The ‘convoluted’ economics of pulses in India.

Toor_Dal_Tur_dal

The kharif crop sowing season is on. The ministry of agriculture declares regular data on this front every week. The latest data suggests that as on June 23rd 2017, the area sown under pulses stood at 5.97 lakh hectares. By the same time last year, the area sown under pulses had stood 9.01 lakh hectares. Hence, this year has seen a drop of close to 34 per cent, as far as area sown under pulses is concerned. The question is why? While deciding on how much area to allocate to a particular crop, farmers basically look at the price they received for it, the last time they produced and sold it. On that front, the record of pulses hasn’t looked good in the recent past. Look at Figure 1.

Figure 1: 

lefttop00Figure 1 plots out the inflation and recent deflation (a fall in prices) of pulses over the last few years. In December 2015, the price of pulses had gone up by 49 per cent in comparison to December 2014. This rate of price rise fell in the months to come, but remained in and around 30 per cent. While this made pulses unaffordable for the common man, the indication it sent out to farmers was to plant more pulses because that is where money was to be made. Take a look at Figure 2. It plots the total production of pulses over the years.

Figure 2: 

In 2016-2017, the production of pulses went up by 37 per cent to 22.4 million tonnes. This was the highest production of pulses in India ever. The farmers were expecting a good price for it, but what they got was exactly the opposite. The price of pulses crashed. Take a look at Table 1. It has the details of the prices received for different kind of pulses across different mandis in India.

Table 1: Price Movement for major pulses in Major Domestic Markets (in Rs/gtl) 

As is clear from Table 1, the price of different kinds of pulses except for chickpeas, has fallen in comparison to the last year. Tur dal or pigeon pea has been hit in particular, with prices in March 2017, falling by close to 45 per cent across different mandis.

This is not surprising given that Tur dal production went through the roof this year. Take a look at Figure 3, which plots the production of Tur dal over the years.

Figure 3: 

As can be seen from Figure 4, the production of tur dal in 2016-2017 jumped by close to 80 per cent to 4.6 million tonnes. This massive increase in production was primarily in response to a massive jump in price in 2015-2016. With the massive increase in supply in 2016-2017, the prices of tur in particular, and pulses in general, have crashed.

The central government declares the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for 23 crops, including rice and wheat. While the government declares the MSP for 23 crops, it procures only rice and wheat directly from the farmers, using the Food Corporation of India as well as state procurement agencies. Recently, the government has started to procure pulses as well, in the hopes of being able to offer a reasonable price to farmers.

But given the poor procurement mechanism in place, the price of pulses in many places, fell below its MSP. As a February 2017 report in The Times of India points out in the context of the state: “The MSP for tur dal is Rs 5,050 per quintal, but farmers are getting only Rs 4,200-4,300 per quintal.”

Some sort of stability could have been provided to these falling prices, if the government through its various agencies would have bought pulses at the MSPs it had announced. But given the recent start in procurement of pulses, the government agencies are not in a position to procure much. In 2016-2017, the total procurement of pulses by various government agencies stood at 1.1 million tonnes. This amounted to around 4.9 per cent of the total production of pulses. As the Price Policy for Kharif Crops-The Marketing Season 2017-18 points out: “Procurement of pulses is about 1.1 million tonnes as on 21.03.2017, much higher than earlier years but market prices are still ruling below MSP in some states. Therefore, there is a need for effective involvement of states in procurement of pulses. However, infrastructure of NAFED and SFAC [two of the agencies that procure pulses] needs to be strengthened with administrative and financial support to take up procurement of pulses on a substantial scale throughout the country.”

NAFED has had multiple problems regarding procurement of pulses, from a shortage of gunny bags, to running out of space due to a bumper crop. Having said this, procurement by the government isn’t really a long-term solution. What is needed is the development of a proper market system, where farmers can get the best prices for their crops. This of course, is easier said than done. While, Indian politicians like to flirt with market economics in many areas, the moment it comes to agriculture, they tend to clamp up.

