Pulse Prices Jump Up to 10% in a Month as Drought Threatens Rabi Sowing

The news

Pune and New Delhi. Pulse prices are climbing even though the government has acted to cool cooking oil and sugar, The Economic Times reports; new since the 28 September card are price data, the Centre’s rabi plan and a ground report from a drought-declared taluka. Wholesale data from the India Pulses and Grains Association (IPGA), the trade body, show chana, the most consumed pulse, up 11% in a month (ex-Delhi) and 5.5% in a week; tur, the second most consumed, up 6.5% and 2.4%; moong up 10.6% and 4.3%; and matar (dry peas) up 6% and 3%. Year on year, chana is up 23%, urad 24% and matar 47%, while masur and moong rose only 2% and 4%. IPGA secretary Satish Upadhyay blamed worries over rabi sowing because of moisture stress, lower chana supply from Australia, costlier yellow peas (a chana substitute) as Russian supplies shrink because of its war with Ukraine, and festive demand. Traders say El Niño’s impact became clear in the last month as Karnataka and Maharashtra declared drought across large areas. El Niño is the periodic warming of the eastern Pacific that tends to weaken India’s monsoon. At the National Agriculture Conference – Rabi Campaign 2026 on Monday, Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan asked States and districts to check irrigation availability and soil moisture before finalising crop plans, with water-stressed areas prioritising less thirsty pulses and oilseeds to cut import dependence. He said the deficit was not severe enough to hit water availability nationally, but flagged drought in Maharashtra and Karnataka, where central teams will assess the ground. The Indian Express reports from Sakri in Dhule district, one of 265 of Maharashtra’s 358 talukas declared drought-affected last week, covering 32 of 36 districts. The State got 798.2 mm of rain between June 1 and September 26 against a normal of 970.9 mm, an 18% deficit. Sakri’s total was near average, but had no rain on 67 of 102 days to September 11, including a 22-day dry spell. The declaration under the Drought Management Code uses a trigger of at least 21 consecutive days without significant rain and brings a land-revenue waiver, crop-loan restructuring and a stay on loan recovery; crop compensation waits for panchnamas (field inspection reports). Most Sakri farmers are Bhil, Kokna, Gamit, Naikda and Pardhi tribespeople who have tilled forest land for generations with individual forest-rights claims pending; a 2019 Government Resolution promised relief to such claimants, but they say Sakri got none. In The Hindu, historian Priyambada Jayakumar, marking M.S. Swaminathan’s death anniversary, argues that his National Commission on Farmers treated distress as an income problem, not a yield problem. The syllabus link is GS3 on cropping patterns, MSP and food security, and GS1 on drought.

Static syllabus linkage

1. Drought is declared by States under a national manual, and the trigger is a combination of indicators, not rainfall alone. The Ministry of Agriculture’s Manual for Drought Management, first issued in 2016 and revised later, sets out how a drought is assessed and declared. It uses mandatory rainfall indicators, such as the deviation from normal rainfall and prolonged dry spells, followed by impact indicators covering crop sowing, satellite-based vegetation health, soil moisture and hydrology such as reservoir and groundwater levels. The State government declares drought, usually by taluka or block, and classifies it as moderate or severe after field verification. Maharashtra’s own Drought Management Code applies these principles, which is why the Sakri report speaks of a 21-day dry-spell trigger followed by panchnamas.
2. Drought relief is financed through the disaster response funds under the Disaster Management Act, 2005. The Disaster Management Act, 2005 provides for a State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) in every State under Section 48 and a National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) under Section 46. Drought is a notified disaster for which relief is paid from the SDRF according to norms fixed by the Ministry of Home Affairs, with the Centre contributing the larger share of the SDRF. For a drought of severe nature, a State submits a memorandum and an Inter-Ministerial Central Team visits to assess damage before additional money is released from the NDRF. The central teams Mr. Chouhan mentioned belong to this assessment process.
3. Minimum Support Price and PM-AASHA are the instruments meant to make pulses worth growing. The Minimum Support Price (MSP) is announced by the Union government on the recommendation of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) for 22 mandated crops, including the major pulses; it has no statutory backing. The Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay SanraksHan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA), launched in 2018, has three parts: the Price Support Scheme for physical procurement of pulses, oilseeds and copra, the Price Deficiency Payment Scheme that pays farmers the gap between MSP and market price, and a Private Procurement and Stockist pilot. The Price Stabilisation Fund, run by the Department of Consumer Affairs, finances a buffer stock of pulses that is released into the market when prices spike. Together they are meant to protect farmers when prices fall and consumers when prices rise.
4. The National Commission on Farmers redefined farm policy around income, not output. The National Commission on Farmers was constituted in 2004 under Prof. M.S. Swaminathan and submitted five reports, the last in 2006, together with a draft National Policy for Farmers. Its best-known recommendation was that the MSP should be at least 50% more than the weighted average cost of production, commonly read as the comprehensive C2 cost plus 50%. It also recommended land reform, water-use efficiency, cheaper institutional credit, a crop-insurance system that covers the whole country and a knowledge connectivity network for farmers. The Commission’s central insight, as the Hindu op-ed stresses, was that farmers’ incomes and livelihood security should be the test of agricultural policy.

