The Lift Line

“India’s soils have been quietly underwriting our food security for decades; that account is now overdrawn.” (Ashok Gulati and Ritika Juneja, The Indian Express, 26 October 2026)

Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam

In the news: In a column in The Indian Express on 26 October 2026, Ashok Gulati (distinguished professor) and Ritika Juneja (senior fellow) of ICRIER argue that India’s fertiliser policy has tilted nutrient use towards nitrogen and is running down soil health. They draw on an ICRIER policy brief released this month and propose four steps.

For the background, see our 23 October editorial page on fertiliser and fuel, the Kharif 2026 NBS subsidy rates and the soil health campaign in an earlier roundup.

UPSC relevance:

  • GS Paper 3: Agriculture: direct and indirect farm subsidies, cropping patterns, irrigation (drip and fertigation) and technology in aid of farmers; Environment: pollution of air and groundwater.
  • Prelims: the Nutrient Based Subsidy scheme; urea’s MRP; the N:P:K ratio; the Soil Health Card’s 12 parameters; PM-PRANAM; nitrous oxide’s global warming potential; the nitrate limit and blue baby syndrome; the 4Rs of nutrient use.
  • Essay and Interview: soil as natural capital; the politics of subsidy reform.

The Crux in 60 Words

Under the Nutrient Based Subsidy regime, phosphate and potash prices float while urea stays fixed, so farmers pour on nitrogen and starve soils of potash. Gulati and Juneja, drawing on an ICRIER brief, trace the damage through soil, air, water, nutrition and the subsidy bill, and propose four fixes centred on nutrient-neutral support and soil-test-based advice.

Key Arguments at a Glance

Relative prices, not farmer ignorance, drive India’s nutrient imbalance, so the fix must change the price signal.

Supporting
  • Since 2010-11, DAP’s price has nearly tripled and MOP’s has risen six-fold while the price of nitrogen in urea has barely moved, and nitrogen’s share of NPK use is back to its 1970-71 level.
  • The damage compounds: carbon-starved soils hold little of the nitrogen poured on them, the rest escapes as nitrous oxide or leaches as nitrate, and micronutrient-poor soils feed hidden hunger.
  • The subsidy is costly and unevenly spread: a Hormuz scenario could push it far above its budget, and Punjab draws about ten times Kerala’s nitrogen subsidy per hectare.
  • PM-PRANAM, meant to reward balanced use, has disbursed nothing so far, as the Government confirmed in March 2026.
Counter

Raising urea’s effective price is politically hard and risky for small farmers; a per-hectare transfer needs tenants identified, which the authors concede is a challenge; ICAR holds that no single ideal ratio fits the country; and, the authors admit, balance will not stick in Punjab and Haryana without power and procurement reform.

Way Forward

The authors’ four steps: a per-hectare, nutrient-neutral transfer (or, if that is too abrupt, urea under NBS with lower DAP and MOP prices, within about Rs 2 lakh crore); a fixed and expedited PM-PRANAM; subsidy savings put into drip, fertigation and new products; and the 4Rs with soil-test-based, plot-level advice.

Background and Context

The study behind the column

The column rests on ICRIER Policy Brief 79, Repurposing India’s Fertiliser Policy towards Nutrient Optimisation (October 2026), by Ramesh Chand, Purvi Thangaraj, Ritika Juneja and Ashok Gulati. It compares actual nutrient use in 20 major states with crop- and irrigation-specific norms between 2009-10 and 2024-25, “neatly bracketing the NBS reform of 2010”, as the column puts it. Most of its figures are for a triennium ending (TE): the three years ending in the year named.

The subsidy bill

By ICRIER’s count, the fertiliser subsidy peaked at Rs 2.51 lakh crore in 2022-23, or 8.6 per cent of crop-sector gross value added, the year global fertiliser and energy prices spiked after the war in Ukraine. It was Rs 1.86 lakh crore in the revised estimate for 2025-26 and is budgeted at Rs 1.71 lakh crore for 2026-27, of which urea takes about Rs 1.16 lakh crore, or about 68 per cent.

