What do you understand by Green Revolution? Do you think that a Second Green Revolution is needed to adequately address the agrarian challenge in contemporary India? Examine. (2017, 15 Marks)
The famine threat of 1965-67 and dependence on American food aid drove India to a technology-led strategy for farming. Today the problem is different: incomes, water and nutrition matter more than cereal volume. India does need a second transformation, but not a repeat of the first.
What the Green Revolution was
- Definition: the New Agricultural Strategy of 1966. It combined high-yielding dwarf wheat and rice with assured irrigation, chemical fertiliser, institutional credit, and price support (Agricultural Prices Commission and Food Corporation of India, both 1965).
- Authors: Norman Borlaug‘s Mexican wheats, adapted by M. S. Swaminathan and pushed through by Food Minister C. Subramaniam.
- Outcome: wheat output nearly doubled within five years, concessional imports ended by the early 1970s, and India became a net cereal exporter. The gains came in irrigated north-western cereal districts, and they came at a cost to aquifers and soils.
The contemporary agrarian challenge
- Farm size: the 2015-16 Agriculture Census counts roughly 86% of holdings below two hectares, with an average of 1.08 ha. Agriculture still employs 43% of workers (PLFS 2025) but produces under a fifth of output.
- Diminishing returns in the old heartland: over-drawn aquifers in Punjab and Haryana, and much less grain for each kilogram of fertiliser.
- Crop imbalance: surpluses of rice and wheat alongside imports of pulses and edible oil, and child stunting of 35.5% (NFHS-5).
- Climate risk on the roughly half of cropland that is rain-fed. Income stress shows up as debt and farm suicides.
Why a second revolution is needed, and what it should look like
- Eastern India: Bringing Green Revolution to Eastern India (BGREI, 2010-11, under RKVY) extended irrigation, better seed and improved rice practices to seven states from Assam to eastern Uttar Pradesh. Rice yields rose. Tenancy and incomes barely changed, which shows that institutions must come with seeds.
- Pulses, oilseeds and millets: the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses (₹11,440 crore, 2025-26 to 2030-31) and the National Mission on Edible Oils–Oilseeds target the crops the first revolution neglected.
- Water and climate: “Per Drop More Crop” micro-irrigation, and climate-resilient and genome-edited rice released in 2025.
- Ecology: Swaminathan’s “evergreen revolution”, meaning productivity gains without ecological harm, and the National Mission on Natural Farming (2024).
- Institutions and markets: 10,000 Farmer Producer Organisations for scale, e-NAM, AgriStack for digital records, private and public research, and diversification into livestock, fisheries and horticulture, which already grow faster than crops.
Limits of the idea
- A new round of subsidised inputs would repeat the old damage. Punjab needs to shift out of paddy through crop-neutral procurement, not higher yields.
- Ashutosh Varshney‘s point still holds: rural political power wins price and subsidy transfers more easily than public investment.
- Farm incomes depend finally on moving labour into non-farm jobs, which no farm technology can deliver.
Conclusion
A Second Green Revolution is needed where the first never reached: eastern and rain-fed India, pulses and oilseeds, and farm incomes. It must be ecologically “evergreen” and institution-led, not another input push. For the country as a whole, agricultural renewal alone cannot solve the agrarian challenge without structural change in employment.