Land Reforms, the Green Revolution and Farm Subsidies

1. The agrarian inheritance at Independence

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Colonial legacy

Settlement details (Permanent Settlement, ryotwari, mahalwari) are in colonial-economy-1947.

• Revenue settlements gave the farm surplus to intermediaries. These were zamindars, jagirdars and inamdars. They collected rent from the real tillers but did nothing to improve the land (Class 11, Indian Economy on the Eve of Independence).
• Revenue had to be paid by fixed dates, or the zamindar lost his rights. So zamindars squeezed cultivators for rent "regardless of the economic condition of the cultivators".

• The result was misery and social tension in the villages.

• Subinfeudation and rack-renting. Layers of sub-lessees grew up between the state and the tiller. Each layer took a cut. Rack-renting means charging excessive rent that leaves the tiller almost nothing.

• Absentee landlordism: land owned by people who neither live on it nor farm it, and who lease it out to tenants. Their only interest was rent, so nobody invested in the land.
• Insecure tenants and sharecroppers. They could be evicted at will. They had "neither resources and technology nor incentive to invest" (Class 11, Indian Economy on the Eve of Independence).
• No investment in the land. Agriculture was "starved of investment in terracing, flood-control, drainage and desalinisation of soil". Technology was poor, irrigation scarce, and fertiliser use negligible.
• Commercialisation without prosperity. Some farmers moved from food crops to cash crops (cotton, jute, indigo) for British industry. Yields of cash crops rose in some areas, but farmers did not become better off.
• Stagnation. Total output grew a little only because more land was brought under the plough. Output per hectare stayed low. In the first half of the 20th century, aggregate real output grew by less than 2% a year and per capita output by about 0.5% a year.
• The frame in Class 11, Indian Economy 1950–1990: under colonial rule there was "neither growth nor equity" in agriculture.

The position around 1950

• About 75% of the population depended on agriculture (Class 11, Indian Economy 1950–1990). The colonial-era chapter gives about 85% of people living in villages and 70-75% of the workforce in agriculture.
• Agricultural productivity: output per unit of land or labour. It was very low because of:
• old technology;
• missing infrastructure for most farmers;

• dependence on the monsoon, with very few farmers having irrigation.

• Subsistence farming: farming mainly to feed the household, with little marketable surplus left to sell. This was typical of small holdings using traditional methods.

• Food imports. Low productivity "forced India to import food from the USA". This came under PL-480 (the US law of 1954; India's agreement was signed in 1956). In the drought years 1965-66, grain went almost straight from ship to consumer, the so-called "ship-to-mouth" existence.
• Partition gave West Punjab and its irrigated canal colonies (the surplus wheat and cotton lands) to Pakistan. This made India's food problem worse.

The two-pronged policy answer

Goal	Instrument	Logic
Equity	Land reforms	Change who owns and operates land
Growth	HYV technology (the Green Revolution)	Raise output per hectare

The rest of this note is about the tension between these two goals.

2. Land reforms: rationale, instruments and the constitutional route

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Meaning and logic

• Land reforms: changes in the ownership of landholdings to promote equity. They include abolishing intermediaries, making tillers the owners and fixing ceilings on ownership (Class 11, Indian Economy 1950–1990).
• Land to the tiller: the policy of making cultivators the owners of the land they farm. It worked mainly in Kerala and West Bengal.
• An owner keeps the profit from higher output, so the owner has a reason to invest (wells, levelling, better seed).

• A tenant does not invest, because "it is the landowner who would benefit more from higher output".

• Box 2.5, "Ownership and Incentives" (after Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics, 2004): farmers in the former Soviet Union owned no land. They often packed rotten fruit in the same box as fresh fruit, which spoiled the whole box. They did this because they "neither enjoyed the profits nor suffered the losses". This helps explain poor Soviet farm output despite vast fertile land.

• The condition NCERT attaches: ownership raises investment only "provided sufficient capital was made available" to the tiller. Title alone is not enough; the tiller also needs credit.

Instruments

1. Abolition of intermediaries (section 3).
2. Tenancy reform: rent regulation, security of tenure, ownership for tenants (section 4).
3. Land ceilings and redistribution of surplus land (section 5).
4. Consolidation of scattered plots (section 5).
5. Later, updating and digitising land records (section 6).

