Revision summary
Green Revolution packed HYV, fertiliser, pumps, and MSP into irrigated north-west India. Some small owners gained yield and food; landless gained peak wages. Capital cost, moneylender credit, and insecure tenancy transferred gains to owners. Rainfed regions and mechanisation left many marginal households behind. Water-table fall and pesticides are ecological costs the small farmer cannot easily exit.
Model answer
Introduction
The Green Revolution of the 1960s–70s packed high-yielding wheat and rice, chemical fertiliser, tube-wells, and procurement into a few irrigated tracts, especially Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. Small and marginal farmers—those with little land—met that package as both a yield chance and a cost trap.
Body
Gains that some smallholders captured
- Where irrigation, HYV seed, and a nearby mandi existed, even a two-acre household could raise cereal output and eat more securely than under traditional varieties.
- Public procurement at minimum support price in the wheat–rice belt converted surplus into cash, which some small owners used to lease in land or buy a pump.
- Hired work on Green Revolution farms raised peak-season wages for the land-poor, so the landless were not wholly outside the boom.
Why many small and marginal farmers lost relative ground
- The package was capital-using: seed, fertiliser, pesticide, and diesel or electricity for pumps; those without cheap credit paid moneylender rates and entered debt after one failed season.
- Tenants and sharecroppers often financed the inputs while the recorded owner captured the MSP cheque, so tenure insecurity stole the yield gain.
- Regional bias left rainfed smallholders in the east, plateau, and Bundelkhand with traditional yields while the north-west pulled ahead—inequality between classes and between regions.
- Mechanisation (tractors, combine harvesters) cut the days of hired labour even as output rose, so marginal households that lived on wages felt a second squeeze.
- Mono-cropping, falling water tables, and pesticide exposure hit small farmers who cannot easily switch fields or buy tanker water.
Policy lesson
- Later corrections—small-farm credit, Kisan Credit Card, soil-health cards, and eastern India pushes—admit that HYV without water, tenure, and cheap credit is not scale-neutral.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD GR[Green Revolution HYV water fertiliser MSP] --> G[Yield and food security] GR --> C[Capital cost credit tenancy] GR --> R[Irrigated north-west bias] C --> M[Small marginal squeeze] R --> M G --> N[National grain surplus] M --> D[Debt ecology wage loss]
Conclusion
The Green Revolution raised food output and helped some irrigated small owners, but it was not scale-neutral. Credit, tenancy, regional water, and ecology decided whether a marginal farmer gained a surplus or a debt. Food security at the national level and distress at the two-acre well can coexist.
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Discuss how poverty is measured in India. Examine the steps taken to overcome rural poverty in India.
Next question in the 2019 paper (Q6). View answer →
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Did the Green Revolution skip all small farmers?
No. Irrigated small owners in the wheat–rice belt often gained. Tenants and rainfed marginal farmers often did not.
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Was the technology itself biased against small farms?
Seed is divisible; pumps, timely credit, and tenure are not. The bias was in complementary inputs, not only in the gene.
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