Also, what has not helped is the fact that imports of pulses have continued unabated. Between April 2016 and January 2017, a total of 6.1 million tonnes of pulses had been imported. In 2015-2016, a total of 5.8 million tonnes of pulses had been imported. Hence, more pulses were imported in the first nine months of 2016-2017 than the year before that. The trouble was that in 2016-2017 along with a jump in imports, the production of pulses also went up by 37 per cent. If the import of a commodity is allowed, it’s export should be allowed as well.

While this brought down the price of pulses in the short-term, it sent out the wrong economic signals to farmers who had planted pulses in 2016-2017. And given this, the current financial year has seen the area sown for pulses fall dramatically by more than a one-third, in response to the recent crash in the price of pulses. As far as the plantation of pulses in kharif season goes, there is still some time to go and these numbers can change.

But if they don’t, then the total production of pulses through 2017-2018, will be lower than the bumper crop in 2016-2017. This, of course, will send the prices of pulses up all over again. Indeed, this is worrying for a nation where the consumption of protein is going up. Pulses remain the best source of protein for the vegetarian part of the population.

This pretty much summarises the way the ‘convoluted’ economics of pulses works in India.

The column originally appeared on Equitymaster on June 27, 2017

The ‘convoluted’ economics of pulses in India.

Toor_Dal_Tur_dal

The kharif crop sowing season is on. The ministry of agriculture declares regular data on this front every week. The latest data suggests that as on June 23rd 2017, the area sown under pulses stood at 5.97 lakh hectares. By the same time last year, the area sown under pulses had stood 9.01 lakh hectares. Hence, this year has seen a drop of close to 34 per cent, as far as area sown under pulses is concerned. The question is why? While deciding on how much area to allocate to a particular crop, farmers basically look at the price they received for it, the last time they produced and sold it. On that front, the record of pulses hasn’t looked good in the recent past. Look at Figure 1.

Figure 1: 

lefttop00Figure 1 plots out the inflation and recent deflation (a fall in prices) of pulses over the last few years. In December 2015, the price of pulses had gone up by 49 per cent in comparison to December 2014. This rate of price rise fell in the months to come, but remained in and around 30 per cent. While this made pulses unaffordable for the common man, the indication it sent out to farmers was to plant more pulses because that is where money was to be made. Take a look at Figure 2. It plots the total production of pulses over the years.

Figure 2: 

In 2016-2017, the production of pulses went up by 37 per cent to 22.4 million tonnes. This was the highest production of pulses in India ever. The farmers were expecting a good price for it, but what they got was exactly the opposite. The price of pulses crashed. Take a look at Table 1. It has the details of the prices received for different kind of pulses across different mandis in India.

Table 1: Price Movement for major pulses in Major Domestic Markets (in Rs/gtl) 

As is clear from Table 1, the price of different kinds of pulses except for chickpeas, has fallen in comparison to the last year. Tur dal or pigeon pea has been hit in particular, with prices in March 2017, falling by close to 45 per cent across different mandis.

This is not surprising given that Tur dal production went through the roof this year. Take a look at Figure 3, which plots the production of Tur dal over the years.

Figure 3: 

As can be seen from Figure 4, the production of tur dal in 2016-2017 jumped by close to 80 per cent to 4.6 million tonnes. This massive increase in production was primarily in response to a massive jump in price in 2015-2016. With the massive increase in supply in 2016-2017, the prices of tur in particular, and pulses in general, have crashed.

The central government declares the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for 23 crops, including rice and wheat. While the government declares the MSP for 23 crops, it procures only rice and wheat directly from the farmers, using the Food Corporation of India as well as state procurement agencies. Recently, the government has started to procure pulses as well, in the hopes of being able to offer a reasonable price to farmers.

But given the poor procurement mechanism in place, the price of pulses in many places, fell below its MSP. As a February 2017 report in The Times of India points out in the context of the state: “The MSP for tur dal is Rs 5,050 per quintal, but farmers are getting only Rs 4,200-4,300 per quintal.”