• Blueprint: the Kumarappa Committee (Congress Agrarian Reforms Committee, chaired by J.C. Kumarappa, 1949). It recommended abolishing intermediaries, land to the tiller, ceilings and cooperative farming.

The legal and constitutional route

• Land is a State subject: Entry 18, List II (State List), Seventh Schedule. So each state wrote its own laws, and results varied widely.
• Courts struck down early laws. In Kameshwar Singh v. State of Bihar (Patna High Court, 1951), the Bihar Land Reforms Act 1950 was held to violate equality (Art. 14), because compensation rates differed between zamindars.
• Parliament replied with amendments:

Amendment	Year	What it did
First	1951	Added Art. 31A (laws acquiring estates cannot be challenged under fundamental rights), Art. 31B and the Ninth Schedule (laws placed there are shielded from judicial review)
Fourth	1955	Made the adequacy of compensation non-justiciable, so courts could not question the amount
Seventeenth	1964	Widened the definition of "estate" (covering ryotwari lands); required market-value compensation for land within the ceiling held under personal cultivation
44th	1978	Removed property as a fundamental right; it is now a constitutional/legal right under Art. 300A

• I.R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007): laws added to the Ninth Schedule after 24 April 1973 (the date of the Kesavananda Bharati judgment) can be reviewed against the basic structure of the Constitution.
• Voluntary track: Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan (land-gift) movement began at Pochampally (now Telangana) in 1951. It grew into Gramdan (gift of whole villages). Much of the donated land was poor or disputed, and only part of it was distributed.

3. Abolition of intermediaries

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What was done

• Steps began "just a year after independence" (Class 11, Indian Economy 1950–1990).
• Madras Estates (Abolition and Conversion into Ryotwari) Act 1948 came first.

• Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states followed from 1950.

• Compensation was paid to zamindars, unlike the Soviet-style takeover that Nehru rejected for a democracy.

• By the 1950s and early 1960s, intermediaries were largely abolished across India.
• Abolition of intermediaries: the post-1947 removal of rent-collecting zamindars and jagirdars. It brought about 200 lakh (2 crore) tenants into direct contact with the government.

Gains

• Freedom from exploitation. Tenants now paid revenue to the state, not rent to a zamindar.
• Incentive to produce. "The ownership conferred on tenants gave them the incentive to increase output and this contributed to growth in agriculture" (Class 11, Indian Economy 1950–1990).
• A new middle peasantry. A class of owner-cultivators emerged, such as Jats in Punjab-Haryana and western UP and Kammas and Reddys in coastal Andhra. They had land and some savings, so they were the first to adopt the Green Revolution package (sections 7-8).

Limits (NCERT)

• Loopholes let zamindars keep land. Former zamindars kept "large areas of land by making use of some loopholes".
• Laws let them "resume" land for personal cultivation.

• Their home-farm lands (sir and khudkasht) were exempt.

• Evictions. Tenants "were evicted and the landowners claimed to be self-cultivators". The fear of reform itself caused evictions before laws came into force.

• The poorest gained nothing. Even where tillers got ownership, "the poorest of the agricultural labourers (such as sharecroppers and landless labourers) did not benefit".
• So "the goal of equity was not fully served".

Verdict

• Abolition was the most complete of all land reform measures. The conclusion of Class 11, Indian Economy 1950–1990 is that land reforms "resulted in abolition of the hated zamindari system".
• But it changed the relationship between the state and the occupancy tenant. It did little for the people at the very bottom of the village.

4. Tenancy reform, sharecropping and land leasing

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Forms of tenancy

• Tenancy: an arrangement where a cultivator farms land owned by someone else, in return for rent. Rent can take three forms: 1. a fixed cash rent; 2. a fixed rent in kind (a set quantity of grain); 3. a crop share.

• Sharecropping (bataidari, or bargadari in Bengal): the tenant pays a share of the crop (often half) as rent.

• Why it is inefficient (the Marshallian argument, after Alfred Marshall): the tenant keeps only part of any extra output but bears the full cost of extra effort and inputs, so the tenant under-invests.
• Example: with a 50:50 share, a ₹100 fertiliser dose that raises output by ₹150 gives the tenant only ₹75. The dose is not worth it for the tenant, even though it pays for the economy as a whole.

The three planks of tenancy reform

Tenancy reform: measures to regulate rents, give tenants security of tenure and confer ownership rights on them.

