HEAVY LIES THE GRAIN

Punjab’s farmers struggle with the Green Revolution’s toxic legacy

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THIS FEBRUARY MARKED A YEAR since Punjab’s farmers began occupying the highways at Khanauri and Shambhu, along the state’s borders with Haryana. Hundreds of them had set off on their tractors to Delhi, hoping for a repeat of the protests, in 2020–21, against the three controversial farm laws. The farmers were stopped before they could enter Haryana and have camped at the border ever since. Among their key demands is a legal assurance for a minimum support price, or MSP, for all farm produce.

The Green Revolution, which introduced hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and new technologies in the 1960s, helped Punjabi farmers make massive strides in food production. Punjab, which represents less than two percent of India’s geographical area, now produces about sixteen percent of the country’s wheat and eleven percent of its rice. I made several trips to Punjab between 2016 and 2024 to document the challenges confronting the state’s farmers today.

In a 2019 report, the Central Ground Water Board stated that groundwater levels across Punjab were falling at the rate of 49 centimetres per year and warned that the state might run out of groundwater by 2039. Harvinder Singh is a third-generation tube well digger from Tungwali, in Bathinda district. Like everyone else in the profession, Singh keeps a pocket notebook to record the depths at which he strikes water in the villages he works in.