India's paddy-wheat monoculture in North India is an ecological and economic liability. Discuss the challenges and policy imperatives for agricultural diversification with reference to pulses.

The Green Revolution secured cereal self-sufficiency, but assured MSP and procurement locked Punjab-Haryana into a wheat-paddy cycle. The Supreme Court's March 2026 direction to incentivise pulses [1] confirms that this cropping pattern has become both ecologically and fiscally costly.

The liability: ecological and economic

• Groundwater depletion: water-intensive paddy in a semi-arid belt has driven aquifer decline; the Court itself questioned whether such paddy volumes are required [1].
• Soil and air: continuous monoculture causes soil exhaustion, heavy nitrogenous fertiliser use, and stubble burning across the Indo-Gangetic plain.
• Import dependence: despite record output of 252.38 lakh MT in 2024-25, India imported 47.38 lakh MT of pulses in 2023-24 against exports of only 5.94 lakh MT — a forex drain and exposure to global price shocks [2].
• Fiscal burden: open-ended cereal procurement and storage costs crowd out support for protein crops.

Challenges to diversification

• Weak price incentive: MSP for pulses often fails to cover small farmers' actual cultivation costs, and MSP carries no statutory backing [3].
• Procurement design flaw: the Price Support Scheme under PM-AASHA activates only after market prices fall below MSP, so farmers absorb the risk first [4].
• Trade policy distortion: duty-free import of yellow peas, permitted till 20 February 2025, suppressed domestic pulse prices [2].
• Federal friction: agriculture is a State subject (Schedule VII, List II, Entry 14), requiring Centre-State convergence on irrigation and marketing.

Policy imperatives

• Assured offtake: Budget 2025's 100% procurement of tur, urad and masoor till 2028-29 and PM-AASHA's enhanced ₹60,000 crore guarantee must reach the field [3].
• Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses (2025-26 to 2030-31): seed replacement, rice-fallow area expansion and processing units [5].
• Stable tariff policy and ground-level expert consultation, as the Court directed [1].

Diversification is not merely a cropping choice but a route to water security, soil health and protein nutrition. Aligning MSP realism, guaranteed procurement and predictable trade policy can make nitrogen-fixing pulses genuinely remunerative — advancing both farmer income and the SDG goals of zero hunger and sustainable land use.