1. Regulation of rent. The First and Second Plans suggested a ceiling of one-fourth to one-fifth of gross produce.
2. Security of tenure: protection of tenants against arbitrary eviction, so that they have a reason to invest in the land.
3. Ownership rights for tenants, with landlords allowed to resume limited land for personal cultivation.

What actually happened

• "Voluntary surrenders". Landlords pressured tenants into formally "surrendering" their land, and many were then evicted.
• Concealed tenancy: oral, unrecorded leasing that tenancy restrictions push underground. The tenant has no security and no access to institutional credit or insurance.
• Because many states ban or restrict leasing, owners let land only informally.
• Unrecorded tenants are left out of bank credit (Kisan Credit Card), crop insurance, disaster relief and transfers linked to the landowner, such as PM-KISAN (₹6,000 a year, from 2019), which goes to the owner, not the tiller.

Successes

• Kerala: the Land Reforms (Amendment) Act 1969 (in force from 1 January 1970) abolished tenancy. It gave ownership to tenants and rights over house sites to hutment dwellers (kudikidappukars).
• West Bengal: Operation Barga (1978). Sharecroppers (bargadars) were registered through village camps. They got heritable tenure (it passes to their heirs) and a fixed crop share. Registration shifted power towards the sharecropper without transferring title.

The new approach: legalise leasing, do not ban it

• Land leasing: legal renting of farmland for a fixed period. When liberalised with safeguards, it can raise efficiency and give tenants access to credit and support.
• NITI Aayog's Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act 2016 (drafted by the committee under T. Haque):
• The owner's title stays secure, and the land returns when the lease ends.

• The tenant gets recognition, so the tenant can get credit, insurance and relief.

• Andhra Pradesh's Land Licensed Cultivators Act 2011 gave "loan eligibility cards" to tenants without touching ownership.

• State adoption has been patchy. Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have enacted leasing laws on these lines, and others have moved partly (verify current).

5. Land ceilings, holding size, fragmentation and consolidation

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Land ceilings

• Land ceiling: a limit on the maximum land an individual may own, to break the concentration of ownership. Land above the ceiling is declared surplus and redistributed to the landless.
• First round (1950s-60s):
• the unit was the individual, so a family could split land among its members;
• limits were high;

• there were many exemptions (orchards, "efficient" farms, religious and charitable trusts).

• 1972 national guidelines:

• the unit became the family (husband, wife and minor children);
• 10-18 acres of land irrigated for two crops;
• 27 acres of land irrigated for a single crop;

• 54 acres of dry land.

• Hurdles (NCERT):

• Big landlords challenged the laws in court, delaying them.
• They used the delay to register land in the names of close relatives. These fictitious or proxy transfers are called benami transfers.

• They exploited "a lot of loopholes" in the laws.

• Result. Only a small share of farmland was ever declared surplus, and less still was distributed. DoLR figures put the distributed area at roughly 50 lakh acres out of about 67 lakh acres declared surplus (verify current).

Structure of holdings

• Operational land holding: all land used wholly or partly for farming and operated as one technical unit by one person, alone or with others, regardless of who owns it.
• An ownership holding is land owned.

• A tenant who owns nothing but leases in 2 ha has an operational holding of 2 ha.

• Agriculture Census (quinquennial, i.e. every five years) size classes:

Class	Size	Note
Marginal holding	below 1 ha	Largest category by number
Small holding	1-2 ha
Semi-medium holding	2-4 ha
Medium holding	4-10 ha
Large holding	10 ha and above

• Agriculture Census 2015-16:
• small and marginal holdings were about 86% of all holdings but operated only about 47% of the area;
• large holdings were under 1% of holdings but operated about 9% of the area;
• average holding size was about 1.08 ha, down from 2.28 ha in 1970-71.
• Update with the 11th Agriculture Census (2021-22) once final results are out (verify current).

Fragmentation and consolidation

• Fragmentation of land holdings: farmland divided into smaller and more scattered plots through inheritance and transfers. Tiny, separate plots waste time on travel, lose land to boundaries, and rule out tubewells and tractors.

• Causes: inheritance laws that divide land equally among heirs, and population pressure with no exit from farming.

• Consolidation of land holdings (chakbandi): merging a farmer's scattered plots into one or a few compact blocks by exchange.

