Have been studying the chickpea sector for about 8 months now. A reluctant student of the sector.... I started off by thinking that "Well, at least i would be able to learn about one crop and the way it is traded in the market and the sarkaari policies are formulated on that particular crop!"
8 months from then on I am deflated to say the least! I have understood a lot about how our country moves and what drives our policies. Brought up on phrases like "we are an agricultural country!" "Agriculture is our lifeline" I have smartened to take these statements with a pinch of salt...well!....rather!.. a dash of salt would be an appropriate phrase to actually express myself. The Chickpea sector (chana or chholey) is full of irony! And the irony starts from the name itself. My study started off by knowing that though it is called Bengal gram it is not grown in Bengal. (errr......who was the one who was talking of irony? must have been me!). For me who didnt even know how to differentiate between Kabuli chana and desi chana it was quite a climb. Forget knowing the names I didnt even know that such a distinction existed! But anyways I trudged along trying to motivate myself that it is best to start right at the bottom as at least i would learn the most! I know these words ring hollow and also a trifle cliched but i guess it is cliches like these which come to a man's rescue when all seems lost! What else can a man do but rely on cliches. (Ohh!! the irony continues unabated)
But let us get back to chickpea and its position in the country......my visits took me to many places......Mandla (MP), Chitrakut (UP), Bidisha (MP), Chattisgarh, Pakur (Jharkhand), Betul (MP) and Bikaner (Rajasthan). It was an eye opener for me...even after having spent four to five years of working in rural remoteness with tribals chickpea managed to surprise me and yes....humble me. It surprised me with its potential and also with its under-perfomance; (the irony keeps on running as an underlying current) it surprised me with its history and yet the lack of vision of the policy makers. I understood that it is a crop for the poor as it requires much lesser investment when compared to other crops like wheat or mustard; i understood that we (India) are the largest producer of chickpea in the world and yet is the largest importer of chickpea too! That proves we are pretty voracious about chickpea. In the field I found out that chickpea is grown in one of the most primitive ways in most of the places. About the NGOs which were promoting chickpea ........ the less said the better! The production is dwindling steadily with hardly any extension from the line departments and the NGO workers well......what would one expect of them when they give donor proclivity as the reason for promoting chickpea! Oh irony! so what do we do to arrest this problem of dwindling supplies?...Simple....import chickpeas.....! And we do so in tonnes. So much so that we are the major importers of the world, garnering a third of the overall world's imports share. Our demand had ensured that Myanmar, our neighbour, gets a steady market to sell its chickpea to us. To help us out they have doubled their average yields too.......how kind! And how benevolent of us to actually give Myanmar a window to trade with us (a big one at that!)
Although chickpea production is not going to register a growth in production in the coming years but what is important to note is that the rising population would keep up the demand of not just chickpea but the whole pulse sector in general. The Kabuli chickpea does pose some exciting prospects in the chickpea sector but for the masses desi will always be the option for daily use. Therefore although there may be some rise in the Kabuli demand it will never be able to gain substantially on the desi demand. But despite these developments primary producers are not in a position to benefit from the enhanced demand dynamics as the productivity of chickpea is very low and erratic owing to various reasons (lack of technology penetration, lack of seed research, long supply chains etc.) The nil import duties for pulses also mean that countries with higher levels of productivity and lesser costs of productions like Myanmar and Australia will have cheaper farm gate prices and therefore would be a better option than the home-grown desi chickpea.
Upwards in the value chain almost all the actors are trying to diversify their businesses by trading in other items also like ginger coriander etc. Almost every mill that we went to it was observed that it was not more than 50 to 100 days that the mill actually operated for milling chickpeas.
The issues with chickpea and in fact for the whole pulse sector are structural in nature. The Govt’s view that pulses is only “a poor man’s food” and not a “poor man’s crop” is what is driving the policies around pulses. With rising populations and a very low productivity in the whole pulse sector (chickpea being no different at 788 Kgs/Ha) there is always a demand-supply mismatch and, therefore, our dependence on the international market for imports to meet our demands. In addition, chickpea and the pulse sector in general suffers from very long and complicated supply chains with too many intermediaries adding too little value!
With India being a giant player in the international pulse import scenario, prices tend to go berserk with the realisation of the market of impending large scale purchases to match the demand supply mismatch in India; this pushes prices up in the market and pushing all pulses away from the reach of the masses.Well our sarkaar trading wings....(MMTC, STC etc.) are past masters in doing exactly what should not be done in an international market. When we are such big buyers in the international market. instead doing it stealthily..... we do it the big way.......we make a hue cry of our deficits and that gives the chance to international prices to go northwards! Additionally, unlike grains like wheat and paddy, pulses do not have the advantage of captive marketing by the Govt and therefore more prone to the mercies of the private players.
Both Desi and Kabuli chickpea because of its inherent advantages that it can be grown with lesser number of irrigations and also in rainfed condition becomes such an important crop for poor smallholders but unfortunately this is not a crop which is grown by big powerful farmers who have powerful lobbies in the govt. This is mainly grown by smallholders under rainfed conditions...so who cares about producers......keep on importing and whenever there is a brouhaha about rising prices!always blame it on the monsoons or on the producers!
Ohh yes!!!! Us development wallahs' roles in promoting chickpea?? .....will write about sometime again! till then CIAO!
