This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Revisiting the Green Revolution Irrigation and Food Production in Twentieth-Century India. Subramanian, Kapil Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 Revisiting the Green Revolution: Irrigation and Food Production in Twentieth-Century India. Kapil Subramanian A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy King's College, London Department of History 1 Declaration This thesis represents my own work. Where the work of others is mentioned, it is duly referenced and acknowledged as such. KAPIL SUBRAMANIAN London 31 August 2015 2 Abstract This is a new history of irrigation and food production in twentieth-century India. It seeks to challenge the known story of Green Revolution, to question the role of plant breeding in the history of twentieth century agriculture and to de-centre the big dam from our picture of water and modernity. This thesis argues that there is no evidence of a breakthrough in Indian food production the 1960s and 1970s where a Green Revolution is typically placed; this was in fact a period of relatively slow growth in foodgrain production and yields within an era of high growth that had actually begun around 1950. Wheat, which was a small part of India’s food basket was an exception to this general trend of slow growth in the 1960s and 1970s. I argue that High Yielding Varieties of seeds had little to do with this leap in productivity; this was driven by a quick expansion in irrigation facilitated by private tubewells. Tubewell irrigation was initiated by the colonial state and interwar India had the world’s largest tubewell programme. The ability of tubewells to deliver quick results put them on the central government agenda during the Second World War and emphasis on public irrigation (whether from tubewells or dams) increased during the Nehruvian period. The mid-1960s however saw an emphasis on the private tubewell, based on a vision of the peasant as a rational profit-maximizing being who was in conflict with public irrigation systems and their equity objectives. The private-profit motive was put at the centre of agricultural policy, and aided by the World Bank, the government mounted a programme of cheap loans to promote private tubewells which quickly became the most important means of irrigation in India. Putting the tubewell at the heart of my study allows me to re-conceptualise late twentieth- century Indian agriculture. By showing how the World Bank and elite development actors favoured private tubewells, I argue that rising inequality was built into technology choice. This thesis traces the new centrality of the private motive in agricultural policy to Theodore Schultz’s theory of the poor but efficient peasant and argues that ideas of peasant rationality were also central to the adoption of the HYVs which merely justified appropriation of inoptimal quantities of fertilizer by large farmers to produce super- normal yields even as higher overall production could have resulted from spreading fertilizer thin on tall Indian wheat varieties 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration 2 Abstract 3 List of Tables 5 Acknowledgments 6 Introduction 8 Chapter 1: Green Revolution? 37 Chapter 2: The Colonial Origins of Tubewell Irrigation 76 Chapter 3: Planning Irrigation in Nehruvian India 110 Chapter 4: Tubewells in Postwar India 136 Chapter 5: Transforming Traditional Agriculture 151 Chapter 6: Private Pumps and the Green Revolution 182 Chapter 7: Financing a Tubewell Boom 210 Conclusion 234 Bibliography 245 4 LIST OF TABLES 1.1: Annual growth rate of area, production and yield of foodgrains in India, 1891-1947 42 1.2: Annual growth rate of area, production and yield of foodgrains in India, 1950-2001 42 1.3: Adjusted annual growth rate of area, production and yield of foodgrains in India, 1950-1984 45 1.4: Wheat Production in India, 1950-1972. 48 1.5: Response of wheat varieties to fertilizer application 55 1.6: Rice production in India, selected years 60 3.1: All India net irrigated area from various sources in million hectares 1950-80 112 6.1 Groundwater irrigation structures in India, 1951-1969 194 7.1: World Bank loans to the ARC for crop agriculture, 1970-75 222 7.2: Impact of the Karnal tubewell finance scheme on landholding patterns 226 5 Acknowledgments I am thankful to David Edgerton who shaped my approach to scholarly inquiry, unstintingly gave me his time and always encouraged me think about the bigger picture while keeping my feet firmly in the historiography. Abigail Woods offered regular advice and provoked much clarity of thought with her attention to detail, while Jean-Baptiste Fressoz encouraged me to think critically about questions of ideas and society; thanks to them both. CHoSTM is a special institution which enabled the pursuit of scholarship in an intellectually convivial atmosphere. Andrew Mendelsohn provided some early advice. Ben, Aparajith, Cat and Michael all made for an atmosphere of friendship and intellectual camaraderie. Jahnavi Phalkey’ advice brought me to CHoSTM. Together with Dr. Jon Wilson’s sharp advice, she kept me connected to the world of Indian history; I would like to thank them both. Rohan D’Souza, Deepak Kumar, Ramachandra Guha, Sabine Clarke, Mahesh Rangarajan, Madhumita Saha, Tushaar Shah, Uma Lele, S. Janakarajan, Anita Auden and SD Limaye offered much advice; the latter two also opened up their family papers for me. Thanks to them all. The staff of libraries at the Central Groundwater Board, UP State Electricity Board, UP Irrigation Department, Geological Survey of India, Rajasthan Groundwater Department, NABARD, Central Water& Power Commission, Planning Commission, Rural Electrification Corporation, Central Board of Irrigation& Power and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute went well beyond the call of duty in their assistance; my heartfelt gratitude for the same. The staff at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, the Central Secretariat Library, the British Library, the Connemara Library, the National Library at Kolkata, Indian Institute of Public Administration Library, the Churchill College Archives, National Archive of India, Tamil Nadu State Archives, the National Archives at Kew and the libraries at King’s, SOAS and the LSE were efficient and helpful. Suhita Chopra-Chatterjee encouraged my academic interests. Subhranshu and Neeraj hosted me. The friendship of Navnidhi, Girish, Anuj, Alok, Anirudh, Rohan, Ashni and Madeleine will always be cherished. I would like to thank my parents and in-laws as well as my sister who provided much encouragement. This research would neither have taken 6 seed nor come to fruition without the love, unending encouragement and assured support of my wife who never resented the time it kept me occupied; this work is as much the result of her efforts as it is of mine. 7 Introduction This thesis seeks to challenge the known story of what is called the Green Revolution, to question the role of plant breeding in the history of twentieth-century agriculture and to decentre the big dam from our picture of water and modernity. The Green Revolution is at the centre of late twentieth-century agricultural history in India and the Third World; given the marginality of agriculture in accounts of twentieth-century technology in the rich world, it is central to our picture of twentieth-century agricultural technology more generally.1 In its simplest form, the story of the Green Revolution goes that many poor countries faced a Malthusian disaster in the late twentieth century; a disaster which was mitigated by a spectacular growth in the production and yield of foodgrains by the adoption of new varieties of seeds developed by plant breeders of the Rockefeller Foundation. The Indian case serves as the usual exemplar. It is implicitly assumed that India’s food production was in stasis until the mid-1960s, when the country adopted High Yielding Varieties (HYV) of seeds to achieve a breakthrough in foodgrain production, which enabled it to become self-sufficient in food. 2 In the following ten or so pages I outline in summary my argument and its relation to existing understanding as a prelude to a detailed review of the literature. While the social effects of the Green Revolution have long been