The green revolution and socio-economic tensions: the case of India.

A series of chemical-biological breakthroughs in agricultural technology in recent years in large areas of the poor countries in the world have been picturesquely, if somewhat inappropriately, described as the green revolution. The use of high yielding varieties of seeds together with chemical fertilizers, pesticides and other new inputs has dramatically changed the trend and pattern of agricultural production in some of these areas and this in turn is bound to have wide-ranging social and economic effects. The prevailing views on the impact of the green revolution, however, take two divergent lines. One is to emphasize that the new technology breaks the vicious circle of centuries-old stagnation in traditional agriculture and catapults it into the era of modern, efficient, prosperous capitalist agriculture, with even the poor farmers and landless laborers gaining absolutely because the cake to be shared is so much larger now. The other view is to focus on the forces, generated by the green revolution, which tend to accentuate the existing enormous inequality in the economic system those who believe in a strong correlation between increasing inequality and growing discontent and agrarian tensions see here germs of an impending revolution which might ultimately change its color to red.