A CRIPPLING CRISIS

Farmers across the country have been reeling under a shortage of fertilisers, especially diammonium phosphate (DAP) and urea, both key inputs in the ongoing rabi season.

- Rahul Noronha

The shortage could deplete farm incomes further as a delay in sowing leads to drop in production. For political parties, there is also the threat of an erosion of their support base. Pollbound states such as Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, where farmers are a crucial political group, could see a more acute fallout of the crisis.

The DAP shortage has a lot to do with international factors, but it’s also true that the Union government’s late response in announcing the subsidy on fertilisers led to delays in placing import orders. India imports 6.1 million tonnes of DAP to supplement the 9 million tonnes it needs a year. India is also the largest importer of DAP in the world, followed by Pakistan, the USA, Turkey and Vietnam. Another reason for the massive shortage is that India, over the past decade or so, shut six big fertiliser plants as imports were found to be much cheaper than production. That decision has come back to bite now. China’s ban on exports of phosphates has also hit us, as it did the world. One of the largest producers of fertilisers, it is among India’s largest suppliers of DAP.

Top officials in the Union fertiliser ministry simply deny that there is a shortage of DAP; they blame it on panic- and rumour-induced hoarding.. Last week, Punjab’s agriculture minister Randeep Singh Nabha met with chemical and fertilisers minister Mansukh Mandaviya and raised the issue of shortage of fertilisers in the state. The state’s farmers, already on a short fuse over the Centre’s new farm laws, now have this to further aggravate them. In fact, in neighbouring Haryana, the state government has had to deploy the police at fertiliser sale outlets and, in some areas, even distribute it from the police stations.