The Green Revolution: Socioeconomic Insecurity and Agricultural Displacement in India

Abstract

This article discusses the Green Revolution, ostensibly implemented to address food insecurity in India. Instead, it deepened transitory food insecurity as well as systematically compounded exploitative systems of labour, landholding and capital distribution to the detriment of peasant and landless agriculturalists. The project increased the economic risk of agricultural labour and the instability of the sector as a whole. For these reasons, issues surrounding the impact of the Green Revolution inherently involve economic, social and ecological displacement and migration to urban and food-surplus areas. A secondary displacement effect involved the impact of the Green Revolution on forests. Irrigation to support it required dams and canals that displaced people outside the market oriented agricultural sector. The Green Revolution is thus shown to have had both primary and secondary displacement effects.