Q.Why, despite the implementation of green revolution, 65 per cent of India's population continued to be engaged in the agriculture sector till 1990?
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →The Green Revolution raised yields but did not transform the whole economy. Its gains were limited to certain regions and crops, and industry and services did not expand fast enough to pull people off the land. With no alternative employment, about 65 per cent of Indians stayed in agriculture even in 1990.
The puzzle
One might expect that if agriculture became far more productive, fewer people would be needed on the farms and they would move to other work. Yet even by 1990 — decades after the Green Revolution began — around 65 per cent of India's population was still engaged in agriculture. Why?
The reasons
1. The Green Revolution's benefits were geographically limited
The new technology spread mainly to well-irrigated areas — Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh — because HYV seeds need assured water. Vast rain-fed regions of the country were largely left out. In those regions, agriculture stayed traditional and low-yielding, and people remained tied to it.
2. It was concentrated in a few crops
The gains were greatest in wheat, and later rice, while many other crops and the farmers who grew them saw little change. So the revolution did not lift the whole of agriculture uniformly.
3. Industry and services did not grow fast enough
For people to leave farming, there must be jobs elsewhere. But the secondary (industrial) and tertiary (services) sectors did not expand rapidly enough to create the huge number of jobs that the rural population needed. Industrial growth, though real, was not employment-intensive enough to absorb the surplus farm labour.
4. Rapid population growth
A fast-growing population kept adding to the workforce, and with limited non-farm opportunities, the newcomers too fell back on agriculture. …
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