In recent days, Dr M S Swaminathan’s name has become deeply intertwined with farmers’ struggles. His formula to calculate the minimum support price (MSP) C2+50% (50 percent more than the Comprehensive Cost of Production which included input cost of capital, family labour and cost of rent and depreciation of land) was scientific and had the potential to make farmers’ lives bearable. Even though this formula was put before the first United Progressive Alliance government in 2008, both UPA-1 and UPA-2 completely ignored it.
The subsequent Modi government had included it in its manifesto, but once it came to power it made a statement before the Supreme Court that under no circumstances was it possible to implement that formula.
Notwithstanding that, farmers are indebted to Swaminathan for analysing their problems comprehensively and presenting those findings before the government and the public in a meaningful manner. Swaminathan also made several suggestions on how to improve the lives of farmers and also spoke for the interests of small farmers, though within the framework of market-oriented agrarian reforms.
But it is ironic that the very Green Revolution that Swaminathan spearheaded and which the then Congress government implemented under American guidance, was responsible for bringing farmers, especially small farmers, into the vicious trap of the market economy.
Norman Borlaug, the agricultural scientist who changed the face of the rural world through increasing agricultural productivity by what is known as the green revolution, was rewarded with the Nobel Prize. He died on September 13, 2009 at the age of 95. But was he a friend of farmers? Or giant agricultural corporations?
If we want a proper answer to the question of whose side he was on, we would need to have a clear understanding of our country’s development model and also have a stand on it. This is important because this great man is the reason that our farmers are in their current situation. The understanding of whether he was a friend or foe to Indian farmers would thus depend on one’s opinion of the condition of India’s farmers and views on the state of India’s food security.
According to the Indian government, India’s food security is better than it was before, farmers now lead better lives than in the past, the number of poor people have reduced from about 50 percent to 27 percent, and farmers have more purchasing power etc.
There is a view that all of this was possible only because the government implemented practices that Borlaug developed, such as the use of high yielding variety (HYV) seeds, chemical fertilisers, pesticide and insecticide which increased crop yields dramatically. The Indian government is not the only one to put forward such claims. Governments of other poor Asian, African and Latin American countries echo the same views.
In short, they argue that such countries, which were dependent on food aid from the US and other countries, only became food secure because of Norman Borlaug’s green revolution. In support of their argument, they cite the examples of India which overcame its food crisis of 1965 and Mexico, which faced a similar situation in the 1950s. They argue that both countries became food secure in a few years due to the green revolution and even went on to become food exporters.
This argument is not false. But neither is it completely true.
It is true that India’s godowns contain vast quantities of grain and that such a large quantity of grain production was only possible because of the green revolution. But did such levels of production make the lives of farmers better than before? The government has no answer. And neither did Borlaug until his death.
The story of India’s agriculture is the same as that of its development model: It has fed milk and honey to the haves and poison to the have-nots. For example, there is an abundance of grain in India but in rural areas the per capita food consumption is steadily decreasing.
Before the Green Revolution was introduced in India — that is, in the 1970s — per capita food consumption in rural areas was 175 kg. It has now declined to 160 kg and it is not due to a shortage of food production. Therefore, it is true that the Green Revolution simultaneously increased both crop yield and poverty.
This paradox is built into the Green Revolution. Once the high yielding variety seeds are sown, the crops need enough chemical fertiliser. The freely available cow dung in a pastoral and agrarian rural set up will not suffice. Such varieties would naturally attract numerous pests, insects, bacteria and virus attacks, requiring the purchase of chemical pesticide and insecticide. These hybrid seeds also require more water than traditional varieties. Thus, even if yields have gone up five times, the input cost has also gone up proportionally. Thus, rather than an improvement in incomes, farmers have faced ruination.
In the early days of the Green Revolution, the government itself used to provide subsidies for farm inputs but the liberalisation of the 1990s has meant that the government withdrew many welfare measures, leaving farmers in destitution.
Moreover, Indian farmers have been forced to become dependent on American companies for everything from seeds, fertiliser and pesticide as India and other poorer countries began to implement imperialist globalisation policies.
Therefore, it is not as if the Green Revolution provided an escape from dependency. It is American companies and institutions such as Monsanto, DuPont, Ford, Rockefeller, Ciba-Geigy, Cargill which manufacture seeds, fertiliser and pesticide that reaped the full benefits of the Green Revolution.
