Suniti Kumar Ghosh: His Contribution to Indian Historiography–IV

Amit Bhattacharyya

The question that now naturally arises is: How ‘green has been India during the ‘green revolution’ period? Firstly, initially for some years after the application of the costly ‘green revolution’ technique, there was almost a spectacular rise in the production of cereals in the wheat belts of Punjab, Haryana and western UP. Later it spread to rice belts, too. Wherever possible, landlords and rich peasants have made use of subsidized inputs to improve yields of their land. However, soon the growth tapered off and then began to decline. (See: article by M.V. Nadkarni, ‘Crisis of increasing costs in agriculture’, EPW, 24 September 1988).

In December 1988, a note entitled ‘Agricultural Price Policy in India’, released by the Punjab, Haryana and Delhi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) stated: “In the post-Green Revolution period and from the period when price support schemes have been active, there has been a significant fall in production growth rate…the growth came down from 3.1 per cent to 2.5 per cent per annum [which hardly kept pace with population]. Decline in index of per capita production has been even more significant” (Cited in Ghosh, p.36). That, according to Ghosh, means that the rate of production in the pre-Green Revolution period declined after the application of new technology. David Selbourne in his book, An Eye to India, noted that the pre-budget Economic Survey of the Government of India of March 1976 had admitted the failure of the Green Revolution.  

Secondly, according to S.K. Ghosh, the Green Revolution has accentuated the differences between class and class, between region and region. It is the landlords and rich peasants who have mainly taken advantage of the large investments made by the state, ‘loan-melas’, etc.’ and reaped the benefits of this ‘revolution’ to the detriment of the interests of the poor and landless peasants. The benefit from subsidies—open as well as hidden—on account of inputs hardly trickles down to the bulk of the peasantry. The landlords and the rich peasants make large investments in land with generous assistance of the state and have surplus stocks to cereals to sell. The poor and the landless peasants, even lower-middle peasants—the overwhelming majority of the peasantry—have achieved few gains. Rather, their conditions have worsened. In reality, they are net buyers of food at ever-increasing prices; they are also deprived of access to co-operative credit societies and banks for loans for their inability to furnish collaterals (Ghosh, pp.34-35). They have to seek consumption and other loans from village moneylenders at high interest. As S.S.Gill noted, “Many small and marginal holdings [in Punjab] have become unviable. Between 1970-71 and 1980-81, a large number of such holdings have disappeared”. (‘Contradictions of Punjab model of growth and search for an alternative’, EPW, 15 October 1988).

Thirdly, Dipak Lal, in an article has argued on the basis of his study of only three years—1956-57, 1964-65 and 1970-71 that except in West Bengal, the ‘real wages’ of agricultural labourers has increased in all other states of India ( See his article captioned ‘Agricultural Growth, Real Wages and the Rural Poor in India’, EPW, June 1976). RohiniNayyar has made an on-the-spot field study of several villages of UP as also factual analysis of the yearly statistics, money wages and price index for the years 1955-56 to 1973-74 and came to the conclusion that in Western UP, in 1973-74, real wages have not only not increased but decreased to a large extent. (‘Wages of Agricultural labourers in Uttar Pradesh A note’, EPW, November 6, 1976).

Fourthly, Amarjit Chandan has pointed out that as a result of the Green Revolution, many harijan agricultural workers in the Punjab lost their limbs in the thresher machine. At the beginning of the GR, when there was a surge in wheat production, more threshing machines were needed to make atta from wheat. In place of old machines, new machines were introduced, which were low in quality. As a result, accidents took place at intervals that led to mutilation of limbs. Moreover, rich Jat peasants, in their quest for more profit, engaged Harijan peasants for extra time. In order to lure the poor Harijan workers, they provided them opium and hard drinks for free. This addiction to drugs and drinks led to decrease in eye-sights; they were forced to work throughout the day under the blazing Sun and at night in a drunken state like a beast in dim light. Due to physical weakness and poor eyesight, they met with accidents, and mutilation of the limbs and were left virtually unattended. (‘Victims of Green Revolution’, EPW, 23 June, 1979).

