Mushroom subsidy in Kerala

Kerala, VERIFIED 2026-09-13. Four prior passes (including a full Wayback CDX walk of both keralaagriculture.gov.in and shm.kerala.gov.in for the missing 2019-20 circular, page 4 of which is blank in the only known scan) never located an intact document with a mushroom rate. This pass found one by reading a document class none of them tried: SHM Kerala's own **Annual Performance Report**, still live on the department's own site today (not merely Wayback- recovered) at the URL below, HTTP 200, byte-identical to the archived copy.

The report's MIDH section (titled "Progress Report for Financial Year 2022-23, 1. Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture Scheme"), printed pp.22-23, has a table column headed "സബ്സിഡി നിരക്ക്/ഹെ/യൂണിറ്റ് (ലക്ഷം)" ("SUBSIDY RATE / per Ha / per unit, in lakh"), a column header that itself says "subsidy rate", not "cost". Item "IV" is "കൂൺ ഉത്പാദന യൂണിറ്റ്" (Mushroom production unit). The report's own prose narrative, printed p.10, section "4. കൂൺ കൃഷി" (Mushroom cultivation), states the underlying norm and rate explicitly and unambiguously, verbatim (rendered and read as an image at 300 dpi, not from OCR text alone):

"പൊതുമേഖലയിൽ കൂൺ ഉത്പാദന യൂണിറ്റ് സ്ഥാപിക്കുന്നതിനായി യൂണിറ്റൊന്നിന് 20 ലക്ഷം രൂപ എന്ന പരിധിയ്ക്ക് വിധേയമായി പദ്ധതി ചെലവിന്റെ 100 ശതമാനവും സ്വകാര്യമേഖലയിൽ പദ്ധതി ചെലവിന്റെ 40 ശതമാനമായ 8 ലക്ഷം രൂപയും ധനസഹായമായി അനുവദിക്കുന്നു.", "For establishing a mushroom production unit: in the public sector, subject to a LIMIT of ₹20 lakh per unit, 100 PERCENT OF PROJECT COST is sanctioned as financial assistance; in the private sector, 40 PERCENT OF PROJECT COST, i.e. ₹8 lakh, is sanctioned as financial assistance."

"പരിധി" (limit/ceiling) and "ശതമാനം" (percent) are the document's own words for exactly the cost-norm-plus-percentage structure this project models as `basis: 'costNorm'`, this is not a bare rupee figure of unstated character the way the AAP-only Tamil Nadu finding was before its own Policy Note settled it; Kerala's OWN document states, in one sentence, both the cost norm (₹20 lakh) AND that the rupee amounts are percentages of it. The public/private, 100%/40% split is identical in structure to central MIDH's own Annexure V pattern and to Rajasthan's, though the ₹20 lakh production-unit norm itself matches the OLDER MIDH-era figure independently verified for Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (₹20L/₹15L/₹20L), not the current 2025 MIDH edition's ₹30L/₹20L/₹30L, three states now independently corroborate the same older norm set, which strengthens rather than undermines this record (Kerala's own document is dated to FY2022-23, when the older norms were plausibly still what SHM Kerala's own scheme administered, regardless of central MIDH's later revision).

Immediately following the production-unit sentence, the same page and p.11 give the identical structure for the other two mushroom components, equally explicit: Spawn unit (p.10-11): "...കൂൺ വിത്തുൽപാദന യൂണിറ്റ് സ്ഥാപിക്കുന്നതിനായി യൂണിറ്റൊന്നിന് 15 ലക്ഷം രൂപ എന്ന പരിധിയ്ക്ക് വിധേയമായി പദ്ധതി ചെലവിന്റെ 100%-വും സ്വകാര്യമേഖലയിൽ പദ്ധതി ചെലവിന്റെ 40 ശതമാനമായ 6 ലക്ഷം രൂപയും ധനസഹായമായി അനുവദിക്കുന്നു.", ₹15 lakh limit, 100% public / 40% (=₹6 lakh) private. Compost unit (p.11): "...കൂൺ കമ്പോസ്റ്റ് യൂണിറ്റ് സ്ഥാപിക്കുന്നതിനായി യൂണിറ്റൊന്നിന് 20 ലക്ഷം രൂപ എന്ന പരിധിയ്ക്ക് വിധേയമായി പദ്ധതി ചെലവിന്റെ 100 ശതമാനവും സ്വകാര്യമേഖലയിൽ പദ്ധതി ചെലവിന്റെ 40 ശതമാനമായ 8 ലക്ഷം രൂപയും ധനസഹായമായി അനുവദിക്കുന്നു.", ₹20 lakh limit, 100% public / 40% (=₹8 lakh) private, the same norm as the production unit, stated as its own separate sentence, not assumed. All three are corroborated by the p.22-23 table's own target/achievement rows, e.g. the production-unit public-sector row (target 2 units, financial target ₹40.00 lakh = 2 × ₹20 lakh exactly) and a real named beneficiary in the narrative: "...പൊതുമേഖലയിൽ 1 കൂൺ ഉത്പാദന യൂണിറ്റ് സ്ഥാപിക്കുന്നതിനായി തിരുവനന്തപുരം നെട്ടുകൽത്തേരി തുറന്ന ജയിലിന് 20.00 ലക്ഷം രൂപ ധനസഹായം അനുവദിച്ചിട്ടുണ്ട്", ₹20 lakh actually sanctioned to the Open Prison, Nettukaltheri, Thiruvananthapuram, for one public-sector unit in FY2022-23, a real disbursement matching the stated norm exactly, not merely a planning-stage figure.

