Suniti Kumar Ghosh: His Contribution to Indian Historiography–III

Amit Bhattacharyya

The new Indian state looked to the USA for food ‘aid’, capital goods and technology for building industries from the beginning. Nehru himself went to the USA in October 1949 and appealed to the US government for assistance. Even though with all the huge surplus wheat in their stores, the US imperialists were totally indifferent to the famine conditions in India as the British rulers had been during the Bengal famine in 1943. In fact, as Ghosh observes, they had not only been indifferent, but had also contributed to its intensification (Ghosh, p.21). They sought to take advantage of the extreme distress of the Indian people to extract political and strategic gains.

While conditions in India deteriorated, the Indian government made an urgent request in December 1950 to the USA for a food loan of 2 million tons. After about 6 months, the US government agreed to provide on credit the food grains from its surplus. Very high prices were fixed and India had to pay transport unbelievably inflated. According to L Natarajan, the “overcharge” on account of freight alone, “was closer to $29,000,000 since most of the grain was carried in American ships”. The loan had many political and economic strings attached to them (L. Natarajan, American Shadow over India, pp.100-11. The words quoted are on p.103).

The first Public Law (PL) 480 was adopted by the US Congress in 1954. With its adoption, observed Roger Burbach and Patricia Flynn, “food aid was institutionalized as an arm of US imperialism... PL480, with its ostensibly humanitarian purpose, provided a perfect cloak for US diplomacy” (Agribusiness in the Americas, pp.64,69–emphasis added).

India signed the PL480 agreement with the USA in August 1856. Ghosh argues that the complex manner of repayment for the imports of surplus agricultural produce provided the US government with the lever to exert control over Indian currency, to promote the interests of the subsidiaries of US transnationals and the interests of the Indian big bourgeoisie by granting them loans from the Cooley Fund (named after US Congressman H D Cooley) and to influence all other spheres of life including politics and politicians. As we proceed to discuss ‘Green Revolution’, it is necessary to keep this background in mind.

Imperialist Restructuring of India’s Agricultural System: ‘Green Revolution’: Who Promoted it and Why?

Suniti Kumar Ghosh wrote: “U.S. imperialism had still other plans. Its object was to cast India’s agricultural strategy into a mould that would serve the interests of US transnationals. The aim was to decide for India what to produce and how to produce and to make Indian agriculture an appendage of imperialist capital”.

In 1958, Prime Minister Nehru and the Planning Commission accepted the suggestion of Douglas Ensminger, the Ford Foundation chief in India, that a group of foreign experts might be set up to work with an Indian group to make recommendations about Indian agriculture. Ensminger formed a team headed by Sherman Johnson, then chief economist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research service. In 1959, this team produced the Ford Foundation’s Report on India’s Food Crisis and Steps to Meet It. This report by the Ford Team, as Ghosh points out, prepared the way for the ‘Green Revolution’ in India and the penetration and control of Indian agriculture by US and other transnationals. It strongly criticized the approach of institutional change [that is, change in the property structure] and recommended “a technocratic approach based on price incentives to individual farmers for higher investment in modern inputs, especially chemical fertilizers. Simultaneously, the report recommended the formula, abandoned in 1952 on the grounds of social equity, of an intensive and selective development strategy, involving the concentration of a combination of modern practices–improved seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides–in irrigated areas of the country’’–in about 25 districts of Punjab (which then included Haryana), and parts of U.P., M.P., and Bihar (Frankel, India’s Political Economy, p.180). At this time, giant agricultural corporations of the USA were seeking expanded markets for fertilizers, pesticides etc, especially fertilizers, of which there was a glut in Western markets. The report put the major emphasis on the use of chemical fertilizers.

Ghosh argues that the policy was to ensure imports of chemical fertilizers from the metropolitan countries as well as imports of capital goods and technology for building chemical fertilizer plants in India. These were to be set up by transnational corporations, either by themselves alone or in collaboration with their Indian compradors. Their aim was to use Indian agriculture as a captive market for several agricultural inputs manufactured by them–fertilizers, pesticides, farm machinery and so on.

As noted before, as an experimental measure, under the sponsorship of and with generous financial assistance from the Ford Foundation, the Intensive Agricultural Development Programme (IADP)–also called the “package programme”–was extended to several districts. It concentrated on the rich farmers in irrigated areas in irrigated areas and supplied them with subsidized inputs, price incentives, technical advice and marketing facilities.

