Pearlmillet (Pennisetum glaucum) is the most commonly used of all millets around the world. It performs well under hot and dry climatic conditions with rainfall of between 200-600 mm annually. The paper is attempted with objective to study trend in area, production and productivity of pearlmillet in India, its economic viability in higher productivity state and to examine policy initiatives for its cultivation and productivity enhancement. The results obtained based on the data collated form various published sources indicate that acreage under pearlmillet showed declining trend in western India comprising of Haryana, Gujarat and Maharashtra. The four states including Rajasthan together shared 63.90 per cent of total pearlmillet production in the country. The growth rate of area exhibited negative sign (-1.01%) while production revealed inclining trend (1.45%) during period 1970-2019. The productivity of pearlmillet increased upto 12.36 qtls ha-1 with annual increase of 2.51 per cent (1970-2019) due to genetically improvement, crop management,effective extension oriented activities and growing markets. The recent hike in MSP of pearlmillet and procurement arrangement are favourable policy decisions to support pearlmillet cultivation The decadal analysis reflected that decline in area was not covered by sharp increase in productivity level and caused decline in production of pearlmillet during 1970-80, 1990-2000 and 2010-19. The expenses incurred in production of pearlmillet in higher productivity state i.e. Haryana unveiled increase over period due to increase in prices of purchased inputs, wages of labour, hiring charges of machines etc. The rental value of land alone contributed more than one-third of total cost involved in cultivation of pearlmillet. The harvesting plus threshing constituted the highest share of total cost i.e. varied from 17.33 to 25.43 per cent as harvesting of pearlmillet is still done manually. The value of R-C ratio figured by taking into consideration gross returns and total cost was in the range of 0.86 to 1.01 indicates economic viability of promising pearlmillet hybrids.
The cultivation of viable hybrids and adoption of improved agronomic practices are being incentivised by extending the programs like INSIMP, RADP, Nutri-Farms, Sub-Mission on Nutri-Cereals under NFSM to farmers in pearlmillet growing states. Besides, marketing and value addition interventions are also received attention to increase its consumption. Recently, nutri-rich cultivars of pearlmillet as evolved are being cultivated to address National Agricultural Research System are adopted to address micro-nutrients deficiency. State governments have included millets including pearlmillet in the PDS to address the problem of malnutrition and created assured market for sustainable cultivation of millets in rainfed and marginal lands.