PM-PRANAM, the incentive for States

In place since 2023, PM-PRANAM was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on 28 June 2023 (for 2023-24 to 2025-26, by ICRIER’s account) as the PM Programme for Restoration, Awareness Generation, Nourishment and Amelioration of Mother-Earth. A State or Union Territory that uses less chemical fertiliser (urea, DAP, NPK and MOP) in a financial year than its average of the previous three years earns, as a grant, 50 per cent of the subsidy saved. Of that grant, 95 per cent goes to the State or UT and 5 per cent to monitoring, information, education and communication (IEC), research, capacity building and rewards. Department of Fertilisers officials told ICRIER that no decision had been taken to continue the scheme beyond 2026-27.

The Analysis

The authors’ argument

The diagnosis. “Nationally, nitrogen use has moved from 7 per cent below its recommended dose to 6 per cent above it,” Gulati and Juneja write. The brief’s own figures:

Nutrient Gap from norm, TE 2009-10 Gap from norm, TE 2024-25 Use against norm, TE 2024-25 (kg per hectare of cropped area)
Nitrogen (N) 6.8% below 6.2% above 94.7 against 89.2
Phosphorus (P) 28.6% below 22.2% below 37.1 against 47.7
Potassium (K) 48.4% below 71.8% below 9 against 32

Eleven of the 20 states overuse nitrogen, led by Jharkhand (72 per cent) and Punjab (65 per cent). Every state under-applies potash, and Haryana and Jharkhand apply “barely a tenth of what their crops need”. The ratios need careful attribution in an answer:

Measure N:P:K Whose figure
All-India use, TE 2024-25 10.5:4.1:1 (about 4.7:2.0:1 in TE 2009-10) ICRIER’s calculation
Derived normative ratio 2.8:1.5:1 ICRIER, from crop- and irrigation-specific norms
National average about 9.8:3.7:1 Government reply in the Rajya Sabha, 24 March 2026 (Fertilizer Association of India data)

None of these is the familiar benchmark in the Basics box, which the same reply calls “recommended” and which, ICRIER notes, “is hard to trace to a source”; the brief believes it dates to field experiments of the 1950s and says it has never been formally revised.

The cause. “Why has a reform meant to fix the imbalance made it worse? Simple economics.” NBS let phosphatic and potassic prices float with world markets but kept urea at a fixed price. Between 2010-11 and 2024-25, the authors write, “DAP prices nearly tripled to Rs 54/kg, and MOP rose six-fold to Rs 52/kg, while the price of nitrogen in urea rose by just 1 per cent” (ICRIER’s figures: DAP from Rs 18.85 to Rs 54.14 a kg, MOP from Rs 8.43 to Rs 51.92). “Farmers respond to relative prices.” Nitrogen also turns the crop visibly green, while the harm from missing potash “shows up later, and quietly”. In the authors’ account, nitrogen’s share of NPK use is back to about 67 per cent, the 1970-71 level.

The damage, from soil to plate.

  • Soil. Of the 96,62,955 samples tested under the Soil Health Card scheme in its 2025-26 cycle, 72 per cent were low in nitrogen (below 280 kg per hectare), 52 per cent low in organic carbon (below 0.5 per cent), 42 per cent deficient in boron and 37 per cent in zinc, by ICRIER’s compilation from the scheme’s dashboard. Low nitrogen despite overuse “is no paradox”, the authors write: “Carbon-starved soils cannot hold what is poured on them”.
  • Air. Crops take up only 30 to 40 per cent of the nitrogen applied, the column says; the ICRIER brief, citing PIB, puts nitrogen-use efficiency at 30 to 45 per cent. Part of the rest escapes as nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential 273 times that of carbon dioxide over 100 years (IPCC Sixth Assessment Report). Punjab’s fertiliser-related emissions, 476 kg of CO2-equivalent per hectare, are nearly double the all-India average of 244, in a 2025 study by Singh and Gulati that the brief cites.
  • Water. Nitrate above the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) limit of 45 mg per litre has been found in parts of 502 districts across 26 States and UTs, and in 20.7 per cent of the groundwater samples the Central Ground Water Board analysed (CGWB, 2025, cited by ICRIER). It carries the risk of “blue baby syndrome” (methemoglobinemia) in infants and chronic illness in adults.
  • Plate. Potassium deficiency weakens resistance to drought and disease and lowers grain quality; phosphorus shortage delays flowering. “When soils lack zinc and other micronutrients, the grains they yield do too, fuelling the hidden hunger that afflicts millions.”