The World Bank, as Ghosh notes, was not far behind the US imperialists in decrying institutional changes, in insisting on a technocratic approach and in putting emphasis on the role of imperialist capital in raising imperialist capital in raising agricultural production in underdeveloped countries. The World Bank mission, headed by Bernard R. Bell, which came to India in late 1964, derided the objective of institutional change. It recommended “a reorientation of overall investment priorities toward agriculture; incentive prices at levels high enough to guarantee profitability to individual farmers” using the new technology–the concentration of modern inputs, especially hybrid seeds (bred at the research centres set up by imperialist agencies), fertilizers, pesticides, power and farm machinery in irrigated areas. The package of policies recommended included proposals for relaxation of controls on industrial licensing and an import liberalization programme to stimulate investment in private industries. As part of the strategy for strengthening price incentives in the promotion of export-oriented industries, the mission made its first recommendation for the devaluation of the rupee. It is notable that the World Bank presented to the Indian government its package of economic reforms as a condition of substantial flows of ‘aid’ (Frankel, India’s Political Economy, pp.270-71–emphasis added).

Ghosh avers that the strategy that the U.S. imperialists and the World Bank sought to thrust on India was aimed at tightening the grip of imperialist capital on Indian agriculture. There were, according to him, two strategies open before the Indian ruling classes and their political representatives. One was to carry out radical land reforms, rouse the initiative and enthusiasm of the peasants–the creativity and genius that is in them–and apply science to improve upon the indigenous seeds and the traditional methods and practices, as contemporary New Democratic China had been doing. Such a strategy, as Ghosh rightly stated, “would not discriminate against vast agricultural regions which, during the colonial period, were more neglected that certain other regions, but distribute as far as possible irrigation and credit facilities throughout India and rely on a balanced use of locally available manure and chemical fertilizers and on crop protection by indigenous methods” (p.25). He quotes from an article published in Economic Times which stated:

“China uses one-third of the fertilizer inputs that India does, but still manages to produce about twice as much per unit of land as India does. The reason for China’s success is its optimal mix of manufactured and natural fertilizers. At one level this helps lower costs per unit of output. At another, it helps retain soil fertility by replenishing the soil” (‘Seeds of Growth, Seeds of Controversy’, ET, 5 March, 1991).

The other strategy was to import the Western model, which had developed in conditions entirely different from ours. “It sought to reject all that was positive in our farming system, which had already deteriorated under very adverse conditions during the British rule and needed improvement. However, as Ghosh opines, “the total rejection of the indigenous system based on the experience of our peasants over thousands of years meant throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The new technology that would displace the old one was wholly out of place in Indian conditions–the socio-economic, ecological, and other conditions. (p.26) It was a technology that was not based on the between the old and the new, between tradition and science, but was totally exotic in Indian conditions. It was a technology that. Though locally advertised as an instrument of combating hunger, it was really intended to ensure large profits for TNCs based in imperialist countries. According to S.K. Ghosh, while it would intensify India’s dependence on imperialist capital, it would be a disaster for the country and the people.

As Pat Roy Mooney is his Seeds of the Earth, the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the Kellogg Foundation have played an active role in exporting the ‘green revolution’ to India and other underdeveloped countries. The pivot of this revolution was the HYV seed (Ibid, p.60). It was these foundations that provided financial assistance to the establishment of seed research institutes in different countries. Such research institutions were set up in Mexico, the Philippines, Peru, Colombia, and India (‘International Crops Research Institutes for the Semi-Arid Tropics’ in Hyderabad)–all in underdeveloped Third World Countries. The work of these research centres was coordinated by the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR), which is based in Rome. Robert McNamara, a former member of the Ford Foundation and US War Secretary who earned much notoriety and worldwide condemnation by intensifying US aggression in Vietnam and President of the World Bank, was associated with this scheme. (Mooney, op. cit, pp.21-23).

