Global deals for pulses could marginalise Indian varieties

In Goa’s Mapusa market, you will find a few ladies selling a small white bean called merule. It is larger than a mung bean, but smaller than a pea. This allows it to keep its shape but still turn creamy soft after cooking. It’s a wonderful addition to soups and can also be cooked by itself.

I’m not sure if it’s a distinct pulse, or a variety of cowpea, Vigna unguiculata , which grows well in Goa’s heat. In north India, cowpeas are best known as lobia, white with the distinctive dark spot that gives it its western name, blackeyed peas. It’s quite popular in Punjab, but the west coast is where it is really valued. With names like alsande or chawli, and colours ranging from cream to beige to reddish brown, it is delicious in local dishes like Kerala’s olan , where it’s cooked with ash gourd and coconut milk.

This is an example of the wealth of pulses consumed in India. The recent India-US trade deal saw some back-and-forth over pulses, and with all the uncertainties over Trump’s tariffs, it’s still unclear if India will agree to mass imports of pulses from the US. Pulses such as yellow peas are already coming from places like Canada and Australia, but there seems to be little acknowledgement in these deals that India’s huge consumption of pulses isn’t that of a standardised, easily substitutable commodity — rather, it’s a huge variety of many different pulses.

This has been the historic problem with pulse trading.

Most consumers eat two or three pulses and rarely have interest in others. Bengal loves mung, masoor and chana dal; Tamil Nadu prefers tur and split masoor ; rajma rules the hills of north India, but with many varieties that rarely make it out of the region; Punjab is the stronghold of chickpeas, urad and tur dals. But there are many variations within these, including local specialties like all the varieties of vaal consumed in Gujarat or the super-healthy horsegram recipes of Karnataka.

None of this was a problem when the links between local farmers and consumers were short. Farmers knew that there was assured local demand and families would stock up for the year, carefully rubbing dals with oil or mixing them with dried neem leaves to deter bugs. But as cities expanded, these links got lost. It’s easier to pick up a packet from the supermarket as needed rather than set aside space at home.

Supermarkets have little interest in niche varieties, pushing consumers to simplify purchases with discounted sales on just a few dals. Farmers, meanwhile, with little assured demand, poor minimum support prices for pulses from the government, which prefers to focus on grains and more attractive cash crops like fruits, are stopping planting these.

There’s usually some available for those who really want it. It’s encouraging to note that merule sells at a premium in the market, indicating that some consumers know its worth. Regional farmer support groups are also doing a good job by packaging and selling local pulses online.

But survival needs more awareness about local pulses and how to use them. I can’t think of any Goan restaurants with merule on its menu, or melgor, another delicious local dish made of black chickpeas with tendli gourds. When dal dishes are celebrated, it’s for something like Bukhara’s smoky black dal, where cream and tomatoes frankly drown out all other tastes.

I wish equal praise was heaped on the sukha dal from Mumbai’s National restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall place near Bandra station which manages to cook each grain perfectly soft, and with minimal spicing, so that the flavour of the dal dominates.

Restaurants see little profit in dals and would prefer to sideline them. Commodity traders also want to simplify consumption, which will help them to push imported pulses. It is up to the consumers to resist by insisting on eating and preserving India’s vast variety of pulses.