Friday, January 5, 2007
Time for the Second Green Revolution?
The days are a changing in the land of the Ganges. The quintessential " whatever will happen we cant be the best" attitude of the Indian people which even our beloved President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam criticised has it seems been replaced with a " come what may we are the future superpower" attitude in India. The soaring stock market is an indicator of the buoying confidence of the investment sector in India inc. While all this may be all good and gung-ho so to say i feel that we must take a moment to pause and take stock of the situation that we are really in. It is true that the services sector and to an extent the manufacturing sector are seeing days that are rosier than any that exist in the memories of any generation of Indians who are alive today.The globalisation and open market economic policies rung in back in the early 90's with our present Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh at the helm seem to have started reaping in their benefits in many folds. However all may not be as rosy as it seems. Our agricultural sector as any person who remembers his geography lessons from school well enough, knows is the backbone of our economy. In fact it has been so since the earliest traces of our Civilisation has existed.We are lucky to have had a true renaissance in this sector when with the help of Dr Norman Barloug our very own Dr MS Swaminathan( the father of the Green Revolution in India) ushered in an era of increased productivity and high dividends. However the sheen of that achievement is fast fading. The Green Revolution that ensured that our country never faced a famine post independance inspite of our rapidly growing population was confined to the production of wheat and the success was never exactly be reproduced in the sector of paddy cultivations. It is indeed time for a second Green Revolution as our President keeps reminding us. This time providence may not aid us with a foreign scientist willing to help out developing nations .For we seem to have grown out of that tag and become something of a big brother nation ourselves. Our path will have to made by ourselves. AGricultural institutions all over the nation should be imparted with a greater impetus and better incentives in order to usher in a second Green Revolution. Only then can the base of our econoomy be strengthened sufficiently in order to ensure that the rapid strides we are taking in other sectors are consolidated
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3 comments:
interesting analysis anil. however, don't you think we should rather focus on controlling the runaway population growth instead? no amount of productivity is going to feed a population of multiple billions crammed into a relatively small space that is India. in fact, the very green revolution that boosted the food output is now seen to be unsustainable environmentally, given its dependence on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and invasive hybrid species.
Yes anirudh i agree.Population is a problem. But the skills gained by a well fed and healthy population can cause it to truly become an asset as we see in India and China today.As for the environmental problems. Thats why i recommended a second Indian Green Revolution . It need not follow in the exact pattern of the earlier one.Increasing efficiency particularly in storage, transportation, distribution and marketing would probably be a good idea.
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