Some sort of stability could have been provided to these falling prices, if the government through its various agencies would have bought pulses at the MSPs it had announced. But given the recent start in procurement of pulses, the government agencies are not in a position to procure much. In 2016-2017, the total procurement of pulses by various government agencies stood at 1.1 million tonnes. This amounted to around 4.9 per cent of the total production of pulses. As the Price Policy for Kharif Crops-The Marketing Season 2017-18 points out: “Procurement of pulses is about 1.1 million tonnes as on 21.03.2017, much higher than earlier years but market prices are still ruling below MSP in some states. Therefore, there is a need for effective involvement of states in procurement of pulses. However, infrastructure of NAFED and SFAC [two of the agencies that procure pulses] needs to be strengthened with administrative and financial support to take up procurement of pulses on a substantial scale throughout the country.”

NAFED has had multiple problems regarding procurement of pulses, from a shortage of gunny bags, to running out of space due to a bumper crop. Having said this, procurement by the government isn’t really a long-term solution. What is needed is the development of a proper market system, where farmers can get the best prices for their crops. This of course, is easier said than done. While, Indian politicians like to flirt with market economics in many areas, the moment it comes to agriculture, they tend to clamp up.

Also, what has not helped is the fact that imports of pulses have continued unabated. Between April 2016 and January 2017, a total of 6.1 million tonnes of pulses had been imported. In 2015-2016, a total of 5.8 million tonnes of pulses had been imported. Hence, more pulses were imported in the first nine months of 2016-2017 than the year before that. The trouble was that in 2016-2017 along with a jump in imports, the production of pulses also went up by 37 per cent. If the import of a commodity is allowed, it’s export should be allowed as well.

While this brought down the price of pulses in the short-term, it sent out the wrong economic signals to farmers who had planted pulses in 2016-2017. And given this, the current financial year has seen the area sown for pulses fall dramatically by more than a one-third, in response to the recent crash in the price of pulses. As far as the plantation of pulses in kharif season goes, there is still some time to go and these numbers can change.

But if they don’t, then the total production of pulses through 2017-2018, will be lower than the bumper crop in 2016-2017. This, of course, will send the prices of pulses up all over again. Indeed, this is worrying for a nation where the consumption of protein is going up. Pulses remain the best source of protein for the vegetarian part of the population.

This pretty much summarises the way the ‘convoluted’ economics of pulses works in India.

The column originally appeared on Equitymaster on June 27, 2017

Of Exams, Luck and the Paradox of Skill

exam

In last week’s column, I wrote about the role that luck, skill and hard work, play in exams. In this column, I plan to get into a little more detail on the issue.

Over the last few years, the media has made it a habit to splash the pictures of toppers of competitive exams as well as board exams (10th and 12th standards). Other than the fact that any sort of success needs to be recognised, such columns make for an inspirational read, particularly in cases where the toppers come from a poor family.

When it comes to competitive exams (from engineering exams to UPSC exams), there are magazines which interview toppers, in the hope of finding out the formula for success, so that their readers can benefit. And typically, most such news stories and interviews have more or less standard reasons being offered for success. These are hard work, family support and following a regular routine.

Of course, topping exams needs hard work and family support. But are these the only reasons? And if that is the case, how come two equally intelligent candidates, putting in the same amount of hard work and having the same level of family support, don’t perform at the same level in any exam? Because there is something known as the paradox of skill at work.

As Michael Mauboussin writes in The Success Equation—Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports and Investing: “As skill improves, performance becomes more consistent, and therefore luck becomes more important… In other words, if everyone gets better at something, luck plays a more important role in determining who wins.”

Mauboussin offers the example of a company. As he writes: “A company can improve its absolute performance, for example but it will remain at a competitive parity if its rivals do the same.” In this situation whether the company does better than its rivals, depends on luck. As Mauboussin writes: “When everyone in business, sports, and investing copies the best practices of others, luck plays a greater role in how well they do.”

