THE GREEN REVOLUTION

India’s second agrarian policy differed greatly from its first. Earlier traditional farming was very self-sufficient but now due to the introduction of the green revolution, many changes undertook in the agricultural sector. They revolutionised the traditional idea of food production by introducing new technology, chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Due to its need for regular irrigation, this method could not be implemented everywhere, hence as a part of the green revolution they introduced an intensive agriculture area programme which aimed at focusing on certain potential areas, and in these areas, they worked the strong farmers that were financially stable. The government bore a big burden of subsidiaries, involving government investment in the second policy unlike the first one. The initial idea of increasing employment and removal of poverty was pushed back and neglected as they were now betting on the strong, with the focus being shifted to increase production and productivity.

The failure of the first agrarian policy of land reforms had led India into a deeper crisis. By the mid-’60s the crisis had manifested into three successful years of drought with the prices of grain being shot up and having to face challenges of food insufficiency from time to time. However, this was not just the condition in India but had become a global cause for worry as well. This was at the peak of the cold war, with rising communalism leading to peasant unrest across many nations. There was a desperation to find a solution and hence when these new high yielding variety seeds were developed by the US-based scientist Norman Borlaug, with the support of the chemical industry, scientific encouragement

And the government backing came to put across the idea that the green revolution was the solution to these problems. Considering the fact that in a vast country like India adoption of such a method could perhaps help to meet the growing requirement of food in the country, there was a switch from land reforms to the green revolution as it was adopted as India’s 2 agrarian policy.

India’s second agrarian policy differed greatly from its first. Earlier traditional farming was very self-sufficient but now due to the introduction of the green revolution, many changes undertook in the agricultural sector. They revolutionised the traditional idea of food production by introducing new technology, chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Due to its need for regular irrigation, this method could not be implemented everywhere, hence as a part of the green revolution they introduced intensive agriculture area programme which aimed at focusing on certain potential areas, and in these areas, they worked the strong farmers that were financially stable. The government bore a big burden of subsidiaries, involving government investment in the second policy unlike the first one. The initial idea of increasing employment and removal of poverty was pushed back and neglected as they were now betting on the strong, with the focus being shifted to increase production and productivity.

Green revolution referred to the so-called improvement in the agricultural produce by the adoption of the new high yielding variety seeds, it was like a package program as its success dependent on modern implementation, chemical fertilizers and pesticides and regular irrigation. For safeguarding the interests of the farmers, two institutions were set up, the agricultural price commission(APC) and the food corporation of India(FCI). The APC’s job was to study the conditions of the produce at the time of sowing before the harvest and provide a minimum support price (MSP)to the farmers and then return at the time of harvest to declare a procurement price which could not be lesser than the minimum support price.FCI then bought the produce from the farmers at this procurement price. Hence it was the adoption of these new agricultural strategies that were implemented as the green revolution.

The MSP is the minimum price guaranteed that acts as a safety net to ensure the protection of farmers in situations when crop prices fall drastically.MSP has become very crucial in the lives of the farmers as they have come to become very dependent on it. Without the presence of a regulated market like the MSP, the traders, money lenders, etc will start to completely dominate the lives of the farmers like that in the times of the British raj. Farmers are upset with the new farm bills as none of them mentions anything about the MSP, even though a few of the ministers have promised MSP, it is hard for them to trust the government due to the lack of a written agreement. According to these farm bills the farmers can now sell their products to any entity including the private cooperation, which puts them under the fear of the corporations exploiting them in the absence of a minimum support price. These bills promote contractual farming, where big corporations can come set up contracts with the farmers, due to the lack of proper education provided to most it would make it rather hard for them to understand such complicated contracts, which may ultimately lead to their manipulation by these cooperations where they might own the land but be completely dominated by the cooperatives. Hence, perhaps anyone who knows the difficulties faced by the farmers will be against these bills.

The green revolution is not environmentally sustainable as even though it achieved dramatic increases in the early stages it eventually bore immense negative effects. It might have transformed India into a high food grain surplus country from a deficit one but it has manifested this at the cost of a long term disaster on the environment. Although the high yielding variety is more productive in terms of grain the biomass stayed the same, hence in the overall input, it would perhaps be less efficient. The extensive use of chemical fertilizers has led to leaching as only a part of it is taken up by the plant and the rest is absorbed by the soil, making it saline, throughout the world soil fertility has started degrading year by year. As these high yielding variety of seeds demand a huge amount of water for irrigation, water has been over-exploited due to which water table has started to sink, and as you go deeper you come in contact with minerals making the water saline and not fit for irrigation but they are pumped into the land. The toxic level in the food chain has increased to such a high level that barely anything produced is fit for human consumption. Moreover, excessive and uncontrolled use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc has degraded the environment by increasing pollution levels in land, water and air. In conclusion, the further you use the green revolution technology the further it will take you towards disaster, agriculture is dependent upon nature regardless of how good your technology is, ultimately saying the man is dependent upon nature.