After independence, with the institution of welfare state, the policy orientation towards agriculture changed. Agricultural development was seen a prerequisite of development of the country. While planning to develop the agricultural sector, the Planning Commission has kept four broad objectives:

Increase agricultural production – Earlier, the aim was to bring more land under cultivation but later policy included raising the per hectare yield through intensive application of such agricultural inputs as irrigation, improved seeds, fertilizers, extension services , research and development etc. and thus bring about increased agricultural production.

Increase employment opportunities – Apart from increase in production, the agricultural sector should generate additional employment opportunities and provide scope for increasing the incomes of the poorer sections in our villages through effective backward and forward linkages.

Reduce the pressure of population on land – Another basic objective of planning in the agricultural sector is to reduce the number of people working on land, on the assumption that there are too many people working on land. The surplus labour on land should be shifted to secondary and tertiary sectors, preferably in rural and semi-urban areas.

Reduce inequality of income in the rural sector – The Government should remove the exploitation of tenants, and should distribute surplus land among small and marginal farmers in such a way that there would be some degree of equality and justice in rural areas.

All these objectives along with price stabilization, maintenance of food security and rural development are being followed in all our plans but in practice, agricultural planning has shown over stress on increase in production, viz., the achievement of the first objective.

The Agricultural Policy After Independence Contained Following Initiatives,

1.   Improving the infrastructure through public sector investment. e.g. irrigation infrastructure, rural roads etc.

2.   Effecting, institutional changes such as the abolition of intermediaries imposing of ceilings on land -holdings and distribution of surplus land among the landless. (Land Reforms)

3.   Supply of credit through the cooperative and directed credit through nationalized banks

4.   Ensuring remunerative prices for agricultural commodities (Administered Price Mechanism)

5.   After the food aid crisis in late 1960s, the stepping up the use of fertilizers improved variety of seeds. (Green Revolution)

6.   Establishing an effective agricultural produce marketing system under state control.

In the early years of planning the strategy for employment generation and poverty removal alleviation rested on a series of expectations in regard to institutional changes such as land reforms. Land reforms have been an important pillar in Indian planning experience aiming at agrarian as well as social transformation.

Objectives of Land Reforms

i)    To remove such impediments to increase in agricultural productions arising from the agrarian structure inherited from the past.

ii)   To eliminate all forms of exploitation and social injustice within the agrarian system to provide security for the tiller of soil and assure equality of status and opportunity to all sections of the rural population.

iii) To improve agricultural productivity.

iv) To reduce socio-economic inequality.

Measures included under Land reforms

1.   All the intermediaries were abolished with the abolition of the agricultural revenue system.

2.   Tenancy reforms included Regulation of Rent, Security of Tenure and granting owners ship Rights for Tenants

3.   Reorganization of Agriculture

      Land Consolidation took place under which fragmented plots were consolidated into one plot to improve the productivity.

      Redistribution of land aiming at the improving the efficiency of irrigation by rearranging the plots in a systematic manner.

      Co-operative farming – Through promotion of Cooperative farming, govt. motivated the farmers to pool their resources and employ modern technology.

4.   Systematization of land records - Earlier the ownership rights of land were continuing on verbal basis. Through the systematization of land records, the peasants were given the ownership rights in a modern legal sense. Presently, computerization of land records is going on. For ex- Project Bhoomi.

5.   Imposition of Land ceiling limits and acquiring of surplus land- the maximum amount of land which could be held was fixed and the surplus was acquired by the government to be redistributed among the landless.

6.   Prevention of alienation of tribal land – The legislations were made so as to prevent the purchase of tribal land by the outsiders.

7.   Granting of homstead rights – Rights were given the right to construct a house on the land given for cultivation.

Consequences

The intermediaries were abolished within a few years after independence and the actual tillers accounting for about 40% of the cultivated area become the owners.

Under land ceiling Acts, total area declared surplus was 30-34 million hectares and the area acquired by the govt. was 26.64 million hectare. Ultimately the total land distributed was 21.06 million hectares. In west Bengal, the implementation of land reforms[1] was most effective.

Punjab was the first state to complete land consolidation. Around 33% of the total area has been consolidated & this consolidation was done particularly in Green Revolution areas.

Self cultivation provided a major incentive for investment and the growth of agriculture in large parts of the country. However this reforms did not meet success in the hard-core feudal areas where the erstwhile big landowners continued to own large holdings and lease out land to the sharecroppers.

Imposing ceiling landholdings and distributing the surplus land among the landless witnessed two rounds of land reform legislation - one in the fifties, and another on in early seventies. The state legislatures readily passed the radical legislation imposing a ceiling on landholding. However due to numerous exemptions provided by the law and to the lack of political will the objective of this reform was only partially fulfilled. The law discouraged concentration of land ownership beyond the ceiling level and this prevented the possible dispossession of numerous small and marginal holders which would probably have occurred through a competitive process in the land market in the absence of ceiling on landholdings.

