National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India Limited (NCCF), a unit of Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Government of India, has launched ‘Bharat Dal’ brand in Tamil Nadu to sell high-quality pulses and rice to consumers at subsidised price. AASSAAN Global Trade has been appointed as the authorised distributor of Bharat Dal.
Currently, 50 mobile vans sell Bharat Dal brand chana dal directly to customers at main locations in towns and villages in each district. The number of mobile outlets will be increased to 100 and new items such as atta, rice, and moong dal will be added soon.
This flagship initiative of NCCF aims to stabilise prices, curb food inflation, and augment domestic availability, in line with the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Minister of Home Affairs, Amit Shah, and Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Piyush Goyal. Bharat Dal is already sold at various places in North India with overwhelming response from the consumers.
As part of the 75th Republic Day celebration, NCCF offered lucky prizes, such as pressure cookers, insulated bottles, and tiffin boxes, to consumers.
In order to make pulses available to consumers at affordable prices, the Central Government is maintaining a buffer stock of five major pulses, namely, chana, tur, urad, moong and masur under the Price Stabilisation Fund (PSF).
The stocks from the buffer are released in the market in a calibrated and targeted manner to control prices. The chana dal, under this arrangement, is also made available to state governments for supplies under their welfare schemes, police, jails, and also for distribution through the retail outlets of state government-controlled cooperatives and corporations.
Pulses are one of the important food crops globally due to their higher protein content. Pulses are an important group of crops in India, which is also responsible for yielding large financial gains by amounting to a large part of the exports. Pulses are the major sources of protein in the diet. Of all categories of people, pulses form an integral part of the Indian diet, providing much-needed protein to the carbohydrate-rich diet. India is the largest producer of pulses in the world. Pulses are 20 to 25 percent protein by weight which is double the protein content of wheat and three times that of rice.