India’s Pulse Rate
Year 2015
has not been the only year in which availability of pulses in Indian market has
been short of its demand. The total pulse’s production in the country has
always been short of its total demand by 12 to 14%. This demand has been met
through imports of pulses. There has not been unprecedented rise in demand of
pulses in the country in the current year to justify its price rise this year
by 100% to 150% to around Rs. 200/- per Kg. On the contrary the production of
Pulses in the country has substantially risen during the last few years. There
has also not been any change in the exim policy affecting pulses import and yet
if the common man’s plate is devoid of pulses it is astonishing. It calls for
an analysis of the situation. After all how minimum has been the government
(regulation / control) today that maximum has been the governance (its impact
in terms of biting pulse rate).
One most
common pointer that generally appears in the Indian market is the role (rather
undue role) of stockiest effecting restrictive trade practices. Recent raids on
them evidence this pointer. The second pointer could be lack of timely and
adequate import of pulses to make up the shortfall of supply in the market and
pulses importers’ recent proposition to government for a permission to stock
more quantity of pulses goes in support of this pointer. The third pointer is
the availability of substitute pulses like in the past Mother Dairy (in form of
sale of Matar Dal) had done and in the present some private traders have now
started doing in form of “Moth Dal” but by then the situation has already
worsened. One final pointer appears, to me, is the presence of a complex gamut
of middlemen, not just middlemen but a complex gamut of middlemen in the pulses
trades and their internal permutation and combination such as those of
wholesalers, retailers, importers, stockiest, government officials, politicians
(not to be kept away from this whole episode of pulses) etc. It is a known fact
that presence of middlemen in agriculture sector has been lethal for the
farmers and the consumers. The dairying in India has shown how to fight with
them and eradicate their presence from milk business through PMPCS – Primary
Milk Producers’ Cooperative Societies. India is therefore rightly today the
largest milk producing nation of the world. Kudos to dairy farmers. We need to
do some sort of similar thing to say Kudos to Pulses growing farmers.
Let’s
rethink and renovate.
Prof. H. M.
Jha “Bidyarthi”. Shegaon (Maharashtra)
