The Legend of the Green
Revolution in India
Once upon a time in India,
there were too many people and their agriculture was too old-fashioned and
burdensome to feed them all. There was
famine in the land, and so many were facing death from starvation that there
were fears the people would soon be feeding on each other.
Then came the Green
Revolution. Modern high-yielding wheat
and rice which only needed a dab of artificial fertiliser and pesticides to
grow just about anywhere. The
foundations of this Revolution lay in crops with short stalks which didn't
collapse under the weight of their great big yield.
Thus, a billion lives were
saved, Indian peasants were freed from the drudgery of farming, and they all
lived happily ever after.
Dwarf wheat hit Indian fields in 1968, and the Revolution
years continued until 1976. During this
time, you would expect to see a noticeable step-change in the yield produced
and the per capita food-grain* production.
But, interestingly, historical records show an overall increasing trend
in both these parameters stretching back to 1952 and extending forward
through to 2000. In fact, the rates of
increase of food-grain yield and production slowed during the Green
Revolution years. This doesn't sound
like much of a 'revolution', or one which saved anyone from starvation.
*Food-grains
include wheat, rice and other cereals.
The Indian Green Revolution actually started in Mexico where
the Rockefeller Foundation's 'Mexican Agricultural Programme' set about
developing crops to help the country's smallholders. Somehow, all the Programme achieved was
high-input crops which enabled Mexico to export wheat (in addition to the
cattle, vegetables, fruit and coffee it was already exporting) while lining the
pockets of commercial farmers. Having
apparently failed in their philanthropic purpose, the dwarf crops were then
taken to India to try again there.
India didn't have too many people, but they were in the
wrong place to service the government's plans.
After over a century under the drain of British colonial rule, India was
trying to rebuild itself into a functional state and saw its future in modern industrial
output: this meant factories, and non-food crops for export. To man its new factories and ward of the
threat that rural poverty might breed communist insurgency, the Indian
government was keen to persuade its peasants off the land and into the cities.
America at that time was only too willing to help India out:
at the height of the Cold War with Russia and the hot war in Vietnam, the last
thing it wanted was a communist problem in India too. Also the war in Vietnam was proving
increasingly unpopular and the American administration needed some good press.
The US version of the Green Revolution involved a
big-is-beautiful, intensified, high-input, highly mechanised, undiversified,
agricultural policy. This Revolution was
shored up not so much by success as by legal rights, biological rights (hybrid
crops) and government subsidies. It
produced huge uniform harvests which could be sold below the production cost on
the global commodity market. Wheat was
one such crop, selling for example at 67% of production cost in 2010. In the mid-1960s, America had grown so much
wheat, it dared not release the excess onto a market whose prices it had
already driven down to rock bottom.
Coincidentally, 1966 and 1967 were consecutive drought years
in India, and yields of all crops were depressed. Life was tough for the peasants there, but no
one was dying from starvation.
However, the opportunity was too good, it seems, for America
to pass by: it announced a famine in India where tens of millions would soon be
starving and the people could soon be feeding on each other. This allowed it to philanthropically offer
its embarrassing wheat mountain to save India, and earn some brownie points.
While the Indian government declared the 'famine' a sham and
reporters searched in vain for starving peasants to write a story about, the
offer of free wheat was too good to miss: it provided an opportunity to lure the land workers into
the factories with the promise of cheap food.
In 1968, the rains returned and a World Bank initiative to
install tube wells in agricultural areas in India began to make an impact: all
crop yields rose. Somehow, the Green
Revolution dwarf wheat, introduced that same year, got the credit, and the
Legend of the Green Revolution was born.
The real-life net effect of India's Green Revolution seems
to be an increase of wheat in the people's diet at the expense of traditional
protein-rich pulses, and the peasants swapped the drudgery of farming for the
drudgery of the factory. No one was
saved from starvation, but in the years to follow at least 3,800 people were
killed and many thousands more suffered a premature death in one incident
alone, when a pesticide factory sited in an urban area of Bhopal exploded.
Indian non-food crops for export have progressed from jute
for America to GM cotton for the global market, while the Green Revolution
high-input, one-size-fits-all crop varieties still dominate the agricultural
thinking.
OUR COMMENT
The Alternative Legend of the
Green Revolution in India
Once upon a time in India,
there were too many people working the land to suit their leader’s plans for
industrial modernisation.
A country far, far away had
developed high-yielding, high-input wheat and rice to save the poor but which
was too expensive for the poor and only made the rich richer, so it was sent to
India to create a Green Revolution there.
Meanwhile, there was a
drought in India. Another country far,
far away, which had foolishly grown too much wheat, used the drought as an
excuse to declare a fictional famine in India so that it could offload its
excess wheat there. The Indian government cunningly accepted the offer so that
it could lure the peasants into its factories with cheap food.
When the drought ended, the
crops went back to normal, and the Green Revolution wheat got the credit. No lives were saved from starvation, but a
lot of Indian peasants ended up in cities and factories and some of them were
killed there.
If this was just ancient history, it wouldn't matter, but
the same narrative of saving the poor and feeding the starving, and the same
political conniving is being used to push GM crops into the world, especially
into developing countries (for example, see [1]).
Data on like-for-like crops show clearly that yields of GM
varieties are no greater than conventional ones, and GM agriculture sustains
only the unsustainable high-input, low-diversity model of agriculture fostered
by America.
In its rush into modern technology, the safety of its people
wasn't in the Indian government's awareness when it allowed a high-risk factory
to operate in an area of high population density, and failed to require
essential maintenance procedures. The health and environmental damage caused by
GM crops and foods won't happen with the horrific suddenness of the Bhopal
explosion, it will be a slow-motion train wreck, but could kill and harm many
more people now and in future generations.
Let's learn the lesson, not the legend.
Background
[1] IS AFRICA BEING BULLIED? (Doc) - GMFS Archive, April 2010
SOURCES:
·
Glenn Davis Stone, January 2019, Commentary:
New histories of the Indian Green Revolution, The Geographical Journal
·
Glen Davis Stone, Historians rethink the
Green Revolution, https://blog.geographydirections.com, 26.02.19
·
Jack Heinemann, et al., 2014, Sustainability
and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest, International
Journal of Agricultural Sustainability
·
Edward Broughton, 2005, The Bhopal disaster
and its aftermath: a review, Environmental Health A global Acces Science
Source
·
Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro, 1984, Five
Past Midnight in Bhopal, ISBN 0-446-53088-3
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