Fifthly, Suniti Kumar Ghosh has dealt with the decrease in the nutritional quality of food-grains. He has argued that the much trumpeted self-sufficiency in food, achieved as a result of the ‘green revolution’ is a myth. “The fact is, about 40 per cent of the people or more go to bed or to untimely grave semi-starved. About 65 per cent of our children, who are not victims of infant mortality, are malnourished and underweight”. (Ghosh, p.38).

Ghosh has referred to the Planning Commission’s Ninth Plan (1998-2003) Approach Paper, which has adopted the Lakdawala Committee’s criteria for calculating the number of people below poverty line. It shows that 37 per cent of the total population is under poverty line (ET, 25 December 1996) that is does not get the minimum food required. And this official figure is in all probability an underestimate.

Quite rightly does Ghosh aver that while estimating the growth of or decline in food production under the impact of the ‘green revolution’, one should take into account not only certain cereals but also other food—pulses, fruit, fish and so on. We have seen that it had an adverse effect on the growth rate of pulses, the main protein of the poor in India. The fish which, in the past, grew abundant in the rice fields during the monsoon months and in the tanks and streams—a very valuable food for the people in many regions of India—is killed by the pesticides, used for the protection of imported plant varieties.

That the ‘green revolution’ technique had failed to produce the desired result was acknowledged even by The Wall Street Journal, the mouthpiece of UD monopoly capital, as early as 1978. It stated on the front page of one of its issues: “There isn’t anything left in the Green Revolution’s bag of tricks. The Revolution, in fact, has turned against itself.” (Pat Roy Mooney, op.cit, pp.37-38).

Sixthly, the greatest loss to India and mankind, according to Ghosh, is the loss of genetic diversity caused by the ‘green revolution’. Infinite is the variety which every crop possesses. For instance, the number of rice cultivars was till recently more than one hundred thousand. One feels astonished to know that when Dr. R. H. Richharia, an eminent rice scientist, was director of the Madhya Pradesh Rice Research Institute at Raipur in the nineteen seventies, over 17,000 rice cultivars were collected from one region of Madhya Pradesh—Chhattisgarh—under his guidance (Bharat Dogra, The Life and Work of Dr. R. H. Richharia, p.34). This precious collection of rice cultivars, as Ghosh points out, was taken away to the International Rice Research Institute in Manila and his great work was abruptly ended under pressure of the World Bank. But the ‘high-yielding’ dwarf varieties—IR8, Padma, Jaya, Pankaj and a few more—have widely spread, eliminating the rich genetic diversity. In Bengal, there were a large number of varieties, some of which were of the scented type. They have almost disappeared, yielding place to much inferior exotic varieties—inferior as regards nutritional quality, taste etc.

Ghosh correctly points out that agro-climatic conditions differ from region to region. Even within the same district the conditions of the soil are not the same in different areas. The rice variety that suits one area may not suit another. Till recently, peasants with their intimate knowledge of the soil conditions of their fields and careful selection of seeds, knowledge of which had been handed down from generation to generation, planted the varieties of rice most suitable to their fields.

As Mooney states, “Subsistence farmers in the Third World have been cultivating today’s major food crops for over ten thousand years. By observing the natural process of mutation and by careful seed selection over the centuries, these farmers have developed an astonishing range of crop variability. This diversity has been necessary for survival. No one wheat or rice variety can provide adequate protection against monsoon failures, pests, rusta or blights”. (Mooney, op.cit, pp.4-5). However, with the wide propagation of a very few exotic HYVs, irrespective of agro-climatic conditions, this wonderful genetic diversity, a gift of Nature, is being destroyed and genetic takes its place. Mooney also points out that “this genetic uniformity of a crop amounts to an invitation to destroy that crop” (ibid).

Seventhly, the pesticides kill not only harmful pests but also worms and insects that are good for the soil. Harry Cleaver Jr. points out that “dictated by capitalist competition, agrichemical corporations try to minimize research costs while developing new pesticides in their laboratories and that their products are both under-tested and designed to kill a broad spectrum of pests”. The results, quite naturally, are catastrophic (cited in Ghosh, p.41).

