New Urea Policy
Also called: New Urea Policy 2015 · Topic: Land Reforms, the Green Revolution and Farm Subsidies · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The New Urea Policy 2015 is the government's policy for urea plants in India. Urea is the most widely used nitrogen fertiliser. The policy has three aims: make more urea at home, push plants to use less energy (mainly natural gas) per tonne, and cut the cost of the urea subsidy to the government. Farmers still buy urea at a statutory MRP, a price fixed by the government. The subsidy covers the gap between this price and the cost of making the urea. This matters because cheap urea makes up a large part of the farm subsidy bill, and it skews fertiliser use towards nitrogen. In the same year, 2015, all urea was required to be neem-coated. The neem coating makes the urea release nitrogen slowly, and it stops cheap farm urea from being diverted to industry.
Example
A plant that makes urea with less gas than before spends less per tonne. Under the 2015 policy, that plant needs less subsidy. A farmer in Punjab still pays the same fixed MRP for a bag of neem-coated urea.
Don't confuse with
- Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS, 2010): NBS gives a fixed subsidy per kg of nutrient for P and K fertilisers such as DAP and MOP, and their prices are partly decontrolled. Urea is outside NBS. It stays under a fixed MRP.
- Nano urea: this is a liquid urea sprayed on leaves, launched by IFFCO in 2021. It is a product, not a policy, and how well it works is still debated.