The Green Revolution and food self-sufficiency

In the mid-1960s India faced a food crisis. Two droughts, in 1965 and 1966, cut grain output; the country depended on food aid, notably wheat shipments from the United States under Public Law 480; and population growth meant demand rose every year. The response was the Green Revolution: high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, developed from Mexican wheat varieties bred by Norman Borlaug and adapted in India under the leadership of M. S. Swaminathan, combined with chemical fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation and price support for farmers.

The results in output were dramatic. Wheat production rose fastest, and Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh — with irrigation, larger farms, credit and roads — became the granary of India. Within a decade India moved from dependence on food aid to self-sufficiency in cereals, and the fear of famine that had haunted the 1940s and 1960s receded. The state supported the package with minimum support prices, procurement by the Food Corporation of India (set up in 1965), and subsidised fertiliser, power and credit.

The costs became clear over time. Regionally, the gains concentrated in irrigated north-western India, while rain-fed and eastern regions benefited less, widening regional gaps. Socially, larger farmers gained more than smallholders and landless labourers, since the package rewarded those with land, water and credit. Ecologically, intensive cultivation depleted groundwater — Punjab's water table fell steadily — degraded soils, and encouraged monoculture of wheat and rice, crowding out pulses, oilseeds and coarse grains that are better for nutrition and soil health.

The Green Revolution is therefore judged in two parts. As a production strategy it succeeded: it ended chronic food shortage and built the stocks that later made the public distribution system possible. As a development strategy it was incomplete: it did not solve rural poverty, and its environmental bill is now due. The current debate — about crop diversification, direct income support, sustainable irrigation and a second green revolution for rain-fed areas — is, in effect, an attempt to keep the first revolution's gains while correcting its imbalances.