Agriculture Marketing

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)