Eighthly, as Ghosh points out the dependence of a few exotic HYVs which require heavy chemical fertilizers and pesticides also leads to the degradation of the soil. The fertility of the soil is eroded through the application of increasing doses of chemicals. The indigenous method of replenishing the fertility of the soil relied on the use of organic fertilizers at almost no cost and rotation of crops. This age-old method has been discarded. Because of the application of heavy doses of chemicals, without which the exotic HYV seeds refuse to respond, soil conditions have deteriorated considerably in many areas.

Ninthly, besides the food that grows with the help of large amounts of chemical inputs contains very harmful residues in them. As B. D. Nag Chaudhuri, a reputed scientist, said, “excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides and pesticides contributes substantially to ecological disturbances…Excessive use of nitrogen fertilizers, for example, can lead to leaching of these excess fertilizers into water bodies. These can be transformed by micro-organisms into nitrites and carcinogens…which can find their way back to men and animals through the food chain…Similarly, pesticides, besides killing unwanted pests, insects and birds or small animals, can enter the human system” (B.D. Nag Chaudhuri, Introduction to Environmental Management, New Delhi, 1983).

Tenthly, the disastrous effect of the ‘green revolution’ was felt in cases of innocent victims afflicted with arsenic poisoning. According to scientists and government officials, the water in eight districts of West Bengal is contaminated with arsenic and about 200,000 people in West Bengal have already exhibited the tell-tale lesions. The Chicago Tribune quoted a New Delhi-based WHO official who had stated that nearly 15 million people of Bangladesh and 30 million people of West Bengal, including Kolkata, are exposed to the risk of arsenic poisoning. Ghosh also refers to the survey conducted by the School of Environmental Studies, Jadavpur University, which reveals that the situation in Bangladesh is much more grim. The groundwater of 34 out of 64 districts of Bangladesh is felt to be arsenic-contaminated and more than 50 million people are at risk. It is the ‘green revolution’ that has given rise to this situation. This ‘revolution’ has required numerous tube-wells to be dug up. The over-exploitation of underground water has led to the dropping of the water level and has brought up the embedded arsenic. Willard Chapel, an environmental expert at the University of Colorado, visited the affected areas and commented: “It is by far the biggest mass poisoning case in the world” (STN, 6 January, 1997; Dipankar Chakraborti, ‘Courting Disaster’, STN, 20 April, 1997, cited in Ghosh, p.44).

Who profited from the ‘green revolution’? According to Pat Roy Mooney, “The Green Revolution had been undeniably profitable for agribusiness. By the sixties (1960s), agricultural enterprises were in need of a new market to maintain their growth. Bilateral and multilateral aid programmes made expansion into the Third World financially possible. Twenty years later, major agrichemical firms have achieved a world-wide distribution system able to market successfully in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Green Revolution was the vehicle that made this possible.

Green Revolution: Phase 2
The second phase of the Green Revolution began in the 1990s with the Indian government signing in the GATT i.e, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. This GATT was conceived as a member of the ‘Holy Trinity’, the tools of world imperialism led by the USA, at Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the other two being the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The GATT was signed by 23 countries including India in 1947. Its object was to ensure the domination of world trade between advanced capitalist countries by breaking down trade and other external trade barriers in the name of free trade.

As Ghosh observes, the “Final Act” of GATT 1993 goes far beyond GATT”s jurisdiction and spells ruin for the people of India and those of other underdeveloped countries. Among other things, the GATT agreement, in conformity with the demands of the agri-chemical TNCs, requires that ‘intellectual property right’ (IPR) be protected and product patents, not merely process patents, be granted to new innovations including drugs, chemicals and plant varieties. Moreover, the life of a patent must be extended to 20 years instead of 7 years as it was then under the Indian Patent Law of 1970.