During the Second World War, these companies had supplied weapons and chemicals to both Hitler and his opponents. After the war, these companies, ironically, stepped into the agricultural sector, using the same chemicals used in the warfare and manufactured chemical fertiliser and pesticide and retained their markets in another form.
It is not a coincidence that the Green Revolution that created these markets began to be implemented across the world. Borlaug worked at DuPont which used to be a chemical company. Later, the Rockefeller Foundation gave Borlaug a fellowship to work in Mexico where it was conducting agricultural research.
The real face of the green revolution becomes clear when one understands that both Normal Borlaug and the green revolution were products of the US’ imperial interests after the Second World War.
The real story of the green revolution starts in 1943 when the Rockefeller Foundation sent a team of agricultural experts to study the development of indigenous varieties of crops in Mexico. In 1944, Borlaug joined this group. The Rockefeller Foundation undertook this study for two main reasons. One, the Lazaro Cardenas’s nationalist government in 1939 confiscated the Standard Oil company owned by the Rockerfeller family. Two, it had been trying to expand its influence in the southern hemisphere since the time of the Nazis.
The Second World War taught the Rockefellers that a pro-development stance rather than confrontationist stance would help it to expand both its investment and influence.
Around 1956, Borlaug and his team had developed high-yielding seed varieties. They studied it in Mexico for four years and identified the conditions necessary for their growth. This hybrid agriculture assured not only the creation of new seed varieties, but also the destruction of self-sufficient farming practices in poor countries. It ensured these countries’ complete dependence on capitalist countries for seeds, fertiliser and pesticide.
Colonialists now had a new means to bring the world under their control without resorting to war: the green revolution.
During that time, a new political movement was making itself felt across the world. The communists of China, Asia’s largest country, were expelling landlords and overthrowing imperialists. The Korean War cemented communist control over northern Korea and resulted in the formation of two separate countries. In Malaysia, leftist guerrilla fighters started a battle against British imperialists. In Cambodia, Laos and other Indo-China countries, communist guerrilla fighters knocked on the doors of political power. In the Philippines too, communists were gaining ground. Even in the India of 60’s and 70's the communists were comparatively stronger and hegemonic. After World War II, half of Europe was breaking away from capitalist sway and coming under communist influence.
It was under these political circumstances that the US explored the green revolution. Having understood that communism was strong in places where hunger was widespread, the Americans designed the green revolution to throw bread crumbs to starving people and thus bring those countries back under the capitalist thumb.
Thus in 1965, the American diplomat in India Chester Bowles declared, “If the communist movements must be suppressed, the green revolution is absolutely necessary.” That’s also why in 1970, Norman Borlaug was given the Nobel Prize. He got it not for science but for peace, for assuaging the fears of the capitalist world.
Once it became clear that the green revolution would create new markets for American companies, the US began to impose it worldwide. In 1965, the then US president Lyndon Johnson changed the American policy of supplying subsidised wheat to poor countries under its PL-480 law. The US began to insist that in order to receive wheat subsidies poor countries must give up their industrialisation policies, adopt hybrid varieties in agriculture, and open up their markets for American companies.
Faced with unprecedented famine and drought in 1965, India saw massive food shortages. Taking advantage of this situation, the US arm twisted a helpless India into adopting the green revolution and opening up the Indian market for American capitalists, failing which, the US would not supply wheat.
Thus the Green Revolution was a means to bring a primarily agricultural country such as India under American imperialist control, and not a scheme for farmers’ welfare. The results of this are the continuing suicides of farmers, hunger deaths, dried up lakes, depleting groundwater, chronic agrarian crisis, helpless farmers and a dependent country.
Hence even though the Green Revolution did contribute to reducing hunger in the country, it turned India’s agrarian system into a colony of agricultural multinational companies and rich countries led by America and eventually destroyed farmers economically and also caused ecological devastation. Although it did not end hunger, it did miraculously increase yields and created a class of newly rich farmers. At the same time, the poorer farmers in rural society — who mostly comprise Dalits and the lowest of the Shudra castes — were completely left out of the development story and were impoverished further.