• It worked in Punjab, Haryana and western UP (for example, under the East Punjab Holdings (Consolidation and Prevention of Fragmentation) Act 1948).
• Compact blocks made tubewells and mechanisation viable, so consolidation prepared the ground for the Green Revolution.

• It was largely absent in the east and south, where records were poor and holdings tiny.

• Cooperative farming: farmers pool land and resources for joint cultivation but keep ownership, and share produce in proportion to what they contributed. The Nagpur Congress resolution (1959) backed it, but it met strong peasant opposition. It became the road not taken.

6. Land reforms appraised, and the unfinished agenda of records and titles

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Where reform worked, and why

• Successes:
• Kerala and West Bengal: "these states had governments committed to the policy of land to the tiller" (Class 11, Indian Economy 1950–1990).

• Jammu and Kashmir: Big Landed Estates Abolition Act 1950. It set a ceiling of about 22.75 acres and transferred surplus land to tillers without compensation.

• Why reform failed elsewhere:

• Landlord-dominated legislatures that wrote loopholes into the laws;
• weak political will: land is a State subject, and ruling coalitions depended on rural elites;
• poor land records, so tenants could not prove cultivation;

• bureaucratic and judicial delay, which gave time for benami transfers and evictions.

• Net balance:

Achieved	Not achieved
Zamindari and intermediaries ended	Little land redistributed under ceilings
~200 lakh tenants linked to the state	Sharecroppers and landless largely left out
Owner-cultivator middle peasantry	Tenancy pushed underground

• "Vast inequality in landholding continues to this day" (Class 11, Indian Economy 1950–1990).
• Group discussion hook (Class 11, Indian Economy on the Eve of Independence): "Has the zamindari system really been abolished in India?"

Records and titles: the unfinished agenda

• Presumptive titling: registered sale deeds and records only presume ownership, and that presumption can be challenged in court.
• The Registration Act 1908 registers deeds (transactions), not titles. So ownership always stays open to dispute.

• Land and property disputes make up a large share of civil court cases.

• Conclusive land titling: the state guarantees the title and pays compensation for errors (the Torrens model, from Australia).

• NITI Aayog has circulated a draft Model Conclusive Land Titling Act.

• Rajasthan's Urban Land (Certification of Titles) Act 2016 was the first state law of this kind, for urban land.

• Land records digitisation: computerising and linking land records, cadastral maps (village plot maps) and registration. It reduces disputes and fraud and makes conclusive titling possible.

Programme	Key facts
DILRMP (DoLR)	Began as NLRMP (2008); revamped in 2016 as a Central Sector scheme. Covers computerised Record of Rights, digitised cadastral maps, computerised registration through NGDRS (National Generic Document Registration System)
ULPIN / "Bhu-Aadhaar"	14-digit alphanumeric ID for each land parcel, based on its geo-coordinates
SVAMITVA (MoPR, 2020)	Drone survey of inhabited village (abadi) areas; issues property cards that villagers can use for bank loans
Union Budget 2024-25	ULPIN for all rural land and digitised cadastral maps; GIS-mapped urban land records (verify progress)

7. The Green Revolution: the HYV package, institutions and the crop calendar

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The HYV package

• Green Revolution: the large rise in food-grain output, mainly of wheat and rice, from HYV seeds used with fertiliser, pesticide and irrigation (Class 11, Indian Economy 1950–1990).
• High-yielding variety seeds: seeds bred to give much higher yields per hectare. They deliver only with the right doses of fertiliser and pesticide and assured irrigation, and the crops are more prone to pest attack.
• NCERT stresses that "the application of these inputs in correct proportions is vital".

• Consequence: only farmers with reliable irrigation and money for inputs could benefit at first.

• Origins:

• Norman Borlaug's semi-dwarf Mexican wheats (Lerma Rojo 64-A, Sonora 64), imported in 1965-66. Dwarf stems carry heavy grain without falling over under fertiliser.

• IR8 rice, from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI, Philippines), released in 1966.

• Indian architects: M.S. Swaminathan (scientist) and C. Subramaniam (Union Agriculture Minister, 1964-67).

• Programmes:
• IADP (Intensive Agricultural District Programme, 1961), a package approach in selected districts;
• IAAP (Intensive Agricultural Areas Programme, 1964);

• High Yielding Varieties Programme (HYVP, kharif 1966).

