PIB TrackerGaya, Nagaur and Umaria are PMDDKY’s best districts in year one
At the first-year conference the Agriculture Minister named the leaders, said year two must deliver measurable outcomes, and announced a soil-health campaign from 22 October.
What happened
- PM Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana completed one year on 11 October 2026 and the department held its anniversary event at Pusa, New Delhi, with over 370 delegates.
- Gaya (Bihar), Nagaur (Rajasthan) and Umaria (Madhya Pradesh) were recognised as the best-performing districts.
- The Agriculture Minister said year one was about foundations and that year two must deliver visible and measurable outcomes on productivity, cropping intensity, irrigation, credit and post-harvest infrastructure.
- He asked collectors to review district action plans monthly, push pulses and oilseeds in rice-fallow areas, and widen Kisan Credit Card coverage in eastern India.
- Khet Bachao Abhiyan will run in all States from 22 October to 30 November 2026 to promote balanced and judicious fertiliser use.
For Prelims
- PMDDKY: launched 11 October 2025 for six years with an annual outlay of Rs 24,000 crore, covering 100 districts selected on low productivity, low cropping intensity and low agricultural credit, through convergence of 36 central schemes across 11 ministries.
- Rice-fallow area: land left uncultivated after the kharif paddy harvest for want of irrigation. Short-duration pulses and oilseeds on residual moisture are the standard fix - which is why this instruction and the pulses mission point at the same acres.
- Why eastern India for credit: the credit-deposit ratio and institutional credit per hectare are structurally lower in the east, so the same scheme design delivers less there - the reason credit was one of the three selection criteria.
- Kisan Credit Card: introduced in 1998 for short-term crop credit at subvented interest, later extended to animal husbandry and fisheries. Coverage rather than entitlement is the binding constraint, which is what "wider coverage" means here.
- Balanced fertiliser use: Indian soils are over-supplied with nitrogen relative to phosphate and potash because urea is the most heavily subsidised nutrient. The resulting NPK ratio imbalance is a long-standing soil-health problem, and the target of any "judicious use" campaign.
- The agricultural research system: ICAR with its institutes, the Krishi Vigyan Kendras in nearly every district and the Agricultural Technology Management Agency at district level form the extension chain from laboratory to field.
- Delta ranking: the aspirational-districts method of ranking on improvement rather than level, so a poor district that moves fast can top the table. It is what allows Gaya, Nagaur and Umaria to be "best-performing" while remaining low-productivity districts.
- Cropping intensity: gross cropped area as a percentage of net sown area. Raising it means a second or third crop on the same land, which depends on irrigation and short-duration varieties rather than on more land.
For UPSC: The follow-through on a flagship scheme’s first year, with named districts, a stated pivot from process to outcome and a new campaign attached. Deploy it on agricultural productivity and district-level planning, on convergence as a delivery model, on fertiliser subsidy and soil health, and as an example of how delta-ranking changes what "best-performing" means.
What it is NOT: No scores or ranking criteria are published for the three named districts, so what made them best-performing is unstated. No list of the other districts recognised, and no district-wise table despite the monthly dashboard that generates one. The Khet Bachao Abhiyan arrives with no budget, no target and no measure of what balanced use would look like. And the shift to "measurable outcomes" in year two is announced without naming the outcome indicators or the baseline against which they will be read.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS3.4 · GS2.10 · Linkage L2
Anchor
At the first-year event for PM Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana, Gaya in Bihar, Nagaur in Rajasthan and Umaria in Madhya Pradesh were named the best-performing of the scheme’s 100 districts, and the Agriculture Minister said the second year must produce visible and measurable outcomes.
Substantiation (data)
The event drew more than 370 delegates including district collectors and scientists. The district presentations supplied the texture the dashboard cannot: Gadchiroli in Maharashtra on water conservation and drought management, Alluri Sitharama Raju in Andhra Pradesh on shifting a low-rainfall district to high-value, low-water horticulture. A soil-health campaign, Khet Bachao Abhiyan, will run from 22 October to 30 November.
Position
Naming districts matters more than it appears. The scheme’s monitoring ranks 100 districts monthly on output indicators, and until now only the average has been published - which meant the competition the design depends on was invisible to everyone outside the dashboard. Recognition by name is what converts a ranking into an incentive, and it is also what makes the ranking auditable from outside.
Counterpoint
What the recognition means is still unstated. Under a delta-ranking method a district is rewarded for improvement, not level, so a best-performing PMDDKY district remains by definition one with low productivity, low cropping intensity or thin credit. Without published scores, a reader cannot tell whether Gaya improved on irrigation, on credit or only on data submission.
Way forward
The year-two test the Minister set is the right one and has a measurable form: the 47 outcome indicators already collected for 2025-26 can be published district-wise and compared with the three selection criteria. Khet Bachao Abhiyan is similarly testable, if the ministry reports NPK ratios before and after rather than events held.
Conclusion
Three districts named, a pivot to outcomes announced, and a fertiliser campaign added. The scheme now says the right things about measurement; the figures that would demonstrate it remain inside the dashboard.
Deploys into: District-level agricultural planning · Convergence and delta ranking · Fertiliser subsidy and soil health · Institutional credit in eastern India
Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare · 2026-10-12 · PRID 2322267 · PIB source ↗