The Protein Sovereignty Index

Country assessment

India

We assess India as Exposed (62.6). India feeds 1.45 billion people almost entirely from its own soil, producing 247.87 million tonnes of milk, 149.11 billion eggs and 19.78 million tonnes of fish in 2024-25 while exporting rice, buffalo meat and shrimp, so its protein import exposure is among the lowest of any large economy.[3][4][6]

The binding constraint sits upstream and underground: roughly 68.6 per cent of the value of India's fertiliser supply is foreign-sourced, all of its potash and over 90 per cent of its rock phosphate are imported, 85 per cent of the gas that makes its urea arrives as LNG through the Gulf, and the surplus filling the world's largest public grain reserve is grown on aquifers drawn down faster than they refill.[10][25]

Affordability is the second constraint, and it binds households rather than the state: 35.5 per cent of Indians could not afford a healthy diet in 2025 and child stunting remains "very high" on WHO's own classification, even though undernourishment and physical distribution infrastructure are comparatively contained.[17][42]

The protein system

FAO Food Balance Sheets put India's total protein supply at 73.19 grams per person per day in 2022, of which 53.59 grams came from plants and 19.6 from animals, a plant share of 73 per cent.[1][2] Cereals deliver close to half of dietary protein, well above the 32 per cent the National Institute of Nutrition recommends, while pulses contribute 11 per cent against a recommended 19.[19] Composition matters more than the total: only 15.4 per cent of Indian cereals are fed to animals, against 50.8 per cent in the United States, 42.1 in China and 66.6 in Brazil.[21]

The animal protein that exists is domestic and low-input. Milk output of 247.87 million tonnes in 2024-25 gives 485 grams per person per day against a global average near 322, and India has led world milk production since 1998.[3][4] Egg output was 149.11 billion, second globally, and meat 10.50 million tonnes, fourth globally.[4] Fish production reached 19.78 million tonnes in FY2024-25, roughly double the 2013-14 level, making India second in aquatic animal production at 9 per cent of world output, second in aquaculture at 12 per cent of farmed output, and the largest inland capture fishery at 2.2 million tonnes.[6][7] Foodgrain output hit a record 357.73 million tonnes, rice 150.18 million, wheat 117.94 and pulses 25.68.[5] Almost none of the protein Indians eat crosses a border to reach them.

Durable domestic capacity: 71

Quantitative score 75, adjusted down 4 points

On production self-sufficiency India scores near the top of the index, self-sufficient or better in dairy, eggs, meat and fish, with pulses its only material deficit. Two things hold the score down. The first is durability of the production base, treated under headroom. The second is that aggregate supply overstates what households receive. Against 73.19 grams of supply, the 2023-24 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey measures mean intake at 55.6 grams, the richest decile consuming 1.5 times the poorest, and for high-quality protein the poorest households reach 38 per cent of the recommended allowance for eggs, fish and meat against 123 per cent for the richest.[1][19] Widely quoted claims that 73 per cent of Indians are protein deficient rest on a 2017 industry survey rather than a national nutrition survey, and carry no weight here.[20] We do score on SOFI 2026, which finds 142.5 million Indians undernourished in 2023-25, down from 21.1 per cent of the population two decades earlier, alongside 520.1 million people, 35.5 per cent, unable to afford a healthy diet in 2025 at PPP USD 4.11 per day.[17][18] Hence a minus 4 adjustment. Capacity a third of the population cannot convert into protein is capacity the ratio credits and the household does not receive.

Resource headroom: 45

Quantitative score 50, adjusted down 5 points

India presents a sharp contradiction: a highly resource-efficient protein mix on an almost fully consumed resource base. That efficiency is genuine: a plant-dominated diet diverting only 15.4 per cent of cereals to feed carries far less resource overhead per gram of protein than any feed-intensive system, and the dairy herd runs substantially on crop residues, grazing and by-products.[21][2]

