Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday urged farmers to reduce their dependency on global markets and work towards achieving self-sufficiency in pulses, similar to the progress made in rice and wheat. “India must aim to reduce imports and increase exports without falling behind,” Modi said while launching agriculture and allied sector projects worth Rs 42,000 crore.
Centre aims for 40% rise in pulses output
“The country imports a large quantity of pulses from other countries. With an allocation of over Rs 11,000 crore, this mission will greatly help farmers,” he added, after launching the PM Dhan-Dhanya Krishi Yojana and the Pulses Atmanirbharta Mission.
Under the pulses mission, the government has set an ambitious target to boost pulses production by 40%, reaching 35 million tonne (MT) by the 2030–31 crop year, up from the current 24.2 MT. This increase is expected to be achieved through expansion of cultivation area and enhanced productivity under a mission-mode approach.
Between 2020–21 and 2024–25, India’s import dependency for pulses rose from 9% to 23.1%, underscoring the need for greater domestic self-reliance. With an outlay of ₹24,000 crore, the PM Dhan-Dhanya Krishi Yojana will focus on enhancing agricultural productivity, promoting crop diversification, improving post-harvest storage, strengthening irrigation infrastructure, and expanding credit facilities across 100 aspirational districts over the next six years.
Modi stated that these 100 districts were identified based on three key parameters — agricultural productivity, number of times crops are cultivated in the same land and availability of institutional credit facility. He noted that while previous governments had declared over a hundred districts as “backward” and neglected them, his government adopted a targeted and dynamic strategy, redesignating them as “aspirational districts”.
He said that in the past eleven years, India’s agricultural exports have nearly doubled, food grain production has risen by around 90 MT, and fruit and vegetable output has increased by more than 64 MT. He further stated that India leads the world in milk production and is the second-largest fish producer globally. Honey and egg production, he noted, have both doubled since 2014.
PM Modi unveils Rs 6,000 crore push for agriculture
In addition to these announcements, Modi inaugurated projects worth over ₹5,450 crore in the agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries, and food processing sectors, and laid the foundation stone for additional initiatives valued at around ₹815 crore.
Speaking at the event, Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the government recently raised the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for Rabi crops. He added that under the direct cash transfer programme, Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, ₹3.9 lakh crore has been transferred to the bank accounts of eligible farmers since its launch in 2019.
Chouhan also noted that under the highly subsidised Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, Rs 1.83 lakh crore has been paid to farmers as compensation for crop losses since the scheme’s inception in 2016.