On 11 October 2026, the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses completed its first year. The Mission has an outlay of ₹11,440 crore for 2025-26 to 2030-31, and it is India’s most direct attempt so far to resolve an old paradox: India is the world’s largest producer of pulses, yet it has long been one of the largest importers of pulses.

• From 2024-25 to 2025-26, according to the release:
  • production rose by about 6.7%;
  • area grew by about 3.3%;
  • yield improved by about 3.3%.
• The 2025-26 figures are 3rd Advance Estimates, so they can still be revised before the final estimates.

Production equals area × yield. The targets fit this identity: 310 lakh ha × 1,130 kg/ha ≈ 350 lakh tonnes. Reaching them from the 2025-26 base needs:

• about 8.2% more area;
• about 18.1% higher yield;
• about 27.7% more production, which works out to roughly 5% compound growth every year for five years.

On a logarithmic split, about two-thirds of the required growth has to come from yield. That needs about 3.4% yield growth every year, sustained for five years.

• Imports fell by 31.52% in value, from ₹46,427.60 crore (2024-25) to ₹31,793.59 crore (2025-26).
• Exports rose by 13.40%, from US$ 855 million to US$ 969.53 million, on a volume of 10.01 lakh tonnes.
• The main export destinations were China, the UAE, Bangladesh, the USA and Sri Lanka.

Figure 3 — Pulses trade: imports versus exports, 2024-25 to 2025-26

Imports are given in ₹ crore and exports in US$ million, so the two bars cannot be compared directly. Even after the fall, the import bill is still several times larger than export earnings. Image courtesy Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India; reproduced with credit for educational use.

• Main import sources:
  • Canada and Australia — mainly lentils, peas and chickpea;
  • Myanmar — tur and urad;
  • East African countries such as Mozambique — tur.
• India has signed long-term government-to-government MoUs for tur and urad supply, for example with Mozambique and Myanmar.

How MSP is set: the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) recommends the Minimum Support Price, and the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approves it.

MSP is announced for 22 mandated crops, and a Fair and Remunerative Price is fixed for sugarcane. The CACP was set up in 1965 as the Agricultural Prices Commission and renamed in 1985.

The cost benchmark: since 2018-19, MSP has been fixed at at least 1.5 times the A2+FL cost of production. A2+FL means the paid-out costs plus the imputed value of family labour.

Figure 4 — MSP for the three focus pulses (₹ per quintal)

MSP rose as follows between 2024-25 and 2026-27: tur ₹7,550 → ₹8,450 (+11.92%), urad ₹7,400 → ₹8,200 (+10.81%) and masoor ₹6,700 → ₹7,000 (+4.48%). These are cumulative two-season increases, not annual ones. Image courtesy Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India; reproduced with credit for educational use.

• Dal mills: 528 of 1,000 units (52.8%) have been allocated to States/UTs in Phase I. Separately, 23 units were approved under the CEFPPC component of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan SAMPADA Yojana, and 18 of these are complete.
• Seed kits for rice-fallows: 9.25 lakh kits were distributed in Rabi 2025-26. That is about 10.6% of the six-year target of 87.5 lakh. Meeting the target at an even pace would need about 14.6 lakh kits a year.
• Rice-fallows are paddy fields left uncultivated in rabi after the kharif rice harvest, concentrated in eastern India. Short-duration pulses grown there on residual soil moisture are the Mission’s main route to expanding area.

• Three-tier Steering Committees at the national, State and district levels oversee planning and implementation.
• Krishi Mapper geo-fences and geo-tags plots, and tracks seed-variety demonstrations and yields in real time.
• SATHI portal (Seed Authentication, Traceability & Holistic Inventory) was launched in 2023. It tracks the seed life cycle from production through certification to sale, with traceability on seed bags.
• AgriStack is part of the Digital Agriculture Mission (approved in September 2024). It provides Farmer IDs and the Digital Crop Survey, and is linked here with Soil Health Card data. The Soil Health Card scheme dates from 2015.
• e-Samriddhi is the farmer registration-cum-procurement portal that enables direct payment of MSP. Vistaar provides advisory and market information.

• Nutrition security: pulses are the main affordable protein in a largely vegetarian diet. Under-nutrition remains high: NFHS-5 recorded stunting in 35.5% of children under five.
• Foreign exchange and strategic exposure: heavy import dependence exposes India to weather and policy shocks in a small number of supplier countries.
• Price stability: pulses are among the most volatile parts of food inflation. Domestic shortfalls have repeatedly forced stock limits and emergency imports.
• Sustainability: nitrogen fixation and low water use make pulses a natural crop-diversification option away from the water-intensive paddy–wheat system.
• Rainfed incomes: pulses are grown mostly by small and marginal farmers in dryland areas, so assured prices reach farmers whom earlier procurement mostly bypassed.