The base is the problem. Renewable internal freshwater has fallen to 1,014 cubic metres per person per year, from 3,238 in 1961 and well below the 1,700 water-stress threshold, and withdrawals run at 66.5 per cent of internal renewable resources.[22][23] The Central Ground Water Board's 2024 assessment gives annual recharge of 446.9 billion cubic metres, down from 449.08 in 2023, an extraction stage of 60.4 per cent and about 73 per cent of assessment units classified safe, with groundwater supplying close to 60 per cent of irrigation water.[24][25] Land offers nothing either: pulse area contracted from 30.6 million hectares in 2021/22 to 26.9 million in 2024/25, so the crop India most needs to expand is losing ground.[9] The national picture is the same at a broader scale: FAOSTAT records arable land falling from 161.45 to 153.81 million hectares and cropland from 170.13 to 168.01 million hectares between 2000 and 2024, close to flat in absolute terms but down 30.5 and 28.0 per cent per person once population growth from 1.06 to 1.45 billion is priced in.[50][52] There is no frontier left to clear, so growth in protein has to come from yield and efficiency rather than from new hectares.

What growth exists is intensification, and it is real and financed. Land equipped for irrigation has risen from 60.4 to 75.5 million hectares of arable land since 2000, 49.1 per cent of the arable base against 37.4 per cent at the start of the period, and the area actually irrigated has grown every year since 2020 to 82.4 million hectares in 2024, already exceeding the equipped figure through double-cropping.[50] That corroborates the sown-area picture already cited: irrigation coverage has risen from 49 per cent of sown area in 2014-15 to about 56 per cent, buffering rice and wheat,[27] though roughly half the net sown area remains rainfed and produces around 40 per cent of food output.[34] Capital is following the intensification rather than sitting on the sidelines: FAOSTAT's fully reported agriculture orientation index for credit, official for every year on record, rose from 0.70 of parity in 2020 to 0.87 in 2024, with agriculture, forestry and fishing taking 12.9 per cent of total bank credit against 11.5 per cent the year before.[51] The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana's dam-and-canal component has completed 53 major and medium projects for 2.51 million hectares of additional irrigation potential, and its micro-irrigation component covered 7.00 million hectares by 2022-23, a delivered programme rather than an announced one.[53][54] Aquaculture, growing fast at 4.77 tonnes per hectare, may carry a hidden dependence of its own: market research puts Indian feed mills' fishmeal imports from Peru and Chile at about 60 per cent, but no primary fishmeal balance exists to confirm it, so the figure carries no weight in the scoring.[6][29]

We apply a minus 5 adjustment because the official groundwater picture reads as recovery while the physical record does not support it. The safe-unit share has risen and the extraction stage eased, yet a satellite and ground-observation study led by IIT Gandhinagar and the National Geophysical Research Institute finds north India lost roughly 450 cubic kilometres of groundwater between 2002 and 2021, water tables falling about 1.5 centimetres a year.[24][39] That divergence concentrates in the north-western wheat and rice belt generating the exportable surplus, exactly where the block-level statistic most overstates headroom. The deduction stays confined to that stock overstatement rather than widening into a capacity or capital judgement: irrigation coverage and agricultural credit are both tested and both found real, so what constrains India's headroom is the water itself, not the ability to reach it.

Import exposure: 78

Quantitative score 82, adjusted down 4 points

India's strongest pillar by a wide margin. Milk, eggs and fish are effectively all domestic, and India is a net exporter of rice, worth USD 12.47 billion in FY2024-25 (non-basmati USD 6.53 billion, basmati USD 5.94 billion), of buffalo meat, worth USD 4.06 billion on 1.26 million tonnes, and of seafood at USD 7.41 billion.[36][32] The sole meaningful protein import is pulses, and even at a record 7.344 million tonnes in MY2024/25 that is roughly a fifth of pulse supply on our derivation and, since pulses provide 11 per cent of dietary protein, between 2 and 3 per cent of total protein supply.[5][8][19]

Supplier concentration is unusually low. Australia supplied 1.885 million tonnes, Myanmar 1.050 million, Russia 718 thousand and Tanzania 404 thousand, with further volumes from Brazil, Sudan and Malawi, a spread across four continents arriving on both Indian coasts and depending on no single maritime chokepoint.[8] Set against entities such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, whose rice imports concentrate heavily in two suppliers and whose food imports mostly transit a single strait, India's protein trade has neither problem.

