There is a certain flip-flop mentality at play when it comes to assessing the green revolution. In many popular accounts, in reflections by scientists, or in policy discourses, the green revolution often comes across as all good or all bad. In the context of the prevailing charged debate around the subject, it may be better to assess the green revolution with a historical contextualization that highlights the contingencies and pitfalls of agrarian transformation. Its history reveals that HYVs are no magic wand that can transform agrarian lives for the better anywhere, anytime. A historical analysis also implores us to not to criticize the green revolution for not solving every problem of poverty and underdevelopment.

Tarai was a landmass running along an east-west axis just to the south of the Himalayan ranges and was a part of Himalayan Kumaun ecology. At the stroke of independence, the colonialists had made plans to clear the Tarai and settle it with Indian soldiers returning from World War II. The task of actual clearing fell on the sovereign Indian government as the pressure to settle refugees piled on top of the plan to settle soldiers. With the nation struggling to meet its food requirements a new vision was born to turn the Tarai into a “granary” for the province. Under these contingencies, the Tarai became a landmass wherein new settlers were encouraged to perfect the art of productive agriculture. The post-colonial developmentalist state set up a model state farm to propagate such practices. To the outside developer and modernizer, Tarai came across as empty though, in fact, it was inhabited by a limited number of hill communities and villages. As Tarai was turned into a farming land with settlers from beyond, a local democratic movement for autonomy erupted in the region that called into question the method of land settlement and transformation.

Three types of experiments were carried out in colonial India that made a long-term impact on the future of agrarian modernization in sovereign India. One was the colonial state’s investment in irrigation canals that spurred the rise of three distinct agrarian regions. The agriculture in these regions was supported by a new wave of scientism in colonial policy in the early twentieth century as the colonial state utilized Mendelian science to develop and propagate better varieties of wheat in north India. Towards the end of colonial rule, the colonialists also experimented with a project of intensification wherein select districts were provided concentrated inputs to raise yield. On the margins of colonial patterns, the American missionaries set up an agricultural institute in the United Provinces that experimented with rural uplift through a program of teaching, research, and low-cost innovations. This program did not just showcase an alternate program in rural modernization in the colony, but also served as a precursor to the import of Americanist agrarian ideals into India after independence.

The agricultural practices associated with the green revolution assumed their fullest form in the state of Punjab and are commonly associated with the launch of HYVs in 1964-66. But in reality, Punjab had been undergoing a process of agrarian transformations for a long time. Punjab developed as the subcontinent’s most productive agrarian region during colonial times. Though the partition disrupted the region’s agricultural infrastructures, the state embarked upon a massive phase of rebuilding under the leadership of a handful of bureaucrats with a technocratic vision. These efforts were tailored to build a system of productive agriculture to restore the province’s pre-partition preeminence. The pursuit of productivity trumped every other agenda in Punjab and a spell of regional technocracy took hold. The American experts arriving under the Indo-US treaties and those sent over by the American foundations believed that the modernization of Indian agriculture must start from Punjab. When the HYVs arrived, Punjab was readier than any other region.

Development scholars have honed their theories on notions of state-led programs and projects in which the subjects of development are mere recipients of state bequest under elitist planning and implementation. In contrast, the nationwide community development project launched in India in 1952 under the umbrella of the Indo-US treaty of technological cooperation aspired to build participation in planning and development from below. This bureaucracy-led program envisioned instilling a “will to improve” among communities. The notion of “community” had a wide currency in India at a time when refugees from Pakistan were streaming into the nation after partition and officials were engaged in the conjoined task of organizing refugees and organizing rural populace into productive communities. The program was laced with technocratic principles of communitarian sociology. While the program met the metrics of development in the initial pilots, the nationwide spread of community blocks seemed to languish, calling into question the program’s principles and methods.

In the state of Uttar Pradesh, the political elites tried out land reform as a viable, competing strategy of agrarian modernization. This was an alternate vision of modernization rooted in the freedom movement that put trust in creating a land of healthy peasant proprietorship where efficient, productive cultivators would produce for the market. This reform-based approach came to be personified by a regional peasant leader, Chaudhary Charan Singh. Meanwhile, as part of the Indo-US treaty of 1954, the American land grants helped set up India’s very first agricultural university in the state, the Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University (or UPAU). The new agriculture university showcased a technological approach to enhancement of yield. The central state introduced a new program of productive agriculture around Mexican HYVs in 1964-66 and partnered with the technocrats at UPAU to help facilitate its spread in the state. Charan Singh broke ranks with the Congress party in 1967 whose government at the center was the sponsor of the HYV-program.