Gradually, this class of neo-rich farmers acquired political power at the grassroots and became the ruling class. In the 1980s-90s these classes also got a share of power at the regional and national levels. In rural areas, local ruling classes embraced the Western-backed Green Revolution to crush communist-led protests against landlordism and feudalism which had impoverished and starved rural people.
On the other hand, the lure of greater crop yields led to extensive use of chemicals which adversely affected soil quality, even as yields gradually declined. The whole ecosystem of earlier agricultural practices was destroyed. Around this time, due to global free trade agreements, the Indian government withdrew support to the farm sector and cheaper imports flooding into Indian markets created a situation in which farmers began to kill themselves.
For these reasons, the Green Revolution was not just a technological marvel that increased yields. It bankrupted Indian farmers, especially small and marginal farmers, pushed Indian agriculture, the rural economy, and the environment into a devastation that they have not recovered from.
While Swaminathan himself did rethink some of his views on the Green Revolution, it does not appear that he comprehensively reassessed it. Swaminathan is not responsible for all of this. He sincerely attempted to solve the problem of hunger, which the country faced at the time. But whether or not he appreciated the problem of green revolution stemming from its inherent capitalist impulses is not known.
It is also time to carefully examine the role of national and international institutions, both government and private, which are instrumental in the success of the Green Revolution. These actions include the promotion and implementation of experiments and programmes pushed exclusively by American companies, while at the same time rejecting attempts to explore alternative ideas and replacing experts who raised doubts about these programmes. This is important because the criterion for selection to these key posts was not just technical expertise but also alignment and internalisation of the logic of inevitability of the US model.
These international “research” centres, and large Western companies indulged in a daylight robbery of local seed varieties in the name of research and conservation. Initially, Swaminathan headed several such organisations as he too shared the public opinion that such institutions were bringing positive change in the world.
Swaminathan later spearheaded what is euphemistically called the “Ever Green Revolution” and became an advocate for genetically modified crops which would increase yields. However, he does not appear to have paid as much attention to the adverse impact of such technology on the environment, on soil, on landless farmers as he did on increasing productivity.
In reality, there is a widespread belief among the majority in the ‘Left’ too, that as long as social justice guides the redistribution of resources, pursuing capitalist modes of production and technological development is all right. However, the Green Revolution is a testimony for how myopic and misguided this view is.
It would be worth recalling today how this lopsided pursuit of increasing productivity — that is, the seed, input and agricultural industry and the profit-oriented tech pushed by large corporate companies — acquired the upper hand politically and oversaw the scuttling of any alternatives and their proponents.
This is important because we are witnessing an attempt by multinational agricultural companies such as Bayer-Monsanto to capture the future of Indian agriculture on the pretext of facilitating the Ever Green Revolution and genetic revolution. Already Bayer-Monsanto has concluded a strategic pact with the Indian Council Of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the premier state-run agricultural research institute.
On the other hand, the US and the European Union are exerting pressure on poor countries such as India to sign the Global Methane Pledge which aims to reduce emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. The pledge states that agriculture, particularly paddy cultivation, makes up 40 percent of methane emissions. Therefore, these countries are exerting pressure to decrease paddy cultivation. In pursuance to this, the Modi government has announced that India will promote millets, and went ahead and formulated corporate-led programmes for it without considering their feasibility or consequences.
Thus, in the name of a second Green Revolution and the production of genetically modified hybrid varieties, Indian agriculture again finds itself getting trapped in a capitalist net by rich countries to supply millets for the corporate market.
During the first Green Revolution, India already saw how technological know-how was used as a pretext to gain control over and destroy India’s farmers and farming systems. Now it is again facing the danger of the Western corporate bogey of increasing production.
Neither India, nor its agriculture or farmers need corporate-controlled technological solutions. What they need are comprehensive pro-people agricultural policies and agricultural technology that preserve farmers’ and India’s sovereignty, respect farmers’ knowledge and have a politics of public good with inherent ecological considerations.
The real tribute to Swaminathan would be the ability to have learned political, agricultural economics and environmental lessons from the first Green Revolution, and muster the capacity to reject what is unsuitable and develop our own autonomy and place food, environment and farmers’ sovereignty, at an equal pedestal with the question of food security.
Shivasundar is an activist and freelance journalist. Views expressed are the author’s own. This piece was translated by Anisha Sheth.