• The term "Green Revolution" was coined by USAID's William Gaud in 1968.

Institutions and inputs

• Research and extension: farm research, and the work of taking it to farmers. Both were crucial to the Green Revolution, and both were hit by lower government spending after the 1991 reforms.

• ICAR and state agricultural universities on the US land-grant model: Pantnagar (1960) and PAU Ludhiana (1962).

• National Seeds Corporation (1963) for multiplying and distributing seed.

• FCI and the Agricultural Prices Commission (both 1965; the APC is now CACP) for procurement and price support. Mechanics are in agri-marketing-msp-pds.
• Rural electrification, which powered tubewells.
• Farm mechanisation: tractors, threshers, harvesters and pumpsets used in place of human and animal power. It spread with the Green Revolution.
• Metrics:
• Crop yield: output per unit of area, in kg or tonnes per hectare. It is the basic measure of land productivity.
• Seed replacement rate: the percentage of crop area sown with certified or quality seed rather than farm-saved seed in a season.

Land-use effects and the crop calendar

• Multiple cropping: growing two or more crops on the same field in a year. Short-duration HYVs plus irrigation made it possible, for example kharif paddy followed by rabi wheat in Punjab-Haryana, with a zaid crop in summer.

Season	Sown / harvested	Examples
Kharif crops	Sown with the south-west monsoon (June-July); harvested Sept-Oct	Rice, maize, cotton, soybean
Rabi crops	Sown in winter (Oct-Dec); harvested in spring	Wheat, mustard, gram, barley
Zaid crops	Short summer crops between rabi and kharif	Watermelon, cucumber, vegetables, fodder

• Net sown area (NSA): the area sown with crops and orchards, counting land sown more than once in a year only once.
• Gross cropped area (GCA): the total area sown, counting land sown more than once as many times as it is sown.
• Cropping intensity = (GCA ÷ NSA) × 100. It shows how many times the same land is cropped in a year.
• Worked example: NSA 100 ha; 60 ha double-cropped. GCA = 160 ha. Cropping intensity = 160/100 × 100 = 160%.

• India: about 111% in 1950-51, about 155% in recent years (verify current).

• Why this matters now. NSA is close to its ceiling at about 140 million ha. So future growth has to come from higher cropping intensity and higher yields, not from more land.

8. Phases, regions and gains of the Green Revolution, and the workforce that stayed on the farm

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Phases and regions

Phase	Period	Spread
Phase I	~mid-1960s to mid-1970s	Only the more affluent states. NCERT names Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu; standard accounts centre on the Punjab-Haryana-western UP wheat belt. Benefits went "primarily" to wheat-growing regions
Phase II	mid-1970s to mid-1980s	Spread to "a larger number of states" and "more variety of crops" (notably rice), but still bypassed rainfed and eastern India and pulses, oilseeds and coarse cereals

Outcome

• The stagnation of colonial agriculture was "permanently broken" (Class 11, Indian Economy 1950–1990).
• Self-sufficiency in food grains: meeting food-grain needs from domestic output without imports. India "no longer had to be at the mercy of America".

• NCERT error: the chapter says self-sufficiency came "by the late 1960s". The standard dating is the 1970s, after PL-480 imports ended around 1971.

• Wheat output roughly doubled within about a decade of 1965, from about 12 million tonnes in the mid-1960s to over 24 million tonnes in the early 1970s (verify figures).

Marketed surplus and its effects

Term	Meaning
Marketed surplus	The part of output farmers actually sell in the market (NCERT)
Marketable surplus	Output minus the farm family's own needs (consumption, seed, feed): what farmers could sell

NCERT's exercise asks "What is marketable surplus?" while its text defines marketed surplus. Keep the two apart.

• Why marketed surplus matters. If farmers eat most of the extra output, it "will not make much of a difference to the economy as a whole".
• Chain of effects:
• A large marketed surplus of rice and wheat meant the price of food grains fell relative to other goods.
• Low-income groups, who spend a large share of income on food, benefited most.
• The government could procure buffer stocks for times of shortage (mechanics in agri-marketing-msp-pds).

The workforce that stayed on the farm

• Agriculture's share of GDP fell sharply: 59.0% (1950-51) → 34.9% (1990-91), per the NCERT table.
• Its share of the workforce barely moved:
• NCERT text: 67.5% in 1950 → 64.9% by 1990;
• NCERT table: 72.1% (1950-51) → 66.8% (1990-91);
• flag this inconsistency within the same chapter.

