Reading the pulse

Subramanian panel has many good, and a few bad, proposals

Like most committees set up routinely to go into sector-specific issues, the Arvind Subramanian panel on pulses, too, hasn't come up with any out-of-the-box idea to boost the output of these protein-rich staples and stabilise their prices. However, having gone through this drill, the government must now earnestly pursue the recommendations of this panel that merit implementation and, more importantly, disregard the ones that are manifestly ill-conceived. Notable among the well-judged counsels are delisting of pulses from the state Agricultural Marketing Committee Acts (APMCs); removal of curbs on exports and stock-holding of pulses; incentivising cultivation of these crops on irrigated lands; and ensuring remunerative returns to growers to motivate them to produce more.

Also in the same league are the suggestions to encourage indigenous genetic modification technologies and revisit the outmoded Essential Commodities Act, 1955, that permits unleashing the Inspector Raj to harass traders - both unscrupulous and law-abiding ones. But the panel's proposal to form a new entity to handle procurement and stocks of pulses is inherently unsound and needs to be discarded. The underlying message of the report, very rightly, is that pulses should not be treated as step-children of the agricultural sector, as has been the case till now, and should be held at par with cereals in developmental policies.

The current crisis in pulses is marked by an unprecedented price spike that hurt consumers and a subsequent downtrend in wholesale rates prior to the new harvest to the detriment of farmers. This may have been triggered by back-to-back droughts, but misguided policies have surely exacerbated it. There is no harm in creating a buffer to stave off price volatility. But such a reserve needs to be built through strategic imports at favourable prices or, as suggested by the Subramanian panel, through opportunistic local purchases when prices are low. The government, shockingly, did the opposite. It began sourcing pulses from abroad when global prices were high and supplies were thin and followed it up by domestic purchases during the peak of the crisis to worsen the price and supply situation. About 120,000 tonnes of pulses were siphoned off till last month. This apart, in a knee-jerk reaction, the government also negotiated long-term arrangements for the production of pulses in Mozambique, Myanmar and other countries for exports exclusively to India. Such actions, coupled with curbs on exports and domestic trade, serve as disincentives for the farmers to boost output, as the committee has observed.

The panel's suggestion to set up a new body to procure and store pulses may end up in creating another inefficient white elephant of the kind the Food Corporation of India has proved to be. None of the existing entities such as Nafed, the small farmers' agri-business consortium, and state agencies, which have been involved in price support operations for long, has proved up to the task for want of necessary expertise and infrastructure. There is no guarantee that the new entity - that, too, in the public-private partnership mode - may fare any better. With policies that favour cultivation, pulses can easily be pushed into multiple cropping systems on irrigated lands thanks to the availability of quick-growing and high-yielding varieties. The government will do well to keep these aspects in view while taking a final call on the recommendations of the Subramanian panel report.