The “Final Act” which will have a far-reaching impact on the lives of the Indian people, was signed ironically by the government of the ‘Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic’ of India on 15 April 1994. Ghosh draws our attention to the fact that “this act was passed without any reference to the people, without even consulting the Indian parliament and the constituent states of India and even though the chief ministers of Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Rajasthan and West Bengal had asked for it (p.63: emphasis ours). There is no doubt that this “Final Act” ensured the all-pervasive domination of Indian agriculture, like other sectors of Indian economy, by TNCs and their legalized loot.

In the new period, a significant move had been initiated by several state governments—Karnataka, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab etc.—to amend the land ceiling acts and raise the ceiling of landholdings that one may legally own. It is the policy of the ruling classes to encourage TNCs to acquire large plots of land for this purpose, develop horticulture and floriculture for export of their products. Handing over peasant land to capitalists for conversion into plantations (as in the northern districts of West Bengal) or for other purposes is part of the policy. At the beginning of the 21st century, the West Bengal government, in accordance with the advice of Mckinsey & Co—an imperialist body—has taken initiative to turn agricultural land into land for the cultivation of fruits. The imperialist agencies involved in the process are Rallis, Pepsi, Cargill and HLL.

In the Green Revolution belt spread over Punjab, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and other states, a large number of peasants were forced to commit suicide because of very low yields over the years. Sukhpal Singh, in his study of Punjab agriculture, has pointed out that the number of indebted peasants had grown so much that by the year 2000, the total debt of the Punjab peasants reached the figure Rs.5700 crores ( See his article, “Crisis in Punjab Agriculture”, EPW, 3—9 June, 2000).

In such states as Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka, Maharashtra, particularly the Vidarbha regions, many people committed suicide because of debt trap. During the period from May 2004 to April 2006, 2,261 peasants committed suicide (The Telegraph, 6-4-2006). From the Vidarbha cotton belt of Maharashtra, hundreds of peasants reportedly died by committing suicide. The disaster in cotton cultivation, inability to pay off the debts and to get the market price of cotton, the indifference of the government—all these factors were responsible for such a crisis ( Times of India, 01/07/2006).

The crisis in Indian agriculture was aggravated further by the invention of sterile seeds or terminator seeds. A number of foreign agencies had acquired patent rights, viz, Novartis, Delta and Pine Land, Purview Research, Monsanto, Dupont etc. In our country, before the ‘green revolution’ period, peasants could use the same seed in the next year. These new sterile seeds, however, could be used for one year only. These cannot be used next year. So peasants would have to buy wheat, rice, soya or oil seeds every year. Scientists apprehend that in an agricultural country like India, these terminator seeds would spell disaster in the lives of millions of Indian peasants and lead inevitably to suicides.

In the later period, as Ghosh points out, the discovery of G.M. (genetically modified) cotton has aggravated the crisis. In 2002, the European Union made research on G.M. cotton and concluded that its use in the field would contaminate it, produce large weeds which would destroy those jungle plants that maintain ecological balance (‘GM crops are environmental risk: EU Study’, TOI, 26/1/2002).

What are the net effects of the GR? Ghosh has summed it up while he was writing on this theme in 1998.The grip of foreign imperialist agencies on Indian agriculture is tightening. Falling yields of food grains and their souring prices, the ever-rising costs of production, the ecological and environmental damage, the erosion of genetic wealth, the pauperization of large masses of peasants, more hunger and more malnutrition—all these and more are the prices the people are paying for the policies on the Indian’s ruling classes.

Like a true scholar and activist with visions towards the future, Suniti Kumar Ghosh concludes his work with the following words:

“Today, agrarian relations in India are like a tangled skein: a farmer who makes large capital investment in land to produce for the market may employ bonded labour. Because of uneven development, regions differ from one another: even production relations in areas within the same region may vary. It is not uncommon for the same farmer practising the capitalist mode of production in one part of his holding and the feudal mode in another. Reports and books may be of help but it necessary for interested persons and organizations to undertake class analysis in different areas to grasp the complexities and obtain a correct understanding” (see Ghosh, op.cit, page 90).

[Concluded]

Back to Home Page

Frontier
Vol 57, No. 40, March 30 - Apr 5, 2025