Story behind Punjab's Green Revolution that changed India forever

It's known that the Green Revolution in Punjab in the mid-1960s singularly contributed to making India self-sufficient in food, by ringing in a quantum jump in foodgrain — wheat and rice — production and productivity.

But how did it all happen? Unpublished proceedings from a panel discussion — "Green Revolution, National Food Security and Natural Resources" — at the Ludhiana’s Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) reveal that besides a significant amount of foresight and advance preparation, there were a fortuitous set of circumstances under which things fell into place.  

Authored by PAU’s incumbent Director of Research, Prof Navtej Singh Bains, a widely acknowledged wheat breeder, the document quotes GS Kalkat, who was in the "thick of things" as the deputy director of Punjab’s agriculture department during the early years of the Green Revolution.  

During Partition in August 1947, in Indian or East Punjab a mere four lakh hectares of the total 47 lakh acres of cultivable farmland was irrigated. The state had just 1,973 tubewells of which only 325 had electricity connections (the rest were diesel motor-driven), and there were just 1,392 tractors available to till the land. Total wheat and rice production were a measly 11.3 lakh tonnes. 

Key to the success of the Green Revolution, the panelists say, was the implementation of land-consolidation under the watch of the then chief minister Pratap Singh Kairon and Giani Kartar Singh, a minister in Kairon’s cabinet.  

Also, although the Bhakra-Nangal project was completed in 1963, Sutlej water from Bhakra was available for use in southern Punjab districts as early as in 1957. And around the time Norman Borlaug led the way in bringing the new dwarf, input responsive Mexican wheats to India in the mid-1960s, Punjab was perhaps the only state in the country that was in a position to take advantage.  

Consider this: PAU, which eventually proved critical in adapting the new wheat varieties to local conditions, had been established in 1962; Markfed, the state’s marketing body, the Punjab Mandi Board, the Land Development & Reclamation Corporation and Punjab Agro Industries Corporation were also set up by 1965-66.  

In addition, the (central) Agricultural Prices Commission was established in 1965, and FCI (Food Corporation of India) opened in 1964 and began procurement of wheat in the summer of 1965.

In 1966, India imported 18,000 tonnes of dwarf wheat seed by ship from Mexico and Punjab was the only state that seized the initiative in transporting its share from the port by road on trucks rather than by train, to ensure timely arrival.  

And before the seeds landed in the state, the department of prisons was asked to get prisoners to stitch adequate numbers of cloth bags to distribute seeds to farmers in 10-kg lots. Also anticipating the increased requirement of fertilisers (1 kg to 35 kg per hectare) for the new wheat variety, the Punjab government picked up most of the fertiliser that was imported via Kandla Port in 1966. Other states were nowhere near prepared to make the transition to the new varieties and so had little use for the fertiliser. 

That same year, Kalkat says, Punjab farmers were provided credit, tubewell connections and diesel pump sets at their doorsteps. As the then chairman of the Mandi Board, he sanctioned Rs 4 crore to the state electricity board so it waived the Rs 5,000 fee to pull power lines to a tubewell on a farm.  

With little local experience of digging tubewells, the Kairon government arranged for training 250 diggers who then headed 250 teams to dig new tubewells. The state also purchased 90,000 diesel pump sets from leading manufacturers. Ahead of the sowing of the winter wheat crop in 1966, agricultural scientists at PAU worked in tandem with agriculture department staff and farmers to develop “the new package of practices” to manage the crop.  

All this, by 1968, made for a record harvest of wheat. This, Kalkat recalled at the panel discussion, also caused an acute shortage of storage space for the bumper crop, so school students across Punjab were given an early summer vacation so that their classrooms could be used as wheat warehouses. The early successes with wheat were in time replicated with dwarf paddy varieties as well as other crops including maize. 

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