Law of Agriculture

CIA II
Question 1: Write a note on the emergence of the Green Revolution, highlighting how the
conditions then prevalent in India shaped its objectives and strategies. Do you think the
Revolution has achieved its stated objectives? What have been the successes of the
initiative? In what respects has it not succeeded? Give reasons for your response.
Answer :
In the 1960s and 1970s India faced a shortage of essential food crop. The shortage led to huge
imports and dependence on the charity of nations such as United states of America. The Green
Revolution was introduced by the government of India in 1967 to remedy this shortage and
make India self-sufficient in its agricultural production. The Green Revolution was an attempt to
use technology to increase food output. The aim was to ensure that India would have the
potential to grow enough food crops without relying on external sources.
Pre-1967 there farming did not rely on technology or advanced knowledge, agriculture was an
labour intensive occupation and employed primitive techniques. The small land holding patterns
also gave rise to inefficiencies. The farmers suffered losses due to low yields from indigenous
seeds.
The strategy to adopted by the Green revolution was introducing several land reforms,
developing new high yielding varieties of seeds, and advancing technological innovations to
increase efficiency and reduce the dependency on manpower. The main objectives of the Green
Revolution were: increased agricultural production, increased employment opportunities,
reduction of population pressure on land, and reduction in inequalities of income.
The Green Revolution was a success and it achieved most of the set objectives. The Green
Revolution nearly quadrupled the production of rice and wheat. India was no longer dependent
on the foreign grain and food aid shipments from the United States. With increased production,
India was able to attain a level of self-sufficiency. The economic implications of the agricultural
sector during and immediately after the Green Revolution have been extremely positive. The
spurt of growth in the agricultural sector gave rise to a growth in the allied sectors and the
industrial sector. The Green Revolution was responsible for the creation of employment
opportunities not only in the agricultural sector, but also in the industrial and other incidental
sectors.
The Green Revolution did have many shortcomings and it gave rise to some problems. In areas
where there was an increase in mechanisation, there was an increase in unemployment with
fewer people needed to do the jobs.The irrigation schemes introduced by the Green Revolution
required reliable and continuous sources of abundant water, which were expensive. The large
amount of chemical substitutes required by the high-yielding varieties of seeds raised serious
environmental concerns. The Green Revolution created wide regional and interstate disparities
in wealth distribution, leading to pockets of growth and huge concentration of growth in those
areas.

Question 2: What lessons, positive and otherwise, can we draw from agriculture as it existed
prior to Independence?
Answer:
During the colonial era there was a great shift in the agrarian industry. There was attempts to
modernize the sector. New systems of land holding, such as the Zamindari system were
introduced. Most of the reforms were geared towards helping the British. The introduction of a
definite right to private property in land, increased market-oriented (including global) production,
better irrigation and transport facilities, growth of usury capital and flow of money into land, etc,
brought about far-reaching changes in India's agrarian land structure as well as the agrarian
condition. These reforms had both positive and negative results. Sections of peasants benefited
from these changes as productivity increased, primarily due to irrigation facilities. Crops brought
marginal monetary returns. Farmers' children went to schools; were employed in government;
and took to different occupations, some of them moving to towns. At the same time, the
"extraction of surplus" from agriculture through land revenue and price mechanisms and
collection of other cesses led to great misery and indebtedness among certain sections of the
peasantry. It was this new prosperity, on the one hand, and oppression in the hands of the
zamindars and the British government on the other, which made the farmers to join the
nationalist struggle. The peasant movements and campaigns of this period primarily centred
round the demand for retaining a greater share of the agrarian surplus for the cultivators -
whether it was against the zamindar or the landlord or the government. These shortcomings
together led to the world's worst recorded food disaster 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. The self centered policies of the British destroyed the indian agrarian system and caused
immeasurable hardship.