🌾 Schemes & WelfareMAINS · GS3.5 · GS3.4

Six-year pulses self-reliance mission under way

A Cabinet-approved central mission to make India aatmanirbhar in pulses by 2030-31, anchored on Tur, Urad and Masoor.

What happened

In a Rajya Sabha reply, the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare gave the working status of the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses, the dedicated programme cleared to cut India's import dependence in pulses.
The Union Cabinet had approved the mission as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme on 1 October 2025, with an outlay of ₹11,440 crore spread over six years, from 2025-26 to 2030-31.
The two Central Nodal Agencies, NAFED and NCCF, have been tasked to procure Tur (arhar/pigeon-pea), Urad (black gram) and Masoor (lentil) from registered farmers under assured-price norms.
For the Rabi 2026-27 season, the reply confirmed that about 1.5 lakh pulse farmers had already registered for procurement on the NAFED and NCCF portals.
On the value-chain side, the mission offers post-harvest support of up to 33% of project cost or a maximum of ₹25 lakh per new processing/packaging unit, with a target of 1,000 such units.
Separately, the reply noted 23 pulse-processing units sanctioned under the food-processing window of PMKSY, of which 18 are completed.

Background & context

Pulses are India's main vegetarian protein source and a keystone of its dryland farming, yet the country has long been the world's largest producer, consumer and importer of pulses at the same time. Domestic output has historically lagged demand, leaving a recurring import gap that is filled by Tur from East Africa and Myanmar, and Masoor and yellow peas from Canada, Australia and Russia. The new mission is the government's attempt to close that gap by name, treating import-substitution in pulses as a standalone target rather than a sub-line of a broader crop scheme.

The mission does not appear in a vacuum. It sits on top of an existing procurement architecture. Pulses are one of the commodities covered by the Price Support Scheme (PSS), which is itself a component of the umbrella scheme PM-AASHA (Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay SanraksHan Abhiyan) — the farmer income-protection framework that bundles the PSS, the Price Deficiency Payment Scheme (PDPS) and the Market Intervention Scheme (MIS). Under the PSS, when market prices fall below the Minimum Support Price, the Central Nodal Agencies step in to buy the notified crop directly from registered farmers at the MSP. The pulses mission piggybacks on this machinery, but adds a crucial guarantee: NAFED and NCCF will procure Tur, Urad and Masoor for a full four years, giving farmers the confidence to expand acreage knowing a buyer of last resort is locked in.

It also draws a clear line of descent from earlier pulses efforts. India's earlier push came through the National Food Security Mission (NFSM), under which a pulses component and special programmes such as the schemes built around the model village of Tur and a national buffer stock of pulses were run. The dedicated mission consolidates and sharpens these scattered efforts into a single, time-bound, separately-funded programme with its own outlay and its own procurement promise — and frames the goal in the language of aatmanirbharta (self-reliance), the same banner used for defence, electronics and edible-oil missions.

For Prelims

Name & type: Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses — a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS), meaning the Centre and States share the cost (the Centre does not fund it alone, as in a Central Sector scheme).
Approved by & when: the Union Cabinet, on 1 October 2025.
Nodal ministry: Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare).
Outlay & period: ₹11,440 crore, over six years, 2025-26 to 2030-31.
Focus crops: the three import-heavy pulses — Tur (arhar), Urad and Masoor — not the whole pulses basket. Gram (chana) and Moong, which India is already broadly self-sufficient in, are not the special-focus crops.
Procurement agencies: NAFED (National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India) and NCCF (National Cooperative Consumers' Federation of India) — the two Central Nodal Agencies — buying for four years under PSS norms of PM-AASHA.
Registration so far: ~1.5 lakh pulse farmers registered for Rabi 2026-27 procurement.
Post-harvest pillar: capital support of up to 33% of cost or ₹25 lakh per new processing/packaging unit; 1,000 units targeted.
Other tools named: distribution of climate-resilient pulse seeds; convergence with food-processing units (23 sanctioned under PMKSY's CEFPPC window, 18 complete).
Reading the umbrella stack: PM-AASHA (umbrella) → PSS / PDPS / MIS (components) → NAFED & NCCF (executing agencies) → MSP-based purchase of Tur/Urad/Masoor (the act on the ground).

