India, with its millions of farmers who provide food security for the country’s vast population, is primed to reform its fertilizer subsidy program. This blog lists the challenges of subsidizing fertilizer use in India and provides solutions to connect subsidies directly to farmers.

This publication discusses the importance of soil nutrients, particularly micronutrients, and the factors that affect their availability in Indian soils. It also explores the reasons for the low use of micronutrients and provides recommendations to optimize their use to increase yields.

This publication discusses the initiatives of the Government of India to increase transparency in the fertilizer distribution system. It also highlights some challenges that persist in the implementation of direct cash transfers in fertilizer and a three-step approach to resolve these challenges.

NITI Aayog engaged MSC in a nationally representative study on DBT in fertilizer. This report provides details of the on-the-ground realities of DBT-F implementation and makes actionable recommendations to improve the DBT-F system further.

This case study discusses a unique experiment of distributing food subsidy in the Nagri block of Ranchi district. The document discusses the learnings and insights from the pilot that governments can use to inform future experimentation in food subsidy delivery.

MSC has been engaged in a nationally representative study on DBT in fertilizer in India, based on a request from NITI Aayog. It identified issues and challenges around the implementation of DBT at the national level.

Over the past few years, there was a continuous effort by the government to streamline the in-kind distribution of fertiliser. Targeting fertiliser subsidies directly to farmers would be a herculean task, but can be attempted by combining several initiatives that the central government and some state governments have undertaken over the past years. This note discusses potential solutions to improve in-kind transfers and suggests few ideas for cash transfer pilots for fertiliser subsidy.

The Indian government initiated DBT in fertiliser to plug leakages and bring transparency in the system. Direct Benefit Transfer in Fertiliser (DBT-F) in its current form is a modified subsidy payment system, where the government pays subsidy to fertiliser companies only after fertiliser retailers have sold fertiliser to farmers or buyers. The subsidy isn’t directly credited to farmers in their bank accounts owing to certain challenges. This note highlights the major barriers to distributing fertiliser subsidy through cash transfers and in-kind transfers.