How does this apply in the context of exams? Most people prepare for exams these days by going to coaching institutes and if not that, at least using study material provided by coaching institutes. This is typically true more for competitive exams. But it is also true for board as well as BA/BSc/BCom exams in many states.

Given this, a significantly large pool of candidates which has access to the same study material and is also more or less equal on other parameters, faces the paradox of skill. In this situation, who comes out on top or even qualifies in a competitive exam, depends on their luck on the day of the exam.

Let me give you an example from my life. When I first wrote the Common Aptitude Test (CAT) for admission into the IIMs and other MBA colleges, I had prepared decently for the exam. The city that I grew up in did not have a CAT exam centre. So, I had to go to another city to write the exam. I spent a sleepless night in the hotel overnight. And this clearly had an impact on my performance in the exam.

If the examination centre had been in the same city that I grew up in, my performance in the exam would have been significantly better. But this was how the luck of the draw turned out.

The same logic applies to toppers as well. Of course, they need to work hard, but they also need to be lucky on day of the exam. This could mean anything from sleeping well overnight to being able to reach the exam centre on time to not becoming obsessed with a question they are not able to solve.

The media focus on the toppers does injustice to many others who do not come out on top, but are equally intelligent. It’s just that on the day of the exam things didn’t work out as well for them, as they did for the toppers. And there is no second chance.

The column originally appeared on June 28, 2017 in the Bangalore Mirror.

 

 

The Bank Ponzi Scheme

RBI-Logo_8

Every six months the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) publishes a document titled the Financial Stability Report . In the December 2011 report, it pointed out that at 55 per cent, loans to the power sector constituted a major part of the lending to the infrastructure sector. It further said that restructured loans in the power sector were on their way up.

Restructured loans are essentially loans where the borrower has been given a moratorium during which he does not have to repay the principal amount. In some cases, even the interest need not be paid. In some other cases, the tenure of the loan has been increased.

This was nearly five and a half years back, and the first time the RBI admitted that there was a problem in the bank lending to the power sector. In the December 2012 report, the RBI said: “There are also early signs of corporate leverage rising among the several industrial groups with large exposure to infrastructure sectors like power.”

When translated into simple English this basically means that many big industrial groups which had taken on loans to finance power projects had borrowed more money than they would be in a position to repay.

In the years to come by, other sectors along with the power sector also became a part of the RBI commentary on loans which were likely not to be repaid in the future. In the June 2013 report, the central bank said: “Within the industrial sector, a few sub-sectors, namely; Iron & Steel, Textile, Infrastructure, Power generation and Telecommunications; have become a cause of concern.”

In the December 2013 report, the RBI said: “There are five sectors, namely, Infrastructure [of which power is a part], Iron & Steel, Textiles, Aviation and Mining which have high level of stressed advances. At system level, these five sectors together contribute around 24 percent of total advances of scheduled commercial banks, and account for around 51 per cent of their total stressed advances.”

Dear Reader, the point I am trying to make here is that the RBI knew about a crisis brewing in the industrial sector as a whole, and power and steel sector in particular, for a while. In fact, in the June 2015 report, the RBI pointed out: “the debt servicing ability of power generation companies [which are a part of the infrastructure sector] in the near term may continue to remain weak given the high leverage and weak cash flows.”

The funny thing is that while the RBI was putting out these warnings, the banks were simply ignoring them and lending more to these sectors. Between July 2014 and July 2015, banks gave out Rs 86,500 crore, or 71.5 per cent, of the Rs. 1,20,900 crore that they had lent to industry to the two most troubled sectors, namely, power and iron and steel.

What was happening here? The banks were giving new loans to the troubled companies who were not in a position to repay their debt. These new loans were being used by companies to pay off their old loans. A perfect Ponzi scheme if ever there was one. If the banks hadn’t given fresh loans, many of the companies in the power and the iron and steel sectors would have defaulted on their loans.

Hence, the banks gave these companies fresh loans in order to ensure that their loans didn’t turn into bad loans, and so, in the process, they managed to kick the can down the road. In the process, the loans outstanding to these companies grew and if they were not in a position to repay their loans 2-3 years back, there is no way they would be in a position to repay their loan now.

