence. The plan was outlined in the Union Budget for 2025-26 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1.

There is more in store as well. A six-year National Mission for Atmanirbharta in pulses, along with a comprehensive programme for vegetables and fruits, is a promising supply-side initiative that will not only increase the availability of these food items for consumers but also provide much needed help—financial and technical—to farmers involved in cultivating these crops. Both programmes are important from political economy and supply-side perspectives.

The finance minister outlined yet another programme in her speech. This is the Rural Prosperity and Resilience Programme in partnership with states. It seeks to address the issue of unemployment in agriculture and to give a boost to the rural economy. One key aim is to handle the issue of migration whereby people involved in agriculture are forced to migrate elsewhere in search of op­portunities that do not exist at the local level. The programme seeks to ensure that “migration is an option, but not a necessity.”

The pulses programme has its own importance. Since Inde­pendence, India has been dependent on imports for meeting domestic consumption of pulses. In 1950-51, the country had 19.09 million hectares of land under pulses cultivation and it produced 8.41 million tonnes of pulses at an average yield of 448 kg per hectare. Seventy-two years later, by 2022-23, the area under pulses cultivation had gone up by 44 per cent, output had increased by 188 per cent, and yields had gone up by 100 per cent. But even after these large increases India is not fully self-sufficient in pulses and continues to import large quanti­ties. For example, in 2023-24, it imported 4.73 million tonnes of pulses, 20 per cent of what it produced domestically. While this figure varies from year to year, imports of pulses remain high. The problem of availability will intensify as per capita income increases and food consumption moves away from cereals to­wards protein-rich diets. Some years ago there was even a ‘pro­tein inflation’ scare. While that dire situation has not come to pass, it is worth noting that pulses often lead to a spike in food inflation. From that perspective, the Atmanirbharta Mission in pulses is important.

But there is a larger perspective in which both pro­grammes—PM-DDKY and the pulses mission—are important. Since the 1960s, India’s overwhelming emphasis has been on self-sufficiency in foodgrains. That mission was achieved a long time ago as the scale and spread of cultivation of wheat and rice show. The per capita availability of these foodgrains has gone up considerably in recent years—from 465 grams per day in 2015-16 to 568 grams per day in 2023-24. The focus needs to shift from foodgrains to other crops both from a nutritional as well as larger welfare and political economy perspectives.

It is no secret that wheat and rice farmers have gained dis­proportionately in terms of government support through the past six decades. These farmers are largely concentrated in Pun­jab, Haryana and parts of Uttar Pradesh (UP). In contrast, pulse growing farmers have received much less support, are dispersed across the country and are relatively poor when compared to wheat and rice farmers.

The two programmes announced by Sitharaman in her speech have the potential to change this situation for the better. This will not happen overnight as the experience of the Aspira­tional Districts Programme (ADP) shows. The latter programme was launched in January 2018. Six years later, a visible differ­ence has been made to many of the most underdeveloped 112 districts. The PM-DDKY is modelled after APD and involves a similar convergence of different government schemes across 100 districts. Among the five goals of the scheme, adopting crop diversification is perhaps the most important political economy objective today. If 100 districts are able to grow crops other than wheat and rice—say, among pulses and fruits and vegetables— the current, rather vicious, policy skew in favour of wheat and rice will lead to a more sustainable and balanced outcome. The mission for pulses has a budget of ₹1,000 crore in 2025-26. Simi­larly, the mission for vegetables and fruits has an outlay of ₹500 crore in 2025-26. These are funds being made available at the very origin of these programmes.

THE SIX-YEAR ATMANIRBHARTA Mission for puls­es has a special focus on tur, urad and masoor. Under the programme, Central agencies like National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) and Na­tional Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India (NCCF) will be ready to procure these pulses—as much as farmers offer— for the next four years from farmers who register with these agencies and enter into agreements with them. The conditions listed, purchasing as much as farmers offer and a limited period of four years, are important and incorporate lessons that have been learnt in dealing with farmers over time. Buying whatever quantity farmers bring is important as limiting the produce that can be purchased to a pre-set quantity discourages farmers and also has a negative impact on productivity, an important pa­rameter of the programme. But it is equally important to limit the duration for which these purchases will be made: open-ended purchases, such as wheat and rice in North India, have had negative political and distributional effects. These farmers, especially those from Punjab, are now agitating for a perma­nent, open-ended, procurement system backed by law. At the moment, a similar situation arising in the case of pulses seems remote and far-fetched. But if one could go back in time to 1960- 61, when the Intensive Agriculture District Programme (IADP) was launched, farmers in Punjab also appeared to be agents of change and deserving of government support.

The skew away from wheat and rice towards pulses and other crops will not be sudden as that is not feasible politically or admin­istratively. This can be seen from the budgetary allocations for these different crops in 2025-26 which tell this story in stark terms.

The total allocation for the Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, the part of the ministry that deals with key farmers’ programmes, is ₹1,27,290 crore in 2025-26. This is around 4 per cent higher than what it was allocated in 2024-25 and 17.5 per cent more than what was given in 2023-24. Of this sum, the lion’s share is taken by the PM-Kisan programme, ac­counting for ₹63,500 crore or nearly 50 per cent of the budgeted sum. The pulses programme accounts for just ₹1,000 crore. It is another matter that PM-Kisan is geared largely towards smaller farmers, giving a distinctively small-farmer bent to the alloca­tion which is the right course.

In contrast, the cost of the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana for 2025-26 is ₹2,03,000 crore. Technically this is considered a food subsidy but in reality it is a producers’ subsidy as the vast bulk of this payment goes for MSP payments and storage and transportation costs. All this largely goes to wheat and rice farm­ers. When compared against this gigantic outlay, the sums allo­cated to PM Annadata Aay SanraksHan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA), a scheme to provide price support to farmers and prevent price volatility in crops other than wheat and rice, is ₹ 6,941.36 crore. Although PM-AASHA has seen a 215.5 per cent increase in al­location since 2023-24, it pales before the huge expenditures on wheat and rice. If one includes subsidies on fertilisers, ₹1,67,887 crore in 2025-26, again largely cornered by rich farmers, the level of support to this class of farmers is mind-boggling.

It is not as if the government is not aware of the situation. But any re-balancing requires deft handling, more so when a minor­ity of farmers is well-organised and militant in its demands. But a beginning has been made in the past couple of Budgets and the 2025-26 version takes this process further in a qualitative manner. If PM-DDKY bears fruit, it will change Indian agricul­ture for the better. Small and marginal farmers will gain and the country’s ability to spend money on agriculture will become more productive and sustainable.

agricultureFinance Minister Nirmala SitharamanNarendra ModiOpenomics 2025PulsesriceUnion Budget 2025wheat