A ground-level research and study of the cost involved in the cultivation of the Red Gram conducted by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) has exposed the lopsided fixing of the Minimum Support Price (MSP) by the Union Government and how the farmers were forced to eke out a pittance as a profit for their six-month long toil in the field.
Senior Research Fellow in the ISI, Dr. Biplab Sarkar who conducted the study in three villages in Kalaburagi, Mandya and Kolar, in his report has come out with some shocking details of the lack of research and development activities to improve the yield of the crop and unscientific manner in which the MSP is fixed for the Red Gram, which is main stay of the farmers in some parts of the country, including Kalaburagi.
He said as per the details worked out,the farmer should get at least Rs. 6,157 as Minimum Support Price (MSP) as against the Rs. 4,350 announced by the central government and the state government which had intervened in the market by paying Rs. 5,000 as MSP last year is yet to announce the MSP for the Red Gram this year.
Dr. Sarkar said that at present the red gram growers who incurred around Rs. 3,500 as cost of cultivation, the return he got per quintal of pulse produced was just Rs 800 as profit for the hard work for six months, which is too low when compared to other professions.
Due to lack of remunerative price and low returns the area under the Red Gram cultivation is declining over a period of time as per the latest data available with the Directorate of Economics and Statistics.
In his report, Dr. Sarkar said although the share of India in the production of Red Gram in the world continued to be highest with 24,00,000 tonnes produced annually, India had the dubious record of being third lowest among all the major red gram growing country in the productivity of the pulse per hectare (6.85 quintals per hectare). The Highest productivity per hectare was in Uganda (10 quintal per hectare) and Myanmar (9.25 quintal per hectare).
He said that the annual productivity of the Red Gram was almost stagnant with the minimum fluctuations year to year. If the productivity of the Red gram which was eight quintal per hectare in 1950-51, it is almost the same today also, meaning that there was no technological productivity breakthrough in the cultivation of the Red Gram, unlike the breakthroughs achieved in the production of wheat and rice. The increase in the production of the red gram was mainly due to the increase in the area and not due to any increase in the productivity. In the last two decade the production of the Red Gram had remained static around 3 million tonnes.
In India, Maharashtra topped the list of the state which produces more Red Gram with 32 per cent followed by Karnataka (13 per cent). However in the productivity, Karnataka (6 quintals per hectare) stands almost at the end of all the major Red Gram producing states. The Indian institute of Pulses research has been carrying out pioneering research in the field of pulses, but the lab to land transfer of the technology is still a dream and the new technologies were yet to reach the farmers.
