India needs to overhaul its approach towards agriculture
the circle of Green Revolution seems to be complete. Punjab's agricultural growth of 1.86 per cent last year was just a plot in a declining graph since 1970. It is clear that the farming system could not sustain itself feeding on super-intensive inputs, organically as well as financially. Such farming technology has robbed off all things natural from agricultural nature. Water table in large parts of central Punjab today is below 10 metres.
Green Revolution was undoubtedly a useful response to food insecurity (on emergency) at that point in India's history. But the euphoria made us forget that the strategy could not have been a permanent one for a country like India. The fact that intensive agriculture could happen only with high level of irrigation became prohibitive for agricultural growth across the country, with diversity of ecology, rainfall and water table. The inertia of Green Revolution forced us to a cumulative investment of more than Rs 2,000 billion in surface irrigation systems till now. The orgy of construction was also fuelled by