Green Revolution

"In the mid-1960s, rural India passed through a period of rapid technological and social change known as the Green Revolution. It was the transition from basically subsistence peasant farming at a low technological level to expensive commercial farming with modern technology. Five major sociotechnological innovations were basic to the Green Revolution: the development of high-yielding varieties of food grains, especially wheat and rice; land consolidation; private tubewell irrigation; mechanization; and the use of factory fertilizers and pesticides. New sources of energy, electricity and the internal combustion engine, which replaced bullock power, and the financial infrastructure that enabled farmers to buy the new equipment--tractors, tubewells, and threshers--represented a fundamental change. If the Green Revolution is taken in its broadest sense to include much higher educational levels and new employment opportunities in modern occupations, then the economy of Shanti Nagar, whose principal component is still agriculture, has been transformed. This work is the 11th in a series of monographs, all published in the Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, devoted to the description and analysis of life in Shanti Nagar (a pseudonym), a village in the Union Territory of Delhi. Our research is based on holistic fieldwork carried out in the village in 1957-1959 and 1977-1978, dates which make it possible to compare the village just before and after the Green Revolution. The most visible results of the Green Revolution were substantially increased production of the new high-yielding varieties of grain and increased prosperity for farmers, and indeed for almost all villagers. Because of the Green Revolution and associated developments in education and employment, the villagers of Shanti Nagar now lead a modern style of rural life supplemented by urban employment. These changes have also had the effect of enhancing equality, one of India's greatly desired social goals"--T.p. verso.