“Thanks to the Green Revolution, India is food self-sufficient”. I am tired of reading and listening to variations of this statement of gratitude. What do these journalists even imagine? Do people really believe that before the British colonialized India, Tribes, Rajas and traders were importing food from the rest of the world to feed the populace? Almost every region in the globe was mostly self-sufficient by design for food until a handful of centuries back: especially agricultural powerhouses Iike India and China.
Do they not know that the British impoverished India by looting and imposing famines on us for their imperial conquests using their wartime policies? This need to thank green revolution is absolutely unnecessary – it is steeped in ignorance. I don’t know why we have to pay homage to a “revolution” imported from the west.
I understand that one can’t always provide the entire history of the matter while writing an article. But lack of nuance while thinking about such topics is what results in sweeping generalizations such as this.
To set the record straight : the Green Revolution was nothing more than a band-aid to fix the tempoary setbacks to India food sovereignty caused by the World Wars. It has now been proven that the damages caused the pursuit of land productivity of a handful of variants of a handful of species is harmful for the current and future generations. Our lands are reflective of our diets. The less diverse our meals are, the more monocropping we are going to have in our lands. Monocropping might look impressive to one’s eyes – the views of endless rice fields, bananas, coconuts seem enticing. Economies of scale is the reason monocropping is encouraged. But economies of scale in agriculture is achieved at the expense of existence of several species, human health, soil health, ocean health.
I have nothing against MS Swaminathan. He and his team did what was best during that period of the last century. I am sure he must not have been happy with the depleting carbon content of Indian soils. 5 decades post green revolution, we know that the ramifications of prioritising food production over long-term sustainability of human existence are severe. Now that we have realised this as a society, we need to change course towards more environmental friendly ways of farming.
Regards
Sudhakar