Many of these projects, as Raghuram Rajan put it in a November 2014 speech, “were structured up front with too little equity, sometimes borrowed by the promoter from elsewhere. And some promoters find ways to take out the equity as soon as the project gets going, so there really is no cushion when bad times hit.”

The corporates brought in too little of their own money into the project, and banks ended up over lending. Over lending also happened because many promoters in these sectors were basically crony capitalists close to politicians to whom banks couldn’t say no to.

Over and above this, the steel producers had to face falling steel prices as China dumped steel internationally. In case of power producers, plant load factors (actual electricity being produced as a proportion of total capacity) fell. Along with this, the spot prices of electricity also fell. This did not allow these companies to set high tariffs for power, required for them to generate enough money to repay loans.

All these reasons basically led to the Indian banks ending up in a mess, on the loans it gave to power and iron and steel prices.

The RBI has now put 12 stressed loan cases under the Insolvency Bankruptcy Code, in the hope of recovering bad loans from these companies. Not surprisingly, steel companies dominate the list.

The column originally appeared in the Daily News and Analysis on June 23, 2017.

 

Luck, Skill or Something Else?

exam

This is that time of the year when various examination results get published. And I happen to be in Delhi, where my parents and a bulk of my relatives live. So, I have been listening to a few interesting stories around examination results.

More than the individuals writing the exams, it is interesting to see how their parents react, once the results are out. If a child does well, it is always because of his hard work and the adjustment his or her parents had to make in order to ensure that he or she could totally concentrate on studies.

If a child doesn’t do well, then it is almost always because circumstances beyond their control. Excuses start to spring up. Here are a few that I have heard over the years: He or she wasn’t keeping well through the period of the examination; there was a power cut the night before the Maths exam and he couldn’t do well; the invigilator took away his paper five minutes before the time got over (this seems to be a favourite with parents).

As Robert H. Frank writes in Success and Luck—Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy: “[A] disconnect between evidence and belief is people’s tendency to underestimate good fortune’s role in success, while being too quick to embrace bad luck as an explanation of failure… People want to feel good about themselves, and they’re more likely to enjoy the warm glow of a positive self-image if they think of themselves as highly competent and attribute their failures to events beyond their control.”

But the point is that luck plays a role both ways—in success as well as failure in exams, even though we like to bring only bad luck into the picture. Let me share a few personal examples here even though it has been a long time since I wrote an exam.
When I was doing my MBA, there were two papers, Macroeconomics and Microeconomics, which were deemed to be the toughest of the lot. As luck would have it, I never got around to studying either of the subjects but passed both of them.

How did that happen? Before the Microeconomics exam, a friend took pity and taught me one chapter 30 minutes before the exam. A bulk of the questions came from that chapter. I scored all of them correctly and got more than the required 50 per cent. Hence, luck played a huge role there.

Luck, in the form of bad luck, also played a huge role for many of my friends who had studied everything else but missed out on that particular chapter.

When it came to macroeconomics, due to some organisational hassles, there was a holiday of four days before the exams. And that was enough for me to read large sections of the prescribed text book and pass the exam. Without the holidays, there was no way I could have passed the exam by just studying overnight.

These were two examples from my end. But all of us have such lucky streaks when we write exams over a long period of time from our childhood till our early twenties.
The issue is how should parents approach this. Should they tell their children about the role of luck? Or should they keep harping on the benefits of hard work? Or should they take the middle path, and tell their children that while hard work is important, luck has a huge role to play as well? And if they do this, will the children be able to understand this?

As Frank writes: “Parents who teach their children that luck doesn’t matter may for that every reason be more than likely to raise successful children than parents who tell their children the truth. When the going gets tough, as it inevitably does along almost every career path, someone who’s keenly sensitive to luck’s importance may be more tempted just to sit back and see what happens.” And no parent would want that to happen.

The column was originally published in the Bangalore Mirror/Mumbai Mirror/Pune Mirror on June 21, 2017.