Hybrid seeds of wheat, rice, maize, potato, etc. were bred in the international research centres controlled by the US capitalists (by crossing the seed genes of plants with which Nature has endowed several underdeveloped countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America). These countries are, in fact, the original homes of an infinite variety of plants, while the gene-poor industrialized countries of the North depend on them for them for the genetic material. Many of these seed genes have been plundered by the imperialist agencies and stored in gene banks and laboratories under their control, like the National Seed Storage Laboratory at Colorado–” the world’s storehouse for many major crops” (Mooney, ibid, pp .3-7, 23). As Mooney states, “almost 90% of all genetic material in in long-term storage is located in Europe is located in Europe and North America” (Ibid, p.31). It has been said that “any person or group, who could successfully achieve private control over a variety of these genetic resources, whether they reside in a centralized cold storage facility or preserved environment, would indeed possess almost infinite political and economic power” (M L Oldfield, The Utilization and Conservation of Genetic Resources: An Economic Analysis, 1977, p.164, cited in Mooney, op. cit, pp.28-29–emphasis added).

In order to understand the purpose behind the ‘green revolution’, one has to know its connection with agri-chemical transnationals. Foreign agencies, according to Ghosh, hold that these seeds are of high-yielding (HYV) varieties; however, actually, the seeds which they sell to the peasants are not so much high-yielding as high-responsive seeds. They respond only to large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, besides adequate water. In the absence of required inputs, there may be extensive crop failures.

Giant transnationals have been attracted to the seed business. They claim monopoly over the HYVs they breed in their laboratories. These include giant agrichemical corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, etc, and Pioneer Hibred International of the USA, Royal Dutch Shell of the UK and the Netherlands, Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz of Switzerland (these two TNCS have merged to form Novartis AG). Ghosh points out that most of the TNCs that breed HYV seeds and dominate the seed business, also dominate fertilizer and pesticide industries, besides oil, pharmaceuticals or other chemicals. They look to profits from several sectors and breed seeds which would boost the sales of fertilizers, pesticides, etc. and serve their chemical interests–not the interests of peasants or consumers.

The new offensive of US imperialism found the economic and political conditions in India in the mid-1960s quite opportune. Due to drought, crops failed in several parts of India in two successive years–1965-66 and 1966-67. Taking advantage of famine conditions in several parts of India, US imperialism used food as a weapon to force its policies on India, as Ghosh observes. The US government insisted on India’s adoption of the ‘green revolution’ strategy as one condition of resumed economic aid. Felix Greene wrote that while countless Indians were starving, food shipments were ordered to be held up to force the Indian government to capitulate to the demands of the oil companies (The Enemy Notes on Imperialism and Revolution). The New York Times (15 May 1966) reported that the US government and the TNCs insisted that India provide easier terms for resumed economic aid.

The GOI also accepted the ‘green revolution’. It would, as it explained, help in mitigating the immediate food crisis to some extent without bringing about radical changes in agrarian relations. The big landowning class and its representatives at the highest positions of power also welcomed this technocratic approach. Ghosh argues that such a policy would lay the spectre of radical changes in landownership and redistribution of land among the poor and landless peasants. This class of big landowners looked forward to thriving with subsidized inputs like fertilizers (imported or locally manufactured in collaboration with the imperialist capital), liberal credit and price incentives. Similarly, the big bourgeoisie hoped to expand and wax fact in collaboration with imperialist capital and by swindling state funds. Thus, as Ghosh avers, the interests of the US and other imperialists and of Indian ruling classes converged.

C Subrahmaniam was then the central finance minister. In its ‘Agricultural Production in the Fourth Five-Year-Plan: Strategy and Programme”, the GOI gave an outline of its new approach. “The new policies”, to quote Frankel, ‘were mainly an amalgam of the dominant strains in foreign expert advice represented by the World Bank, the USAID, and the Ford Foundation then enjoying maximum influence on the thinking of the agricultural minister [C. Subrahamaniam]”.

Thus the “green revolution” was initiated in certain chosen regions of India–Punjab, Haryana, and western UP, which have enjoyed irrigation facilities since colonial days more than any other region of India. And the ‘new agricultural strategy’ was based on the rich landowners. Here, the top 10 to 15 per cent–the landlords and rich peasants–were offered a package of subsidized inputs–exotic HYV seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides–and cheap credit and subsidies to install tube-wells and pumps and buy farm machinery. Frankel writes about loans given to farmers on easy terms: “Rs. 6,500 for a tube-well, repayable over nine years, with only repayment of interest during the first year”. The International Minerals and Chemicals corporation, in association with the Standard Oil Company of California, USA, set up a chemical plant in India, which had an annual turnover of 3 lakh 65 thousand tons [Foreign Affairs, April 1969, p.47]

[To be concluded]

Back to Home Page

Frontier
Vol 57, No. 39, March 23 - 29, 2025