एमएसपी में वृद्धि — हमने प्रमुख फ़सलों के लिए न्यूनतम समर्थन मूल्य में अभूतपूर्व वृद्धि सुनिश्चित की है, और हम समय-समय पर एमएसपी बढ़ाते रहेंगे।

Start with what the 2024 manifesto actually promises on MSP, because the imported version of this claim — "ensure fair minimum support price" — reads more expansively than the text. Under the heading "Increase in MSP", the manifesto says: "We have ensured unprecedented increase in MSP for major crops, and we will continue to increase MSP from time to time."

That is a commitment to keep raising announced rates. It is not a commitment to a legal guarantee of MSP, which was the central demand of the farm protests, and it is not a commitment about procurement volumes or coverage. Reading it as either would be reading in something the party did not write.

On its own terms, it is being kept. The Ministry of Agriculture confirms that MSPs are fixed for 22 mandated crops — 14 kharif, six rabi and two commercial — on the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices' recommendations, and that since 2018-19 they have been set "with a minimum return of 50 percent over all India weighted average cost of production". The annexed table shows the formula holding: paddy (common) moved from a cost of ₹1,293 and an MSP of ₹1,940 a quintal in 2021-22 to a cost of ₹1,579 and an MSP of ₹2,369 in 2025-26. Ragi went from ₹3,377 to ₹4,886. Bajra from ₹2,250 to ₹2,775. Every year in the table shows an increase.

Two qualifications a reader needs.

The first is what "cost" means in that formula. The ministry's own description lists paid-out costs — hired labour, machine hire, leased-land rent, seeds, fertiliser, irrigation, depreciation, interest on working capital, fuel — "and imputed value of family labour". That is the A2+FL measure. It does not include the imputed rent on a farmer's own land or the interest on owned capital, which is what the C2 measure adds. The Swaminathan Commission's recommendation, which the 50-per-cent formula is popularly identified with, was framed against C2. MSP at 1.5 times A2+FL is a real and substantial floor, and it is a lower number than 1.5 times C2. The ministry does not claim otherwise; the manifesto's word "unprecedented" simply does not engage with the distinction.

The second is who can actually sell at MSP. Between 2022-23 and 2024-25, procurement across all 22 mandated crops came to 3,382.64 lakh tonnes, worth ₹8,43,445.57 crore. Paddy alone was 2,381.19 lakh tonnes and wheat 828.42 lakh tonnes — together 95 per cent of everything bought. Pulses, for which India is a large importer and which the same manifesto promises to become self-reliant in, came to 49.11 lakh tonnes, about 1.5 per cent. Oilseeds and coarse cereals barely register.

The state-level figures make the point sharper. Maharashtra, one of India's largest agricultural states, recorded 42.89 lakh tonnes of paddy procurement and exactly zero wheat. A wheat MSP announced for the country as a whole is worth what the local procurement operation makes it worth, and the ministry says plainly that MSPs are set "for the country as a whole and not region specific".

Partly delivered, mid-term, on a promise the government is meeting as written. Recorded as lacking context because an MSP that rises every year and is realised at scale for two crops is a different thing from a price guarantee, and the manifesto's phrasing does not distinguish them.