We apply a minus 4 adjustment for a coupling protein trade data misses. India imports roughly 60 per cent of its edible oil, about 16.3 million tonnes in 2024-25, with palm at 7.58 million tonnes from Indonesia and Malaysia through the Strait of Malacca and a record 5.47 million tonnes of soybean oil largely from South America.[37][38] Edible oil carries no protein, yet the same crush complex producing oil produces oilmeal, India's principal feed protein, and cheap imported oil suppresses domestic oilseed area. A disruption in a non-protein commodity therefore reaches the protein system through the crush margin.

Upstream dependence: 40

Quantitative score 35, adjusted up 5 points

Here India's protein sovereignty is decided. ICRIER's 2026 assessment, on Fertiliser Association of India and DGCIS data, finds 68.6 per cent of the value of India's fertiliser supply foreign-sourced, 44.5 per cent as imported feedstock and 24.1 as imported finished product, against only 5.8 per cent domestic feedstock.[10]

Nitrogen looks better than it is. Urea consumption was 38.7 million tonnes in 2024-25 against domestic production of about 30.6 million and imports of 5.6 million, a nominal self-sufficiency near 79 per cent. Because 85 per cent of the gas used in domestic urea production is imported LNG, effective self-reliance falls to about 46 per cent of requirement.[10] India imported 27 million tonnes of LNG, 61 per cent from Gulf suppliers with Qatar alone at 41 per cent, of which the fertiliser industry took 12.8 million tonnes worth USD 6.15 billion; Wood Mackenzie puts Qatar and the UAE together at 59 per cent of India's 2025 imports.[10][12] Urea sourcing is more concentrated still: Oman 46 per cent, Russia 16, Saudi Arabia 9, the UAE 6.[10]

Phosphorus is worse. Of 9.2 million tonnes of DAP consumed, about 4.5 million was imported from Saudi Arabia (42 per cent), Morocco (23), China (19), Russia (6) and Jordan (5), five countries covering roughly 95 per cent. Domestic rock phosphate output was 1.37 million tonnes against 11.95 million imported, and phosphoric acid production of 2.16 million was almost matched by 2.12 million imported. Indigenous rock contributes 7 per cent of India's phosphorus supply, and value-chain self-sufficiency in phosphatic and complex fertilisers is 16.5 per cent. Potash is total dependence: no viable domestic reserves, 3.54 million tonnes imported, Russia at 51 per cent. Imported ammonia of 2.5 million tonnes and sulphur of 2.2 million came over 80 per cent from the Gulf.[10]

Feed is the one critical input India mostly owns, and 2025-26 showed how thin the margin is. The Soybean Processors Association of India put the 2025-26 kharif crop at 11.03 million tonnes, down 14 per cent on the 12.58 million tonnes harvested in 2024-25, after a smaller sown area and a weaker yield; an earlier estimate had put the fall as high as 16 per cent.[40] The tighter crop has not shown up as an export collapse: soymeal exports in October and November 2025-26 actually rose to 334,000 tonnes from 241,000 tonnes a year earlier, as crushers processed more of a smaller harvest against thinner opening stocks.[41] Claims circulating in trade commentary of a soymeal price rise above 40 per cent and a surge in soybean imports from West Africa do not appear in SOPA, USDA or primary trade data and carry no weight in the scored indicators. Broiler genetics are imported in substance: dominant Vencobb strains derive from Cobb-Vantress lines, and with no primary figure for imported grandparent stock volumes, genetics is assessed qualitatively in this pillar.

We apply a plus 5 adjustment. India holds owned and contracted origination in the inputs it lacks: the Oman India Fertiliser Company, Jordan India Fertiliser Company, Industries Chimiques du Senegal, Indo Maroc Phosphore and TIFERT in Tunisia give equity access to ammonia, rock phosphate and phosphoric acid, and a long-term agreement with Ma'aden of Saudi Arabia covers over 3 million tonnes of DAP a year.[10] With a domestic manufacturing base that is the world's second largest, much of the exposure arrives as price rather than absence, the same effect that owned offshore farmland has elsewhere in this index. The dependence remains, and 40 sits firmly in the structural weakness band.