• Now: about 46% (PLFS 2023-24; verify current).

• Reason: "the industrial sector and the service sector did not absorb the people working in the agricultural sector". Many economists call this "an important failure" of 1950-90 policy.

• Link: too many workers on the land means disguised unemployment, where the marginal worker adds nearly nothing to output (see employment-informal-sector).

9. Equity risks, state support and the subsidy debate

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The feared risks (NCERT)

1. Wider inequality between small and big farmers. Only big farmers could afford the inputs, so they would reap most of the benefits.
2. Pest risk. HYV crops are more prone to pests, so a small farmer "could lose everything in a pest attack".

How the state responded

• Low-interest loans to small farmers.
• Subsidised fertiliser.
• Research institutes' services that reduced the pest risk.
• Result: "output on small farms equalled the output on large farms in the course of time", and the Green Revolution benefited both small and rich farmers.
• NCERT's lesson: without "an extensive role" for the state, it "would have favoured the rich farmers only".
• Flag the critical literature. Many studies find regional inequality (Punjab versus eastern India) and interpersonal inequality (tenant eviction as land values rose, labour displaced by tractors) did widen, especially in Phase I.

The debate over subsidies

For continuing subsidies	Against
Any new technology looks risky, so subsidies were needed to get farmers to try it	Once the technology is profitable and widely used, their purpose is served, so phase them out
Farming is still risky; most farmers are very poor	Much of the fertiliser subsidy benefits the fertiliser industry
Removing them would widen inequality and violate equity	Among farmers, it goes mostly to prosperous regions
Fix: target them better, do not abolish them	A huge burden on government finances

Box 2.6: prices as signals

• A price rise signals scarcity and pushes users to economise.
• Subsidies block this signal. Free or cheap power and water lead to water-intensive crops (paddy, sugarcane) in water-scarce regions, which depletes the resource further.
• Cheap fertiliser and pesticide lead to overuse, which harms the environment.
• NCERT's question: is it wise, "from the economic viewpoint", to give free electricity to farmers?

The present architecture

• Fertiliser subsidy: it helped small farmers adopt HYVs. It is criticised because much of it goes to industry and prosperous regions.
• Urea is sold at a statutory MRP, fixed by government, and is outside NBS.

• P and K fertilisers (DAP, MOP, complexes) come under the Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS, 2010), a fixed subsidy per kg of nutrient, with prices partly decontrolled.

• NPK ratio: the ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium applied to soil. The ideal is about 4:2:1. India's actual use is heavily skewed towards nitrogen because urea is cheap (verify current ratio).

• Reforms:
• Neem-coated urea, fully mandated in 2015, releases nitrogen slowly and stops diversion to industry;
• DBT in fertilisers, rolled out nationwide in 2018, pays the subsidy to companies after point-of-sale machines record sales to farmers;
• Nano urea: liquid urea with nano-sized nitrogen particles sprayed on leaves, claimed to improve nutrient-use efficiency. Launched by IFFCO in 2021; its efficacy is debated;

• PM-PRANAM (2023) rewards states that cut chemical fertiliser use.

• Free farm power: flat or zero tariffs (for example, Punjab) drive over-pumping and groundwater depletion (section 10) and strain power distribution companies.

• MSP works as a price incentive and has made rice and wheat the safest crops to grow. Mechanics are in agri-marketing-msp-pds.
• Terms of trade for agriculture: the ratio of prices farmers get for output to prices they pay for inputs and consumer goods. It indicates how profitable farming is.
• Subsidies vs public investment:
• Public investment in agriculture means government spending on irrigation, power, roads, market links and research and extension. Studies find it gives higher returns than input subsidies.
• It fell after 1991, which is blamed for slow agricultural growth.

• Subsidies crowd it out of the budget.

• PM-KISAN (2019): ₹6,000 a year in direct income support. It is an alternative to input subsidies that does not distort prices.

• WTO Agreement on Agriculture boxes are covered in international-trade-policy.