For UPSC: Pulses Mission = a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, ₹11,440 cr, 2025-31, focus on Tur/Urad/Masoor, procured by NAFED & NCCF for four years under the PSS of PM-AASHA, with up to ₹25 lakh per processing unit and 1,000 units targeted.

What it is NOT: It is not a Central Sector scheme (it is Centrally Sponsored, so States co-fund). It is not part of the National Food Security Mission line item any more — it is a separate, dedicated mission with its own outlay. It is not a scheme for all pulses uniformly — its assured four-year procurement push targets only Tur, Urad and Masoor. And PM-AASHA is the umbrella, not the mission itself — PSS is the component the mission rides on. NAFED (a cooperative marketing federation) should not be confused with NCCF (a consumers' cooperative); both act here as Central Nodal Agencies.

The full set it belongs to — pulses facts worth carrying: India is the world's largest producer and consumer of pulses, contributing roughly a quarter of global output. The major pulses are gram/chana, tur/arhar, urad, moong, masoor and peas; gram is the single largest pulse by share of Indian production. Pulses are largely a Rabi-dominant crop in terms of output (gram and masoor are Rabi; tur, urad and moong straddle Kharif), grown heavily under rain-fed conditions in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, with Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra among the leading producers. As legumes they fix atmospheric nitrogen, which is why they anchor crop-rotation and natural-farming systems. All major pulses carry a notified Minimum Support Price, and it is the gap between that MSP and weak market prices that PSS procurement exists to plug.

Why it matters

The problem the mission addresses is concrete: India spends a large foreign-exchange bill every year importing pulses, and that import dependence both drains money abroad and exposes domestic protein prices to global supply shocks, weather in exporting countries, and export bans by suppliers. A bad monsoon or a Canadian crop failure can swing Indian dal prices sharply. By guaranteeing a buyer for four years and de-risking the farmer's decision to plant Tur, Urad or Masoor, the mission tries to break the cycle in which farmers, burnt by a price crash, retreat from pulses the very next season — the volatility that has kept Indian pulses output from catching up with demand.

There is a nutrition-security angle too. Pulses supply affordable protein to a largely vegetarian population, and they feed welfare channels and the mid-day-meal and ICDS supply chains. Cheaper, more reliable domestic pulses ease both household food budgets and the fiscal cost of those programmes. Ecologically, expanding pulses fits the sustainability case: as nitrogen-fixing legumes grown largely without irrigation, they cut fertiliser demand and suit the dryland regions where water-hungry crops should not expand. The mission's post-harvest and processing support also targets the weak link that has long depressed farm-gate returns — the absence of nearby cleaning, grading, dal-milling and packaging capacity — by funding up to a third of the cost of new units close to where pulses are grown.

For Mains

Anchor

A question on India's strategy to achieve self-sufficiency in pulses, or on de-risking farmer income, can be built directly around this mission — its ₹11,440 cr outlay, six-year window and four-year assured procurement of Tur/Urad/Masoor.

Data

Supplies hard figures for any answer on MSP/procurement or agricultural self-reliance: ₹11,440 cr over 2025-31, 1.5 lakh farmers registered for Rabi 2026-27, up to ₹25 lakh per unit and 1,000 processing units targeted.

Exemplification

A clean example of import-substitution by guaranteed procurement, and of how an umbrella scheme (PM-AASHA) is operationalised through nodal agencies (NAFED, NCCF) on the ground.

Problematisation

The reply itself shows the gap: only ~1.5 lakh farmers registered and the heavy reliance on assured procurement signals the underlying price-volatility and weak-processing problems the mission must still overcome.

Way-forward

For answers on doubling farmer income, food/nutrition security or reducing the agri import bill, the mission is a ready way-forward: assured procurement + climate-resilient seeds + decentralised processing capacity.

Position

States the government's stance — treating pulses self-reliance as a named, separately-funded national target rather than a residual line in a wider crop scheme.

Deploys into: MSP/PDS/buffer/food-security and animal-rearing (GS3.5); crops, irrigation, storage and farmer technologies (GS3.4); inclusive growth and farmer-income protection; food-processing and value addition.

Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare · 2026-03-13 · PRID 2239790 · PIB source ↗