Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday called for an expeditious implementation of the budgetary proposals for agriculture and rural development, while stressing on the need to achieve self-sufficiency in pulses output. Modi said that the government is working towards two big goals simultaneously — the development of the agriculture sector and the prosperity of villages.

For harnessing the potential of the agriculture sector, he said that the Budget has announced the PM Dhan Dhanya Krishi Yojana, focusing on the development of the 100 least productive agricultural districts.

“Efforts in recent years have increased the country’s pulses production,” Modi said at a post-Budget webinar on ‘agriculture and rural prosperity’, adding that, however, 20% of domestic consumption still relies on imports, necessitating an increase in pulses production.

For boosting pulses output, it is essential to maintain the supply of advanced seeds and promote hybrid varieties, while focusing on addressing challenges such as climate change, market uncertainty, and price fluctuations, the PM said.
“While India has achieved self-sufficiency in chickpeas and moong, there is a need to accelerate the production of pigeon peas (tur), black gram (urad), and lentils (masoor),” Modi said.

India imports 15-20% of its annual pulses consumption of around 30 million tonne (MT); especially tur, urad and masoor from countries, including Canada, Australia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi and Myanmar.

In 2024, pulses imports had doubled to 6.63 MT from 3.3 MT in the previous year. Currently, the area under pulses and oilseeds is only a fraction of the country’s top crop area, and their cultivation is confined to just 55 districts.

Modi also acknowledged the impact of the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi, which was launched six years ago, on the rural economy and stated that nearly `3.75 lakh crore has been directly transferred to the bank accounts of 110 million farmers.
“Today, agricultural production is at record levels. In the past 10 years, production has increased from 265 MT to over 330 MT,” Modi stated, noting that horticulture production has exceeded 350 MT.

Addressing the webinar, agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the government’s focus would be on six key factors: increasing productivity, lowering the cost of production for farmers, ensuring remunerative prices, expanding crop insurance, diversification of agriculture and the promotion of natural farming.

“We need to ensure better remunerative prices for farmers which would expand pulses area in the country,” Chouhan said. The government has announced 100% buy back of three varieties of pulses (tur, urad and masoor) at Minimum Support Price (MSP) from pre-registered farmers.

Chouhan also called for addressing the regional imbalance in agricultural credit flows so that benefits of Kisan Credit Cards (KCCs) are available to farmers across the country. “We also have to address an average lower credit offtake of less than `2 lakh annually per KCC,” he said.  

The agri-credit disbursement by commercial banks and regional rural banks in current fiscal is projected to cross a record `28 lakh crore due to rise in the formalisation of rural credit structure, Shaji KV, chairman, Nabard, had stated earlier this year.
The union budget (2025-26) has increased the loan limit to `5 lakh from the existing `3 lakh  for KCCs holders. According to the economic survey (2024-25), as of March 2024, there were 7.75 crore operational KCC accounts with a total loan outstanding of `9.81 lakh crore.

The budget for the next fiscal also has key measures like the launch of the Prime Minister Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana (DDKY) aimed at boosting agriculture in 100 odd aspirational or backward districts, achieving self-sufficiency in pulses in mission mode in the next six years and rural prosperity and resilience programmes for generating employment with states.