10. Ecological costs and the next agricultural revolution

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Ecological and regional costs

• Monoculture. The rice-wheat cycle replaced crop rotation, i.e. growing different crops in turn on the same land (for example, cereals followed by legumes) to keep soil fertile and break pest cycles. The area under pulses shrank.
• Groundwater depletion. Paddy is not native to semi-arid Punjab and Haryana, and free power has fuelled over-pumping. Most blocks there are classed over-exploited by CGWB (verify current).
• Soil mining. Heavy nitrogen use with little P, K or organic matter has caused micronutrient deficiencies (zinc, sulphur, iron) and flat yield response.
• Pesticide residues in food, water and soil harm health. The Punjab Malwa belt is often cited.
• Stubble burning.
• The Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act 2009 banned early paddy transplanting to save groundwater.
• This pushed the harvest into late October and left farmers a very short window before wheat sowing.

• Burning paddy straw became the fastest way to clear fields, which worsens north India's winter air pollution.

• Narrow genetic base. A few HYVs replaced thousands of traditional landraces.

• A regional gap opened with eastern and rainfed India.

What comes next

• Evergreen Revolution (M.S. Swaminathan): "productivity in perpetuity without ecological harm", i.e. higher yields with conservation of soil, water and biodiversity.
• Second Green Revolution: the next phase of growth, focused on eastern and rainfed regions, pulses and oilseeds, new technology and sustainable use of resources.

• Example: BGREI (Bringing Green Revolution to Eastern India, 2010-11, under RKVY).

• Gene Revolution: using genetic engineering and biotechnology to raise yields.

• Bt cotton, approved in 2002, the only GM crop in commercial cultivation.
• GM mustard DMH-11: approved by GEAC for environmental release in 2022; the Supreme Court gave a split verdict in 2024, so the case is still in litigation.

• Genome-edited rice varieties released by ICAR in 2025. These have no foreign gene.

• Yield gap: the difference between potential or attainable yields and yields actually achieved on farms. Closing it through better seed, extension and inputs is the cheapest source of growth.

• Micro-irrigation: drip and sprinkler systems that put water near plant roots, saving water and fertiliser. Promoted under PMKSY ("Per Drop More Crop", 2015).
• Diversification of cropping:
• Intercropping: two or more crops grown together in a definite row pattern, to make the best use of resources.

• Mixed cropping: two or more crops grown together without a row pattern, to reduce the risk of total crop failure.

• Custom hiring centre: a facility that rents farm machinery to small and marginal farmers who cannot afford to own it. Supported under SMAM (Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanisation). Rented happy seeders also help manage stubble.

• Precision farming: using GPS, sensors, drones, remote sensing and data analytics to apply inputs at the right place, time and quantity.
• Digital agriculture: digital tools (remote sensing, AI, drones, data platforms, mobile advisories) across the farm value chain.
• Digital Agriculture Mission (2024) and AgriStack, a farmer registry with digital crop survey;
• Kisan drones for spraying and crop assessment;

• Soil Health Cards (2015) that give each field a nutrient-based fertiliser recommendation, which helps correct the NPK imbalance.

• Organic and natural farming are covered in rural-diversification-allied.

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Exam angles

Prelims — high-yield facts and traps

• Constitutional facts:
• First Amendment 1951 added Art. 31A, Art. 31B and the Ninth Schedule.
• Fourth (1955) made compensation non-justiciable.
• 17th (1964) widened "estate" and required market-value compensation within the ceiling.
• 44th (1978) moved property to Art. 300A.
• Land is Entry 18, State List.

• I.R. Coelho (2007): Ninth Schedule laws added after 24 April 1973 are reviewable against the basic structure.

• Pairings:

• Operation Barga: West Bengal, 1978;
• tenancy abolition: Kerala, 1969;
• Big Landed Estates Abolition Act: J&K, 1950;
• Bhoodan: Vinoba Bhave, Pochampally, 1951;
• Kumarappa Committee, 1949;

• Cooperative farming resolution: Nagpur, 1959.

• Holdings:

• marginal <1 ha; small 1-2 ha; semi-medium 2-4 ha; medium 4-10 ha; large ≥10 ha;
• an operational holding ≠ an ownership holding;
• the Agriculture Census is quinquennial;

• 2015-16: ~86% of holdings small and marginal, operating ~47% of area; average ~1.08 ha.

• Formula: cropping intensity = GCA ÷ NSA × 100. GCA counts double-cropped land twice; NSA counts it once.