Access and affordability: 51

Quantitative score 51, no adjustment applied

India's affordability outcome sits mid-band: it reflects how unaffordability is distributed across households, not merely the national average. SOFI 2026 finds 520.1 million people, 35.5 per cent of the population, could not afford a healthy diet in 2025 at PPP USD 4.11 a day.[17] Undernourishment is comparatively contained at 9.8 per cent, 142.5 million people over 2023-25, modestly above the 7.8 per cent SOFI 2026 reports for the world in 2025.[17][18] Child stunting is harder: 35.5 per cent of under-fives are stunted, a figure carried against 2020 in the World Bank's UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Group Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates series from the NFHS-5 survey of 2019-21, "very high" on WHO's own classification, and it pulls the pillar toward the bottom of its band despite adequate aggregate calorie supply.[42] Price volatility is genuine: the food price index has swung from minus 5.02 per cent in October 2025 to 14.72 per cent in November 2013, averaging 5.66 per cent since 2012 and standing at 5.32 per cent most recently.[43] Physical access is the stronger leg: roughly half a million 478,024 fair price shops operate nationally on the NFSA dashboard's live count as at August 2026, and 99.7 per cent of the 163,339 habitations sanctioned under PMGSY-I had all-weather road connections by 31 July 2025.[44][45]

We apply no adjustment. The unaffordability and undernourishment figures already reflect whatever benefit food subsidy programmes deliver, so crediting the National Food Security Act's reach again here would double count. At 51, access sits below every pillar except headroom and upstream dependence: production is sufficient, but a third of the population cannot afford it.

Shock endurance: 74

Quantitative score 70, adjusted up 4 points

India endures in tonnage and strains at the household margin. Central pool rice and wheat stocks stood at 60.40 million tonnes on 1 April 2026 against a buffer requirement of 21.04 million, rice at 38.61 million against 13.58 required and wheat at 21.79 against 7.46.[13][14] Because cereals supply about half of dietary protein, that reserve is a protein buffer rather than a calorie buffer alone.[19] Substitution breadth is wide, and residue-fed smallholder dairy does not stop when a ship stops.

Crisis purchasing power is a genuine but partial strength within this pillar. Foreign exchange reserves stood at USD 725.727 billion in the week ended 13 February 2026, at or near their all-time high, and had fallen to USD 682.35 billion by July 2026 as the Gulf crisis drew them down.[33][46] Against a monthly merchandise import bill of USD 70.84 billion in June 2026, that is roughly 9.6 months of import cover on our derivation, a comfortable margin by the conventional three-month adequacy threshold.[46][47] Fiscal space is adequate rather than ample: the fiscal deficit was 4.40 per cent of GDP in FY2025-26, down from 4.75 per cent the year before, but government debt stood at 81.92 per cent of GDP, elevated relative to India's own pre-pandemic trend.[48][49] Social protection can scale: the National Food Security Act's legal entitlement reaches 81.35 crore people, and it is this same architecture, not a new crisis measure, that gives India room to lean on distribution rather than fiscal firepower alone when a shock hits.[15][16] Crisis purchasing power scores 79; the indicators put the pillar at 70. Fiscal space is the weakest of the three purchasing-power legs and does not fully offset the input-side exposure documented under upstream dependence.

Three weaknesses bind. There is no strategic fertiliser or feedstock reserve: when the Gulf escalated on 28 February 2026, urea prices moved from USD 484 to about USD 652 per tonne within ten days, the government invoked the Essential Commodities Act to prioritise household gas, and the fertiliser industry was assured only 70 per cent of its previous six months' consumption.[10] CRISIL estimates a sustained disruption could cut domestic urea output by 10 to 15 per cent and add INR 200 to 250 billion to the subsidy bill.[11] Affordability is the second: a price shock removes protein from a third of Indian households even with national supply intact.[17] The third is compounding, with the India Meteorological Department cutting its 2026 monsoon forecast to 90 per cent of the 868.6 millimetre long period average, a 60 per cent probability of deficient rainfall and a 92 per cent probability of El Niño, against reservoirs at 41 per cent of capacity.[26][27]

We apply a plus 4 adjustment for documented performance. India delivered free grain to over 800 million people through the pandemic and extended the scheme five years from January 2024 to 81.35 crore beneficiaries, a distribution machine proven at continental scale under stress.[15][16] It also showed, through the wheat export ban of 13 May 2022 and the non-basmati rice ban from July 2023 to 28 September 2024, that it converts export surplus into domestic buffer within days.[31][30] That is real endurance for India, and it works by exporting the shock: India's 20.2 million tonnes of rice exports in FY2024-25 make it by far the largest single supplier to a world rice trade that depends on it for well over a third of traded volume.[36]