Why UPSC loves this

1. GS3 asks directly about cropping patterns, MSP and the economics of pulses. The GS3 syllabus lists major crops and cropping patterns, irrigation, MSP and public distribution, and food security. UPSC has repeatedly asked why India remains an importer of pulses and edible oils despite self-sufficiency missions, and how MSP distorts crop choice. The Rabi Campaign 2026 instruction to shift water-stressed areas to pulses and oilseeds is a live example for any answer on crop diversification.
2. Drought management is tested in GS3 disaster management and in GS1 geography. Questions have asked about the difference between meteorological, hydrological and agricultural drought, and about drought-prone area management. The Sakri case, where total rainfall was near average but a 22-day dry spell destroyed crops, shows why agricultural drought is about the timing of rain, not only its quantity. Prelims has asked about El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, so the monsoon mechanism behind the prices is fair game.
3. Tribal land rights and relief access link the story to GS2 welfare of vulnerable sections. The Forest Rights Act, 2006 and the question of whether cultivators with pending claims can receive crop compensation connect agriculture to GS2 on the protection of vulnerable sections. Anthropology and Sociology optionals ask about tribal land alienation and agrarian vulnerability, and this report is a precise case study.

Analysis

1. The price data show a supply shock that imports can no longer easily cover. The sharpest year-on-year rise is in matar, 47%, and matar is mostly an imported pulse used as a cheap substitute for chana. When the substitute becomes expensive because Russian supply has shrunk, and Australian chana is also short, the usual safety valve of cheap imports stops working. That is why an editorial on 28 September urged duty-free imports. The counter-view is that cutting duties now would help consumers but signal to farmers, just before rabi sowing, that the government will not let prices stay high, which weakens the very incentive Mr. Chouhan wants them to respond to.
2. Advising farmers to switch to pulses is sensible, but advice without price assurance rarely moves sowing. Pulses need less water than wheat or paddy and fix nitrogen in the soil, so the Rabi Campaign’s logic is agronomically sound. But farmers choose crops by the certainty of returns, and wheat and paddy have assured procurement at MSP while pulse procurement under PM-AASHA is limited and uneven across States. A farmer in a water-stressed district will switch only if he believes the government will buy chana or masur at MSP when the harvest comes in and prices fall. The test of the campaign is therefore procurement in March and April, not advisories in September.
3. Sakri shows that drought declaration captures timing better than it once did, but relief still depends on paper. Sakri received near-average seasonal rain and would have escaped a declaration based only on total rainfall; the dry-spell trigger is what brought it in. This is a real improvement in drought assessment. Yet the tribal farmers there till forest land with individual forest-rights claims pending, and without a title their losses may not be recorded in panchnamas or linked to land records. A declaration that reaches the taluka but not the cultivator reproduces the gap the Swaminathan Commission warned about, where policy is judged by coverage on paper rather than by income protected.
4. The Swaminathan op-ed explains why each drought becomes a debt crisis. About 86% of farmers own less than two hectares and around half of farmed land relies entirely on rain, the Hindu op-ed notes, while agriculture contributes 15–18% of GDP but employs about 46% of the workforce. Such farmers have no savings buffer, so when kharif fails after they have invested everything, they borrow for rabi, and a second failure doubles the debt. A Sakri farmer said exactly this: two cycles of debt. Loan restructuring defers the burden but does not remove it. The deeper answer is the Commission’s idea of livelihood security, including non-farm income, so that one bad monsoon does not wipe out a household.
5. Food inflation from pulses hurts the poor twice, as consumers and as producers. Pulses are the main protein source for vegetarian and poor households, so a 23% annual rise in chana is a nutrition problem, not just a price problem. At the same time, the small farmers in drought areas who might gain from high prices have no crop to sell. The gains therefore go to farmers in irrigated areas and to traders holding stock. This is why the Price Stabilisation Fund buffer and targeted distribution matter more in a drought year than broad import duty cuts.

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