On account of loopholes and also due to the political interference of large landowners, not much surplus land could be acquired by the government for distribution among the landless.

Land reforms have led to increase in agricultural labourers due to mass eviction of the tenants. This also initiated the process of migration which later on was further accelerated by the Green Revolution. This caused profound demographic changes in the place of origin and the place of source. Apart from above, the process has also caused urban congestion.

Agricultural research had made an improvement in traditional farming in every country of the world.  The first agriculture research centre was established by agriculture scientist J.V. Bosingault at Ellses in 1834.  It was a centre, which initiated agriculture research. American Society of Agronomy was established in 1908, which accelerated agricultural development in America.  Indian Society of Agronomy[2] was established in 1950s.

During 1958, for the first time in India wheat production increased from 120 lakh tones to 170 lakh tonnes.  American scientist Dr. William Gaud^[3]termed it as Green Revolution.  During the middle of sixties, Indian Agricultural Scientists developed a number of new high yielding varieties of wheat by processing wheat seeds imported from Mexico.  These varieties were having production potentialities of 60-65 quintals per hectare.  A similar improvement in variety of rice was also observed.  As a result of introducing these high yielding varieties a true Green Revolution was observed in middle of sixties, which ensured India’s self-dependence in foodgrains.  The credit for it goes not only to Nobel Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug^[4]but also to Dr. M.S. Swaminathan and C. Subramanian.

Green Revolution in India gave a rise to increase in productivity of different crops.  Indian Green Revolution is, thus, associated with the use of HYVS (high Yielding Variety Seeds), chemical fertilizers and new techniques, which led to a sharp rise in agriculture production during the middle of 1960s.

During 1950’s, a team of experts sponsored by Ford Foundation was set up to study the food problem in India. This team produced a report titled, ‘Indian Food Crisis and Steps to meet it”. Upon the recommendation of this team, during 1960-61 a programme named ‘Intensive Agriculture District Programme’ (IADP) was introduced in 7 districts of the country.  This programme was aimed to provide credit loans, seeds, fertilizers, equipments etc. to the farmers and to prepare an infrastructure for intensive farming in other areas of the country. 

During 1964-65, second similar programme named ‘Intensive Agriculture Area Programme’ (IAAP) was introduced in other parts of the country.  This programme was centred to a few particular specific crops.  Both the programmes –IADP and IAAP – were related to intensive farming but their operation was limited to traditional varieties of crops.

Due to severe drought in 1965-66 and in 1966-67, government adopted the new agriculture policy using HYVS (High yielding variety seeds) for accelerating agricultural production. Besides using HYVS, this new agriculture policy also included multiple crop programmes.

After 1966 there was a substantial increase in food grains production, especially wheat production, as a result of the new agricultural strategy. However, HYVP was restricted to only five crops-wheat, rice, jowar, bajra and maize. Non-food grains were excluded from the new strategy.

Achievements of Green Revolution

The major achievement of the new strategy is to boost the production of major cereals, viz., wheat and rice. The increase in the rice production from 35 million tonnes in 1960-61 to 90 million tonnes in 1999-2000 and 106.29 million tonnes in 2013-14, signified a breakthrough in this major crop of India. The yield per hectare has also recorded an improvement from a little more than 10.9 quintals in 1960-61 to nearly 23 quintal now.

The production of wheat which stood at 11 million tones in 1960-61 rose to 76 million tones in 1999-2000 and to 95.85 million tones in 2013-14. Part of this increase in wheat production can be attributed to an extension of the area, but the yield per hectare rose from 8.5 quintals to 29 quintals per hectare, signifying 3.5 times rise in the last 40 years.

It is interesting to observe that the ratio of wheat to rice has steadily increased from one-third in 1960-61 (and also in 1950-51) to cover 74 percent in 1990-91 and 84 percent in 1999-2000 but declined to 77 percent in 2001-02.

This means that, even though rice continues to be the most important cereals in the country, wheat is catching up fast.

The successful adoption of the new agricultural technology has led to continuous expansion in area under crops, increase in total production and rise in agricultural productivity. Impressive results have been achieved in wheat, rice, maize, potatoes, etc. The adoption of new technology has also given a boost to agricultural employment because of diverse job opportunities created by multiple cropping and shift towards hired workers. At the same time, there has been displacement of agricultural labour by the extensive use of agricultural machinery.