Trajectory

India's score moves on inputs and water, not output. Policy direction is correct in intent and thin in execution. ICRIER's recommendations centre on diversifying fertiliser sourcing away from the Gulf towards Africa, Central Asia and Latin America, expanding overseas equity in phosphate and potash through a proposed fund of at least USD 1 billion, and reforming a subsidy regime that spent INR 1.75 lakh crore in 2023-24 and whose distorted price signals drive both nitrogen over-application and leakage estimated near 20 per cent.[10][35] Bringing urea under the Nutrient Based Subsidy scheme, or replacing product subsidies with direct transfers via AgriStack, would cut imports without cutting yields. None of it is funded and legislated, so none earns an adjustment.

Two shifts would improve this outlook: raising nutrient use efficiency, which attacks the upstream pillar at source rather than buying security in concentrated markets, and reversing the pulse area contraction, which would close the one production deficit and improve protein quality at once.[19][9] Two would worsen it: a multi-season Gulf disruption translating the 2026 fertiliser price shock into a yield shock, and continued groundwater drawdown in the north-west, converting India's surplus into a deficit over decades rather than seasons.

Our judgement is that India's protein production is sovereign and its protein system is not. India has done what most large economies have not: grown its own protein at scale. What remains unresolved is that the fertiliser, gas and water underwriting that protein come from four suppliers, one strait and one depleting aquifer system, and no volume of grain in an FCI godown substitutes for a missing tonne of potash three seasons running.

