What is Green Revolution ?
The introduction of high-yielding varieties of Indian seeds after 1965 and the increased use of fertilizers and irrigation are known collectively as the Indian Green Revolution.
It provided the Increase in production needed to make India self sufficient in food grains.
The programme was started with the help of the United States based Rockefeller Foundation and was based on high-yielding varieties of wheat, rice and other grains that had been developed In Mexico and in the Philippines. Of the high yielding seeds, wheat produced the best results.
Why Green Revolution ?
The world’s worst recorded food disaster happened in 1943 in British ruled India known as the Bengal Famine. An estimated four million people died of hunger that year alone in Eastern India (that included today’s Bangladesh). The initial theory put forward to explain that catastrophe was that there was an acute shortfall in food production in the area.
However, Indian economist Amartya Sen (recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics, 1998) has established that while food shortage was a contributor to the problem, a more potent factor was the result of hysteria related to World War II which made food supply a low priority for the British rulers. The hysteria was further exploited by Indian traders who hoarded food in order to sell at higher prices.
Nevertheless when the British left India four years later in 1947, India continued to be haunted by memories of the Bengal Famine. It was therefore natural that food security was a paramount item on free India’s agenda. This awareness led, on one hand to the Green Revolution in India and on the other, legislative measures to ensure that businessmen would never again be able to hoard food for reasons of profit.
However, the term “Green Revolution” is applied to the period from 1967 to 1978. Between 1947 and 1967, efforts at achieving food self sufficiency’s were not entirely successful. Efforts until 1967 largely concentrated on expanding the farming areas. But starvation deaths were still being reported in the newspapers.
In a perfect case of Malthusian economics, population was growing at much faster rate than food production. This called for drastic action to increase yield. The action came in the form of Green Revolution. The term “Green Revolution” is a general one that is applied to successful agricultural experiments in many Third world countries. It is not specific to India. But It was most successful in India.
The Basic Strategy of the Green Revolution:
The new policy towards agriculture which began in the mid-1960s, was a departure from the earlier approach in a number of ways. The main features are:
(a) The government policy was now oriented towards changing the technical conditions of production in agriculture rather than introducing land reforms and other changes in the property relations in the country side.
In so far as institutional changes were part of the policy, they were chiefly in the form of spread of State agricultural extension services in order to spread information and provide access to the new technology, establishment of Agricultural Price Commission (now known as Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (ACP) in 1965, establishment of Food Corporation of India (FCI) in the same year and efforts towards ensuring the availability of credit from institutional sources.
(b) The new technology consisted essentially of a package of inputs and practices including seeds of high-yielding varieties, which responded very favorably to fertilizers, irrigation and pesticides.
(c) The emphasis was primarily on increasing the output of food grains (especially wheat and rice). Other crops such as sugarcane, oilseeds, pulses, coarse cereals, jute and cotton were not a part of this policy.
(d) Given the required assured water supply, the new technology was Introduced and employed successfully in areas having irrigation facilities. The strategy was therefore selective in approach. The focus was on selective new areas with assured irrigation water or rainfall for the effective application of this package.
This combined with the higher yield of new wheat seeds in India, led to a regional concentration of the new HYV technology in the irrigated wheat growing region of Northwest India. This region, comprising the states of Punjab, Haryana and West Uttar Pradesh became major success stories of the Green Revolution by early 1970s.
(e) The new strategy also focused on increasing marketed surplus of food grains through price support and procurement operations. It meant a focus on those group of farmers who could produce surplus for sale, over and above their own consumption, Essentially, these were the larger and richer farmers, who had both resources and access to market which encouraged them to adopt the high yield variety (HY package.
Results of the Green Revolution in India:
(a) Statistical results
1. The Green Revolution resulted in a record grain output of 131 million tons in 1978-79.
This established India as one of the world’s biggest agricultural producer. No other country in the world which attempted the Green Revolution recorded such level of success.
India also became an exporter of food grains around that time. 2. Yield per unit of farmland improved by more than 30 per cent between 1947 and 1979 when the Green Revolution was considered to have delivered its goods.
3. The crop area under HYV varieties grew from 7 per cent to 22 per cent of the total cultivated area during the 10 years of the Green Revolution. More than 70 per cent of the wheat crop area, 35 per cent of the rice crop area, 20 percent of the millet and corn crop area used the HYV seeds.
(b) Economic Results of the Green Revolution:
1. Crop areas under high-yield varieties needed more water, more fertilizers, more pesticides and certain other chemicals. This spurred the growth of the local manufacturing sector. Such industrial growth created new jobs and contributed to the country’s GDP.
2. The increase in irrigation created need for new dams to harness monsoon water. The water stored was used to create hydro-electric power. This in turn boosted industrial growth, created Jobs and improved the quality of life of the people in villages.
3. India paid back all the loans it had taken from the World Bank and its affiliates for the purpose of the Green Revolution. This improved India’s credit worthiness in the eyes of the lending agencies.
(c) Sociological Results of the Green Revolution:
The Green Revolution created plenty of Jobs not only for the agricultural workers but also industrial workers by the creation of lateral facilities such as factories, hydro-electric power stations etc.
(d) Political Results of the Green Revolution:
1. India transformed itself from a starving nation to an exporter of food. This earned admiration for India in the cavity of nations, especially in the Third world.
2. The Green Revolution was one factor that made Mrs. Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) and her party the Indian National Congress, a very powerful political force in India.
