Unintended legacies of the Green Revolution

The Green Revolution is coming back to bite us in ways that policymakers then could not have bargained for.

- KANIKA DATTA

Now, as farmers block borders around the National Capital region (NCR), the downsides of that signature achievement of the sixties are manifesting themselves in myriad crises - inefficient power supplies, water shortages, deteriorating soil health, air pollution, and an escalating freebie culture.

The Green Revolution was undoubtedly transformational. The programme spared India from famine and the humiliation of its ship-to-mouth existence from Public Law or PL480 wheat shipments from the US. Today, unfortunately, the policies that made it a success are causing unintended perverse outcomes from which central regimes are struggling to extricate themselves. These crises are all products of incentives that were rooted in persuading farmers to grow high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice: Broadly, free power, subsidised fertiliser and a guaranteed minimum support price or MSP for produce sold in official mandis.

Consider the MSP. It started as a market-leavening price for farmers, shielding them from exploitation by private traders. But regular increases at the behest of the powerful farm lobbies have rendered the MSP a maximum support price, with the government emerging as a key buyer, procuring between 33 and 40 per cent of India's annual wheat and rice production (the two key commodities that the government buys; there are MSPs for 22 other crops but government purchases are minimal or non-existent for them). Sometimes, state governments, Madhya Pradesh being a prime example, choose to offer a premium above the MSP, adding to the distortions.