• Crop sorting: mustard, gram and barley are rabi; soybean, cotton and maize are kharif; watermelon and cucumber are zaid.
• Green Revolution names and dates:
• Borlaug (Lerma Rojo 64-A, Sonora 64), IR8 (IRRI, 1966);
• Swaminathan and C. Subramaniam;
• IADP 1961, IAAP 1964, HYVP 1966;
• NSC 1963; FCI and APC 1965 (APC is now CACP);
• PAU 1962, Pantnagar 1960;

• William Gaud coined the term in 1968.

• Fertiliser:

• ideal NPK 4:2:1;
• urea is outside NBS (NBS, 2010, covers P and K);

• neem-coated urea 2015; fertiliser DBT 2018; nano urea from IFFCO (2021); PM-PRANAM 2023.

• Land records:

• DILRMP (NLRMP 2008 → revamped 2016);
• ULPIN = 14-digit "Bhu-Aadhaar";
• SVAMITVA = MoPR, drones, property cards;
• NGDRS for registration;
• Registration Act 1908 registers deeds, not titles, so India has presumptive titling;

• NITI Aayog Model Land Leasing Act 2016 (T. Haque).

• Schemes:

• BGREI (2010-11);
• PMKSY (2015, "Per Drop More Crop");
• SMAM and custom hiring centres;
• Digital Agriculture Mission (2024) and AgriStack;

• Soil Health Card (2015).

• Traps:

• "Marketed surplus = output minus family consumption": FALSE. That is marketable surplus; marketed surplus is what is actually sold.
• "Phase I of the Green Revolution mainly benefited rice": FALSE. It mainly benefited wheat.
• "Abolition of intermediaries benefited sharecroppers and landless labourers": FALSE.
• "Land reform is on the Concurrent List": FALSE. It is on the State List.
• "India became self-sufficient in food grains in the late 1960s": this is NCERT's wording, but the standard dating is the 1970s (PL-480 ended ~1971).
• "Agriculture's share of the workforce fell as sharply as its GDP share, 1950-90": FALSE.
• "Ceiling laws originally used the family as the unit": FALSE. The family became the unit under the 1972 guidelines.

Mains — GS-III themes

1. Why land reforms succeeded only in Kerala, West Bengal and J&K: political commitment, records, legislative capture, judicial delay. The unfinished agenda: legal leasing, recognising concealed tenants, conclusive titling and records digitisation.
2. Appraisal of the Green Revolution: food security, self-sufficiency, cheaper food for the poor and buffer stocks, against regional, interpersonal and ecological costs. Lessons for a Second or Evergreen Revolution in eastern and rainfed India.
3. Rationalising farm subsidies (fertiliser, power, MSP): targeting vs abolition; subsidies vs public investment; DBT and income support (PM-KISAN); Box 2.6 on prices as signals; the NBS–urea asymmetry.
4. Small and fragmented holdings and their viability: consolidation, leasing, cooperative and collective models (FPOs), custom hiring and precision farming for small farms.
5. Why the share of the workforce in agriculture stayed high despite rising output: the failure of industry and services to absorb labour, disguised unemployment, and structural transformation today (~46% in PLFS 2023-24).
6. Unintended results of growth led by input subsidies: groundwater depletion, stubble burning (the 2009 Punjab Act), the NPK imbalance, soil and health damage. The role of crop diversification and micro-irrigation.
7. Equity vs growth as the thread linking land reforms and the Green Revolution, with state support both enabling small-farmer gains and creating distortions.

Current-affairs hooks

• Union Budget: fertiliser subsidy allocation; the land-records mission (Bhu-Aadhaar/ULPIN, cadastral digitisation, urban GIS mapping); Digital Agriculture Mission and AgriStack.
• Seasonal NBS rate notifications for kharif and rabi; DAP and urea availability; studies on the efficacy of nano urea.
• The October-November stubble-burning season in Punjab-Haryana; CGWB's annual groundwater assessment.
• Demands for a legal guarantee of MSP and farmer protests; the Economic Survey's agriculture chapter.
• GM mustard litigation in the Supreme Court, genome-edited rice varieties, and GEAC decisions.
• Agriculture Census results (11th census, 2021-22), the PLFS annual report on the workforce share in agriculture, and SVAMITVA milestones.
• M.S. Swaminathan's Bharat Ratna (2024) and birth centenary (2025).