No mention anywhere in this narrative of a mandatory bank loan, credit-linkage or a back-ended, staged release (contrast MIDH's own ≥₹30 lakh rows and Rajasthan's explicit credit-linked back-ended language), the document frames every mushroom sanction as direct government "ധനസഹായം" (financial assistance) to a named beneficiary, including a public-sector institution (an open prison). `creditLinked`/`backEnded` are recorded false rather than assumed true by analogy to central MIDH, matching this project's standing rule against unevidenced claims.

A SEPARATE, RKVY-funded (state-plan, not central MIDH) route for smaller mushroom units is also printed, on p.28, under its own table headed "Schemes implemented with the financial assistance of Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY)", FY2021-22 section, item 1 "കൂൺകൃഷി" (Mushroom cultivation), same "സബ്സിഡി നിരക്ക്" (subsidy rate) column header, this time printing flat per-unit rupee figures with NO percentage at all (so modelled as `basis: 'perUnit'`, not `costNorm`): "ചെറുകിട കൂൺ നിർമ്മാണ യൂണിറ്റുകൾ" (small-scale mushroom production units) at ₹11,250/unit (486 target, 404 achieved, financial target ₹54.9 lakh, 486 × ₹11,250 ≈ ₹54.68 lakh, matching to within normal rounding) and "ഹൈടെക് മിൽക്കി മഷ്റും യൂണിറ്റ്" (Hi-tech Milky Mushroom unit) at ₹1 lakh/unit (57 target, 22 achieved, financial target ₹57.31 lakh ≈ 57 × ₹1 lakh). This is a genuinely different, smaller-scale, non-MIDH route than the SHM/MIDH table above, administered under the same Mission but funded and rated separately, not a duplicate of the MIDH production-unit row above, so recorded as its own rule rather than folded in. Two further RKVY rows on the same page (a spawn-production unit at ₹2 lakh/unit, and non-mushroom items, minimal processing, vermicompost, training) are NOT modelled here: the ₹2 lakh RKVY spawn figure would duplicate the already-verified MIDH spawn-unit rate at a different, unstated basis (flat vs cost-norm) without the document explaining which route a given beneficiary actually draws from, and the non-mushroom rows are out of this project's scope.

CONTEXT, not modelled: p.19-20 describes a much larger "100 കൂൺ ഗ്രാമങ്ങൾ" (100 Mushroom Villages) cluster initiative, 2-3 panchayats combined into one "Mushroom Village" of 100 small + 2 large production units plus processing/marketing infrastructure, total outlay ₹6812.5 lakh, a lump-sum, multi-component aggregate with no per-unit rate printed (exactly the kind of budgeted-total-without-a-rate finding this project has already hit for Jharkhand and declined to convert into an implied per-unit figure for the same reason). Notably, this initiative's name lines up with "RKVY Mushroom Village 2025-26", named in a live SHM Kerala success-story post fetched today (shm.kerala.gov.in/from-a-small-beginning-to-a-successful- mushroom-entrepreneur/, dated 14 Jul 2026, a Wayanad ST beneficiary's mushroom unit), real evidence this Mission Village lineage is still operating four years later, but that live post names no rate of its own, so it cannot upgrade `status` beyond `'unknown'`: the SPECIFIC rates verified here are FY2022-23's, not reconfirmed current.

`status: 'unknown'` (a FY2022-23 report, not re-confirmed at today's rate); 90-day review (fetched from a live departmental portal, per this project's rule for live-portal sources).