When green revolution seeds with a narrow genetic base were spread rapidly over a vast part of the agricultural land of India and several other developing countries, they displaced a vast diversity of local crops and crop-varieties.
It transformed India to self-reliance from a ship-tomouth existence. But the Green Revolution was not an unmixed blessing. Over the decades which followed, it sowed the seeds of its own destruction, leading to a grave farming crisis in the country.
Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, fondly known as MS Swaminathan, who passed away in Chennai on Thursday, was the driving force behind India's Green Revolution.
The Green Revolution made India self-sufficient in foodgrains production and a leading exporter, but it is a tragic paradox that…
Indian Oil has declared 2023 as the year of strengthening the green resolve. With this theme in target the IOC has taken a resolve to achieve a 20 per cent ethanol blending target throughout the nation by 2025.
The third imbalance has emerged in the overall foodgrains basket between cereal crops on the one hand and pulse crops on the other hand.
The worst of all myths is that it is impossible to grow enough food without the widespread use of pesticides. Pesticides are one of the invaluable inputs in sustaining agricultural production and ushering in the Green Revolution. However, for protecting future generations it is time to dispense with the myth that foods from farming systems that use synthetic pesticides are safe to eat.
The Green Revolution model was never designed to solve the problems of hunger and famine, which is primarily shaped by inequity in access to food. All it gave was more on wheat, which did not even form the staple diet of the majority of Indians at that time.
More than all Rahul Gandhi’s ranting about corruption in the Rafale acquisition, the chowkidar being a chor etc, what hurt the Modi-Shah duo was their making light of farm woes, and a skewed belief that higher minimum support prices (MSPs) would suffice.
Alas, Rahul has displayed few signs of recent successes resulting in his acquiring the maturity required of an aspirant to the Prime Minister’s Office in South Block, for in a major address targeting rural discontent he could come up with nothing more “concrete” than writing off farm loans.