The bill. The disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, which ICRIER dates to late February 2026, “could push the subsidy bill to anywhere between Rs 2.5 lakh crore and Rs 3 lakh crore, with the urea subsidy amounting to two-thirds of this”, the authors write; the brief’s scenario range for 2026-27 is Rs 2.42 to 3.32 lakh crore, depending on how long and how severe the disruption is. The benefits are skewed: Punjab draws about Rs 25,700 of nitrogen subsidy per hectare (ICRIER: Rs 25,701 per hectare of net sown area in TE 2024-25), Haryana Rs 21,071 and Kerala Rs 2,540. Add MSP-based procurement and subsidised power, and the rice-wheat rotation gets locked in. “All this hurts aquifers.”

The four steps the authors propose

These are recommendations, not government policy.

Step What the authors propose The catch
1. Pay per hectare A direct benefit transfer per hectare, “neutral across nutrients and crops”, so that farmers face the market price of each nutrient and urea loses its artificial edge. AgriStack’s digital farmer IDs and, in their account, a framework for fertiliser sale (FFS) will tie each purchase to the buyer. If that is too abrupt: bring urea under NBS and lower DAP and MOP prices in step, keeping the subsidy at around Rs 2 lakh crore “But identifying tenants remains a challenge.”
2. Reward balance PM-PRANAM “was supposed to reward states that use fertilisers in a balanced way”; it needs fixing and faster implementation “But so far, nothing has been disbursed.”
3. Spend the savings Put subsidy savings into drip irrigation, fertigation and product innovation: customised and coated fertilisers, triple super phosphate (TSP) in place of DAP, biofertilisers, nano fertilisers and gene-edited seeds that use nitrogen more efficiently Depends on the savings from step 1
4. Advise by plot The 4Rs (right source, rate, time and place), with plot-level advice based on soil tests; rotating cereals with pulses can cut the next crop’s nitrogen need by 20 to 30 per cent, through biological nitrogen fixation “But none of this will stick in Punjab and Haryana unless power pricing and procurement are reformed.”

The authors close on a new yardstick: success must be measured not by “total fertilisers applied” but by “balanced supply of nutrients”.

Where the column is strong, and where it stops

  • Strong: it traces the imbalance to a price signal anyone can check, and its norms are crop- and irrigation-specific, which fits ICAR’s view that no one ratio suits the whole country.
  • On PM-PRANAM, the record backs it. The Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers told the Lok Sabha on 13 March 2026 that “no incentives have been disbursed to States or Union Territories under the PM-PRANAM Scheme so far”. The column does not say why. The ICRIER brief reports that the Standing Committee on Chemicals and Fertilizers called the scheme a non-starter in financial disbursement, found its eligibility criteria too complex and restrictive, and asked for a simpler successor designed with state governments.
  • Our reading: the formula rewards using less, not balance. As PIB describes it, PM-PRANAM pays a State for cutting its use of urea, DAP, NPK and MOP below its three-year average. A potash-starved State that raised MOP use towards its crops’ need would shrink the very saving the grant is based on. Fixing the scheme may mean changing what it measures.
  • The transition is the hard part. Even the fallback would raise urea’s price for farmers used to a fixed MRP, and the column does not set out how that change would be phased or cushioned.

Way forward

Our analysis: four conditions would help the authors’ steps work:

  1. Measure balance, not tonnage. Track nutrient balance State by State against crop-specific norms, using Soil Health Card results, as the authors’ new yardstick implies.
  2. Rewrite the State incentive. Reward movement towards those norms rather than a cut in total use, and design the scheme with State governments, as the Standing Committee asked.
  3. Cushion the price change. Move urea’s price only alongside a transfer that reaches the cultivator, tenants included.
  4. Move the cropping system together. Pair fertiliser reform with power pricing and procurement reform in Punjab and Haryana, the authors’ own condition for success.