Sources

  1. Daily per capita protein supply (FAO Food Balance Sheets) · Our World in Data (2025 (data 2022))
  2. Daily protein supply from animal and plant-based foods (FAO Food Balance Sheets) · Our World in Data (2025 (data 2022))
  3. Release of Basic Animal Husbandry Statistics 2025 · Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying via Press Information Bureau (2025)
  4. India's animal husbandry sector records gains in milk, eggs, meat and wool (BAHS 2025 figures) · Adda247 Current Affairs (mirror of PIB release) (2025)
  5. India's foodgrain output jumps nearly 8% to 357.73 million tonnes in 2024-25, final estimate · Global Agriculture (Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare data) (2025)
  6. Fish production has increased to 197.75 lakh tonnes in FY 2024-25 · IBEF (Department of Fisheries data) (2026)
  7. India becomes world's number two fish producer, leads inland catches: FAO SOFIA 2026 · Down To Earth (FAO SOFIA 2026) (2026)
  8. India: record-breaking pulse imports in MY2024/25 · AgPulse Analytica (2025)
  9. India's pulse imports are soaring: a warning sign for the global food system · Seed World (2025)
  10. De-risking fertiliser supplies for India amid rising geopolitical risks (policy brief) · ICRIER (Juneja, Nand, Johny and Gulati; FAI and DGCIS data) (2026)
  11. West Asia conflict raises concerns over urea supply in India · Mongabay India (2026)
  12. Strait of Hormuz closure threatens South Asia LNG supply · Wood Mackenzie (2026)
  13. Government foodgrain nearly three times of buffer requirement · The Daily Pioneer (Food Corporation of India data) (2026)
  14. India revised the buffer norms for food grains · FAO GIEWS Food Price Monitoring and Analysis (2015)
  15. Free foodgrains for 81.35 crore beneficiaries for five years: Cabinet decision · Prime Minister's Office, Government of India (2023)
  16. As told to Parliament: free food grains provided to over 800 million beneficiaries · Down To Earth (2024)
  17. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (India figures) · FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, via NextIAS summary (2026)
  18. Prevalence of undernourishment (FAO) · Our World in Data (2025 (data 2023))
  19. Indians are getting protein, but of poor quality: nearly 50% comes from cereals (HCES 2023-24 analysis) · Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) (2025)
  20. India's protein deficiency and the need to address the problem · Observer Research Foundation (2020)
  21. Share of cereals allocated to animal feed (FAO Food Balance Sheets) · Our World in Data (2025 (data 2022))
  22. Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (World Bank / FAO AQUASTAT) · Our World in Data (2025 (data 2022))
  23. Freshwater withdrawals as a share of internal resources (FAO AQUASTAT) · Our World in Data (2025 (data 2022))
  24. Annual Ground Water Quality Report 2024 and Dynamic Ground Water Resource Assessment 2024 · Central Ground Water Board via NextIAS (2025)
  25. India's groundwater crisis deepens amid climate change and over-extraction · EA Water (2025)
  26. IMD revises monsoon forecast to 90% of LPA, 60% chance of deficient rainfall · Down To Earth (India Meteorological Department) (2026)
  27. India's 2026 monsoon forecast at 92%: irrigation gains to buffer output, rainfed risks persist · Global Agriculture (Central Water Commission and NSO data) (2026)
  28. India aquaculture feed market size and share report 2026-2031 · Mordor Intelligence (2026)
  29. India lifts export restrictions on rice · IFPRI / Food Security Portal (2024)
  30. India bans wheat exports due to domestic supply concerns · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2022)
  31. Marine products industry in India: export data and growth · IBEF (MPEDA data) (2026)
  32. India's forex reserves hit record 725.727 billion dollars · NewsOnAir (Reserve Bank of India data) (2026)
  33. Rainfed Farming System Division · Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India (2025)
  34. The future of fertilizers: reducing India's dependence on urea, DAP and potash · Insights on India (Department of Fertilisers data) (2025)
  35. Annual Administrative Report 2024-25 (India's export to world: APEDA products; DGCIS trade data) · Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) (2025)
  36. India can't afford rising import dependence on edible oil: industry body SEA on PM appeal · PSU Watch (Solvent Extractors' Association of India) (2025)
  37. India's vegetable oil imports flat at 16.3 million tonnes in 2024-25 · Business Standard (Solvent Extractors' Association) (2025)
  38. Summer monsoon drying accelerates India's groundwater depletion under climate change · Mishra et al., Earth's Future (American Geophysical Union); IIT Gandhinagar and National Geophysical Research Institute (2024)
  39. Soybean production: SOPA sees India 2025-26 kharif soybean output down 14% on year at 11.03 million tonnes · Informist Media / Business Standard (Soybean Processors Association of India data) (2026)
  40. India is crushing more soybean even as production falls in 2025-26 · Global Agriculture (trade and crush data) (2026)
  41. Prevalence of stunting and wasting, height/weight for age, children under 5 (India) · World Bank World Development Indicators (UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Group Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates) (2024 edition (data 2020))
  42. India food inflation · Trading Economics (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation / Reserve Bank of India Consumer Food Price Index data) (2026)
  43. NFSA Fair Price Shops Dashboard · Department of Food and Public Distribution / NIC (2026)
  44. Celebrating 25th Anniversary: Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana · Press Information Bureau, Government of India (2025)
  45. India foreign exchange reserves · Trading Economics (Reserve Bank of India data) (2026)
  46. India imports · Trading Economics (Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics / Ministry of Commerce data) (2026)
  47. India government debt to GDP · Trading Economics (Reserve Bank of India / IMF data) (2026)
  48. India government budget (fiscal deficit) · Trading Economics (Reserve Bank of India / Ministry of Finance data) (2026)
  49. Inputs: Land Use (data, India records), arable land, cropland, land area equipped for irrigation, agriculture area actually irrigated · FAOSTAT (2026 (data 2000-2024))
  50. Investment: Credit to Agriculture (data, India records), agriculture orientation index for credit, share of total credit, credit value · FAOSTAT (2026 (data 1996-2024))
  51. Population, total (India, 2000 and 2024) · World Bank (SP.POP.TOTL) (2026 (data 2000, 2024))
  52. Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY), AIBP irrigation potential created · Drishti IAS (Ministry of Jal Shakti data) (2024)
  53. Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) 2025, PDMC micro-irrigation coverage · IMPRI Insights (Ministry of Jal Shakti data) (2025 (data 2022-23))

What we could not measure

India's own groundwater assessment reports an extraction stage of 60.4 per cent with most units classed safe, but satellite evidence shows north India lost around 450 cubic kilometres of groundwater between 2002 and 2021 in the same wheat and rice belt that grows its exportable surplus. No FAO-computed protein self-sufficiency ratio exists for India; the figures used here are assembled from separate production and trade series. Child stunting and wasting data still rest on the 2019-21 NFHS-5 survey, with no successor yet published.

Published August 2026 ·How scores are produced