The new technology and modernization of agriculture have strengthened the linkages between agriculture and industry. Even under traditional agriculture, the forward linkage of agriculture with industry was always strong, since agriculture supplied many of the inputs of the industry; but backward linkage of agriculture to industry – the former using the finished products of the latter was weak. Now, however, agricultural modernization has created a large demand for inputs produced and supplied by industries to agriculture and thus the backward linkage has also become quite strong[5]. In this way the linkage between agriculture and industry has got strengthened.

Problems in Green Revolution Strategy

Green revolution is criticized, firstly because it has been limited in its coverage of crops, land as well as regions. In case of crops, the charge is that it has been largely confined to wheat and rice to some extent. Two major fallouts from such practice (which is also common after paddy cultivation) are (a) rise in mosquitoes leading to high incidence of malaria and (b) rise in respiratory diseases particularly among the old and children. Practically for two months in a year such atmospheric pollution disturbs the rural areas in the form of low-level smog.

But other crops remained practically outside the ambit of the new technology, at least in the first few years. Commercial crops were not covered by the new technology. Most of the HYV seeds have been developed for and used during rabi season leading to seasonal instability in production.

In India, a major part of cultivable land is without proper irrigation facilities and in dry lands this technique has failed to make any breakthrough[6]. The green revolution has been practically limited to Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

The result is that farmers who cultivated these lands recklessly with their latest machinery and used heavy doses of fertilizers and insecticides to maximize their revenue in minimum time without weighing the adverse consequences, are now in a state of shock. To finance their grow-rich projects they borrow heavily from the State agencies as well as private parties, particularly the Arhtias. When these loans run into lakhs of rupees they are unable to pay the interest leave alone the capital. The lenders constantly harass them with all possible threats. Little surprise that the farmers are forced to take the extreme step of ending their lives. There are indications that disproportionate use of fertilizers has led to substantial erosion of natural productivity of the soils.

The high consumption of water by paddy has led to reckless tapping of ground water with the help of tubewells, thus disturbing the water table. Careless use of irrigation facilities has left several areas waterlogged and in this process vast stretches of agricultural land are now permanently submerged, the drainage cost being stupendous. This problem is reaching alarming proportion in states like Punjab.

Excess irrigation has also led to rise of salinity in several areas of Punjab and Haryana.

At the level of policy that the success of green revolution has led to ignorance of dryland areas. But with stagnating output and increasing costs , some people are of the opinion that the green revolution has outlived its utility.

White revolution is associated with a sharp increase in milk production.  During 1964-65, Intensive Cattle Development Programme (ICDP) was introduced in the country in which a package of improved animal husbandry was given to cattle owners for promoting white revolution in the country.  Later on, to accelerate the pace of white revolution, a new programme named ‘Operation Flood’ was introduced in the country.  The Operation Flood Programme, which is the world’s largest integrated dairy development programme, has made considerable progress in achieving its outlined objectives.  During 20013-14, 137.7 million tonnes of milk was produce in the country.  Buffaloes, Cows and Goats contribute 50%, 46% and 4% respectively in total milk production of the country.  India stands first in the world in milk production accounting for about 17% of global milk production .  USA stands second in the world.

NDDB And Operation Flood

Dr. Varghese Kurien is the pioneer of operation flood in India.  All credit for its implementation and successful operation goes to him only.  Operation flood programme was started in 1970 by National Diary Development Board (NDDB).  The programmehas made a sound impact on rural masses and has encouraged them to take up dairying as a subsidiary occupation defying the traditional notion attached to the milk. It has offered a reliable and regular source of income as more than 62% of milk procurement in the Operation Flood areas comes from the marginal, small and landless farmers.  The recommended nutritional requirement of milk, as per recommendation of ICMR is 220 gm per day. Indian level of per capita consumption is very low as compared with that of developed nations.  This level is about 900 gm in USA. 

A disparity regarding per capita milk consumption among various States is also found in India. It is 800 gm in Punjab; 640 gm in Haryana while it is only 20 gm on an average in northeast State of the country.

The milk production increased steadily and it has reached to an estimated level of about 137.7 million tonnes during 2013-14 from about 66 million tonnes in 1995-96.  Per capita milk availability per day was 112 gm in 1970, which went upto the level of 311 gm in 2013-14, due to success of Operation Flood Programmes. This is slightly above the global average.

Green revolution established many landmarks in the production of foodgrains. The next step in the series of agriculture research and development came in operation with the name ‘Yellow Revolution’.  This yellow revolution is associated with the objective of achieving self-dependence in the production of oilseeds. ISOPOM has been launched as a part of Yellow revolution. It is a centrally sponsored scheme under which government provides financial assistance for purchase of inputs and implements. Oilseeds technological mission was introduced for ensuring optimum utilization of production, processing and management technology in oilseed crops.  At present 337 districts of 23 States are associated with oilseed production programme.  Yellow revolution in India ensured remarkable achievements in production of oil seeds and edible oils.