Data and Institutions Vault

Prelims-grade facts:

Fertiliser pricing:

  • Urea: statutorily notified MRP Rs 242 per 45 kg bag, excluding neem-coating charges and taxes, unchanged since 1 March 2018
  • Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS) for P&K fertilisers since 1 April 2010: a fixed subsidy per kg of nutrient (N, P, K, S); companies fix the MRP
  • Fertiliser subsidy, per ICRIER: Rs 1.71 lakh crore budgeted for 2026-27 (urea about 68%); Rs 1.86 lakh crore (RE) in 2025-26
  • Peak subsidy: Rs 2.51 lakh crore in 2022-23, 8.6% of crop-sector GVA (ICRIER)

Nutrient use (ICRIER Policy Brief 79, 20 major states, TE 2024-25):

  • Gap from norm: nitrogen 6.2% above, phosphorus 22.2% below, potassium 71.8% below
  • Potash applied: 9 kg/ha against a norm of 32 kg/ha
  • Nitrogen overused in 11 of 20 states, led by Jharkhand (72%) and Punjab (65%)

Soil Health Card:

  • Launched 19 February 2015 at Suratgarh, Rajasthan; reports 12 parameters, including organic carbon, pH and electrical conductivity
  • 2025-26 cycle, 96,62,955 samples: 72% low in nitrogen, 52% low in organic carbon, 42% deficient in boron, 37% in zinc

PM-PRANAM:

  • PM Programme for Restoration, Awareness Generation, Nourishment and Amelioration of Mother-Earth: in place since 2023 (CCEA approval, 28 June 2023)
  • PM-PRANAM period: 2023-24 to 2025-26, by ICRIER’s account
  • PM-PRANAM beyond 2026-27: no decision yet to continue it (Department of Fertilisers, per ICRIER)
  • Grant: 50% of the subsidy a State or UT saves by using less urea, DAP, NPK and MOP than its previous 3-year average
  • Split of the grant: 95% to the State or UT, 5% for monitoring, IEC, research, capacity building and rewards
  • No incentive disbursed to any State or UT: Lok Sabha reply, 13 March 2026

Environment and health:

  • Nitrous oxide (N2O): global warming potential 273 times that of CO2 over 100 years (IPCC AR6)
  • Nitrate: BIS limit 45 mg/l; exceeded in parts of 502 districts across 26 States and UTs (CGWB, 2025)
  • Excess nitrate in drinking water: methemoglobinemia (“blue baby syndrome”) in infants

⚠️ Watch the trap:

  • 4:2:1 is a benchmark (“recommended” in a PIB reply), not a statutory norm; ICAR says no single ideal ratio fits all of India
  • 10.5:4.1:1 (against a derived norm of 2.8:1.5:1) is ICRIER’s calculation; the official national average (FAI data) is about 9.8:3.7:1
  • NBS covers P&K fertilisers only; urea stays outside it at a fixed MRP
  • Rs 2.42 to 3.32 lakh crore for 2026-27 is a Hormuz scenario, not a Budget figure
  • Two 4R lists: the column’s right source, rate, time, place; a PIB reply’s right quantity, time, mode, type of fertiliser

The Debate

The case for the authors’ reforms The case for caution
Farmers respond to relative prices, and NBS made nitrogen cheap relative to phosphorus and potash A higher effective price of urea, even with a transfer, is a hard sell to farmers used to a fixed MRP
The damage is measurable: soils low in organic carbon, nitrate in groundwater, nitrous oxide in the air ICAR holds that no single ideal ratio fits the country, so any target must stay crop- and region-specific
The subsidy is costly and skewed: Punjab draws about ten times Kerala’s nitrogen subsidy per hectare A per-hectare transfer needs cultivators identified, and the authors concede tenants are hard to identify
The incentive meant to reward balance has paid nothing so far The authors themselves say balance will not stick in Punjab and Haryana without power and procurement reform

Balanced verdict: the authors’ diagnosis rests on checkable prices and official records, and their PM-PRANAM claim holds on the record; but their remedy shifts cost and risk onto farmers during the transition, so an answer should pair it with how small and tenant farmers would be protected.

How to Think About This

  1. Follow the relative price. A subsidy shapes behaviour through the price it fixes relative to other prices, not only through its size.
  2. Ask whose number it is. A think-tank calculation, an official reply and a rule-of-thumb benchmark can each be right on its own terms; attribute each one.
  3. Read the incentive’s formula. A scheme named for balance may measure something else, such as total tonnes; the formula, not the name, decides behaviour.

Diagram-in-Words

Argument map

Soil health: how a price signal skewed nutrient use

Covers the cause, the skew, where the damage falls and the four steps Gulati and Juneja propose.