• Yield is the binding constraint: about two-thirds of the needed gain has to come from yield, which is the hardest lever to move. Most pulse land is rainfed, seed replacement rates are low, and pests such as pod borer and diseases such as wilt cause heavy losses.
• One year is not a trend: part of the 2025-26 rise may reflect a favourable monsoon. The figures are also advance estimates. India announced near self-sufficiency after the 2016-18 production surge, and that later proved temporary.
• Value is not volume: the 31.5% fall in imports is measured in rupee value. It may partly reflect lower global prices or tariff changes rather than smaller quantities. Volume data is needed to judge real import substitution.
• Limited reach of procurement:
  • Procurement covers only about one-ninth of production and operates in a few States.
  • About 39% of registered farmers on the NCCF dashboard did not benefit.
  • Tenant and unregistered farmers remain outside the system.
• The 2028-29 cliff: the 100% procurement guarantee ends in 2028-29, two years before the 2030-31 target year. If assured buying stops, farmers may switch back to other crops.
• Stocks and fiscal cost: open-ended procurement builds public stocks, which then need storage and disposal channels such as Bharat Dal, the PDS, ICDS and PM POSHAN. Each of these carries losses and subsidy costs.
• Unstable trade policy: India has switched repeatedly between duty-free imports and stock limits under the Essential Commodities Act. These swings blunt the price signal that the MSP increases are meant to send to farmers.

• Pursue yield-first R&D: short-duration, pest-resistant and machine-harvestable varieties, through ICAR institutes including the Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur.
• Adopt a predictable trade-policy framework with rule-based import duties in place of ad hoc switches.
• Extend procurement through FPOs and PACS, and use the price deficiency payment model in States where physical procurement is weak.
• Build post-2028 continuity so farmers can see assured prices up to the target year.
• Link procurement to nutrition schemes, such as pulses in PM POSHAN, the PDS and ICDS, to create stable domestic demand.

The Prime Minister Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana (PMDDKY) completed its first year on 11 October 2026. The scheme takes the district-convergence model of the Aspirational Districts Programme and applies it to farm productivity in 100 lagging districts. It does this by combining 36 existing Central schemes under a single District Action Plan, rather than starting a new standalone programme.

• District level: the District Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana Samiti, headed by the District Collector/DM, prepares and carries out the District Action Plan (DAP).
• State level: the State Samiti, headed by the Chief Secretary, reviews and monitors the district plans.
• National level: two committees:
  • the National Executive Committee, chaired by the Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare;
  • the National Monitoring Committee, chaired by the Secretary, DA&FW.
• What a DAP contains: each DAP starts from a baseline and diagnostic study of the district. It then sets outcome targets, annual milestones and interventions, with each intervention linked to a specific scheme.
• How a DAP gets funded: DAPs go to the relevant State departments to be included in their annual action plans. Approvals and fund release follow from there.
• Monitoring: progress is tracked on 121 indicators (74 output and 47 outcome). Districts are ranked every month on the output indicators.

• The dashboard went live in late October 2025, and monthly rankings began in November 2025.
• Committees have been set up at all three levels.
• All 100 districts have reported output data up to August 2026 and outcome data for FY 2025-26.
• The Department of Public Enterprises has listed adoption of DDKY districts as a CSR activity for CPSEs in FY 2026-27 and 2027-28.
• CSR basics: CSR is mandated under Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013. Companies above set thresholds must spend 2% of their average net profit of the preceding three years.

Figure 7 — Objective-wise progress of the 100 districts (April → August 2026)

The scores rose in all six objectives. The largest gains were in productivity and crop diversification, and the smallest in storage and irrigation. Image courtesy Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India (data as of 1 September 2026); reproduced with credit for educational use.

• Regional disparity: national averages hide large gaps between districts in yield, irrigation and credit. Directing resources to the weakest districts lifts the national average more cheaply than further investment in districts that are already productive.
• Fragmented delivery: a farmer deals with dozens of schemes run by separate departments. A single district plan can sequence these schemes: irrigation before diversification, and storage before procurement.
• Outcome culture: monthly ranking brings to farm administration the competitive and data-driven management that the ADP introduced in health and education.
• Complements the Pulses Mission: PMDDKY is an area-based mission (it improves whole districts), while the Pulses Mission is crop-based (it improves one crop group). Low-cropping-intensity districts are often the same rice-fallow areas the Pulses Mission targets for expansion.

• Outputs are not outcomes:
  • The monthly rankings use output (activity) indicators, while outcome data is reported only once a year.
  • A jump of 28 points in five months may reflect plans being rolled out and data being reported more fully, as much as any change in yields, cropping intensity or credit on the ground.
• Little or no new money: because the outlay comes mainly from existing schemes, the scheme mostly re-prioritises spending. Districts may get attention without getting additional resources.
• Rigid scheme guidelines: Centrally Sponsored Schemes come with uniform norms. These limit how far a district plan can actually be tailored to local needs.
• Slow-moving areas lag: irrigation and storage are capital-heavy and take years to build, and they recorded the smallest gains. Progress depends on other schemes, such as the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (2020, a ₹1 lakh crore financing facility) and the irrigation schemes.
• Federal friction: agriculture is a State subject, so results depend on State capacity and political buy-in. The plans also bypass District Planning Committees and Panchayats, which weakens local ownership.
• The limits of ranking: public league tables can be unfair to structurally disadvantaged districts, such as hilly, tribal or drought-prone ones. They can also encourage gaming of indicators. Reviews of the ADP model have stressed the need for independent verification of data.

• Commission an independent third-party evaluation of the outcome indicators, and publish the scoring method, including the maximum score and the weights.
• Provide untied flexi-funds at the district level, so DAPs can pay for local priorities that existing scheme guidelines do not cover.
• Give Panchayats and District Planning Committees a formal role in preparing DAPs.
• Front-load spending on irrigation and storage, since these take longest to show results.
• Link districts that overlap with the Pulses Mission clusters to the FPO and PACS networks for marketing.