Government of India introduced a new scheme PM-PRANAM which stands for PM- promotion of alternate nutrients for agriculture management yojana.
Objective: To reduce the subsidy burden on chemical fertilizers.
Budgetary Allocation: there will be no separate budget for the scheme. It will be financed through the savings of existing fertilizers subsidy provided by the department of fertilizer under various schemes.
Every year union government spends around 1 lakh crore rupee on fertilizer subsidy. Consequently farmers use excessive amount of urea in to imbalanced ratio of N:P:K to 8:3:1 instead of 4:2:1. Resulting into set of problems such as soil and water pollution.
Measures taken in the past to reduce the consumption of urea:
1 soil health card: it is issued to give farmers ideal prescription to farmers for use of fertilizer as per the requirement of the soil.
- nutrient based subsidy scheme: it was introduced to promote use of fertilizers other than urea.
- Neem coated urea and nano urea
- 4. One nation one fertilizer: under it, fertilizer is sold under single brand to prevent diversion and smuggling
- prampargat Krishi vikas yojanaand Bhartiya prakartik padhati to promote chemical free organic farming.
- Gobardhan scheme: it is to promote organic fertilizers mainly fermented organic manures ( FOM) and phosphate rich organic manures ( PROM)
Despite all this there has not been enough reduction in the use of fertilizers as evident from the quantum of subsidies in the year 2021 it was 1.05 lakh crore in 2022 it was 2.25 lakh crore and in 2023 it is 1.7 lakh crore.
One of the reasons could be:
- Apathy or lack of awareness
- Lack of incentives among farmers in state government to reduce the fertilizer use
therefore
in the budget 2023 government launched PM- PRANAM to incentivise the state governments to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers. 50% subsidy saving will be passed on as a grant to the state government that saves the money for example if state was using 10 lakh tonnes of urea and reduce its consumption by 3 lakh tonnes by using earlier schemes then subsidy saving would be Rs3000cr out of that subsidy savings the centre will give 50% of it to the state for promoting the use of alternative fertilizers.
Conclusion:
Thus, this scheme achieves both objectives
1 sustainable agriculture by reducing the use of chemical fertilizers
2 it will reduce the fertilizers subsidy burden on the government.
- it will also help to achieve sustainable development goal mainly
- a) goal-12 responsible consumption and burden
- b) goal – 15 to protect, restore and promote sustainable of terrestrial ecosystem.