Relative prices since the NBS reform of 2010 phosphatic and potassic prices float; urea stays at a fixed price DAP nearly tripled and MOP rose six-fold; price of nitrogen in urea up 1% (2010-11 to 2024-25) Nitrogen up, potash starved nitrogen 6.2% above norm; potassium 71.8% below N:P:K 10.5:4.1:1 against a derived normative 2.8:1.5:1 the skew (ICRIER, TE 2024-25) Soil Soil Health Card samples, 2025-26: 72% low in nitrogen, 52% low in organic carbon Air and water nitrous oxide escapes; nitrate leaches into groundwater where the damage falls The plate soils short of zinc yield grain short of zinc: hidden hunger The treasury Rs 1.71 lakh crore budgeted for 2026-27; benefits skewed to Punjab 1. Pay per hectare nutrient-neutral transfer, or, if too abrupt, urea under NBS 2. Reward balance fix PM-PRANAM: nothing disbursed so far, the authors say the authors' four steps (proposals, not policy) 3. Spend the savings drip irrigation, fertigation and product innovation 4. Advise by plot the 4Rs, advice based on soil tests, rotating cereals with pulses Balanced supply of nutrients not total fertilisers applied the new yardstick
The authors' argument: a price signal that favours urea skews nutrient use, the costs spread from the soil to the treasury, and four proposed steps aim to restore balance.

Read it from top to bottom: the price signal drives the skewed use, whose costs fall in four places. The lower rows are the authors’ proposals, not government policy.

✍️ Mains Answer Framework
Question

The Nutrient Based Subsidy scheme was meant to promote balanced use of fertilisers, yet India's nutrient use has become more skewed towards nitrogen. Examine the reasons for this and its consequences for soil health, and suggest reforms to fertiliser policy. (250 words)

Introduction

India fixes the price of urea but, under the Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS) scheme in force since 1 April 2010, gives phosphatic and potassic fertilisers a fixed subsidy per kg of nutrient and lets companies set their price. The result is cheap nitrogen and costly phosphorus and potash, a price signal that has skewed nutrient use and is degrading soils.

Body

Urea is sold at a statutorily notified MRP of Rs 242 per 45 kg bag (excluding neem-coating charges and taxes), unchanged since 1 March 2018, while the prices of DAP and MOP have risen steeply, and farmers respond to relative prices. In a Rajya Sabha reply of 24 March 2026, the Government put the national N:P:K ratio at about 9.8:3.7:1, against the recommended 4:2:1, though ICAR holds that no single ideal ratio fits the whole country.
An ICRIER study of 20 major states (2026) finds potash applied at 9 kg per hectare against a need of 32 kg, and Soil Health Card data show widespread nitrogen and organic-carbon deficiency. Unused nitrogen escapes as nitrous oxide, whose global warming potential over 100 years is 273 times that of carbon dioxide (IPCC AR6), and leaches as nitrate, found above the BIS limit of 45 mg/l in parts of 502 districts (CGWB, 2025).
The subsidy flows mostly to urea and to high-use states such as Punjab. PM-PRANAM (2023) offers States half the subsidy they save by using less chemical fertiliser, but no incentive had been disbursed as of March 2026.

Conclusion

Reform should shift support from the price of one nutrient to the needs of each plot: a per-hectare, nutrient-neutral transfer phased in with protection for small and tenant farmers; a State incentive that rewards balanced use rather than lower tonnage alone; soil-test-based advice under the 4R approach; and parallel reform of power pricing and procurement, which lock in the rice-wheat cycle.

Interview Angle

"Urea is cheap and farmers rely on it. As a District Collector in Punjab, how would you persuade farmers to cut back on urea and apply more potash?"

Takeaway Box

  • The concept: nutrient balance, not tonnage; relative prices under NBS tilted use towards nitrogen.
  • The evidence: ICRIER’s 20-state study, Soil Health Card samples and the Government’s own ratio all show the skew; attribute each figure to its source.
  • The institutions: urea at a fixed MRP, P&K under NBS, and PM-PRANAM, approved in 2023 for 2023-24 to 2025-26, with nothing disbursed as of March 2026.
  • Watch: any redesign of PM-PRANAM, and the fertiliser subsidy line in the next Union Budget.

Sources:

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