Trends of Pulses Production, Consumption and Import in India: Current Scenario and Strategies

Though India is the largest producer (around 25% of global production), it however, consumes 27% and imports around 14% of its pulses requirements. The yield of pulses in India is quite low at 781 kg/ha which might be due to policy neglect. The post green revolution era saw a sharp decline in per capita production and availability of pulses with record 4.0 million tones imports of pulses in 2012-13. Bihar is one of the important pulse growing state of India with productivity of 839.3 Kg/ha in 2010-11 which is projected to attain 1461.3 kg/ha by 2050-51, highest in eastern India. With nearly 2.2 million ha of rice fallows, a small technological intervention can transform the rice- fallow to rice-gram or rice-lentil system bringing about pulse revolution. Need is to diversify from cereal–based cropping systems to pulses-based cropping system with certain policy decision like identification of additional rice fallow lands largely in Eastern India, crop diversification, improving seed replacement rate, improved crop production techniques etc. Provisions should be made for easy credit, insurance, attractive Minimum Support Price (MSP) with procurement and appropriate incentives for pulse producers as well as creating necessary infrastructure for processing, marketing and value-addition. This paper analyses status of pulse crop in India as whole and Bihar in particular along with paradigm shift required in policy decision, pulse research, technology generation and dissemination, commercialization along with capacity building of farmers and frontier areas of research and extension.