How to fix India’s problem with pulses
government wants India to be selfsufficient in pulses by 2027-28. As the world’s largest producer of pulses by far, this may not seem hard, but we are also the largest consumer. A large part of pulses’ production in countries like Myanmar, Canada and Australia is meant for India.
Ending imports won’t be easy. This is particularly so for a reason that doesn’t get captured by aggregated figures.
Policy makers tend to refer to agricultural products as if they were one thing. Just as barrels of oil (within certain specifications) are considered identical, rice, wheat and pulses are also spoken of as one thing for production and trade statistics. But at the consumption end, we know that the differences between varieties are huge.
This was felt during the food shortages of the 1960s when India had to receive American wheat as food aid. What came was the high-gluten ‘hard’ varieties grown for American leavened bread, not the low-gluten ‘soft’ wheat Indians used for making rotis. Those with memories of that time still recall how rotis made from American wheat felt like cardboard. Another solution from that time was to promote leavened bread.
But today, bakers have to deal with inconsistent varieties of wheat in the market, which is one reason why they use additives to even out the differences. Differences in rice varieties are why a biryani made to the same recipe can taste quite different in another part of India. Careful cooks try and get their grains from known suppliers.
Differences between pulses are far greater.
