Green ‘Disruption’, Not ‘Revolution’
Ratna and Nadim Siraj
Empire Diaries
November 21, 2024: It’s November, and like every year this time, pollution in Delhi-NCR is back in the news. As usual, everyone is blaming the farmers of Punjab for burning stubble and sparking air pollution. But at the root of this mess, farmers are not at fault.
Instead, they are themselves the victims, just like the people of Delhi and NCR. The actual culprits of this annual pollution drama in the capital region are sitting far, far away. They are the foreign players who once crafted the ‘Green Revolution’.
To be precise, the ‘Green Disruption’ – whose costs we are still counting, on multiple fronts, year after year.
In this special report, we will look at how foreign forces tampered with India’s farming sector since the 1960s and even further back. It is because of these interventions that we have farming catastrophes, and also the sickening pollution crisis in Delhi.
Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana has been going on for years since the onset of the so-called Green Revolution. But it has been carefully cherry-picked by the back-door manipulators for special attention in India’s mainstream media.
Every year around mid-October onwards, the farmers of Punjab and Haryana need to burn up the paddy straw following paddy harvest, so that they can quickly prepare the farmland for cultivating wheat. It is part of their routine annual farming cycle, post the Green Revolution. Paddy farming is quickly followed by wheat farming without a big time gap, and the cycle is repeated annually.
The farming families of Punjab and Haryana don’t want to deliberately create smoke clouds and send them towards Delhi. It’s not some irresponsible grand plan to disrupt good living for the residents of the national capital. Instead, the two states’ farmers are forced to burn stubble at a time of the year precisely when the wind coincidentally blows from the Punjab-Haryana region towards Delhi-NCR.
In 2009, in a bid to preserve groundwater due to excess water-use during paddy farming, the Punjab state government created a law called ‘Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act’. The law forces farmers to delay the planting of paddy until the monsoon rain arrives in Punjab.
Due to this law, Punjab’s farmers can start paddy farming only in mid-June, not before that. Earlier, they used to start paddy cultivation in April and wrap it up in September. The 2009 law made them start rice farming in June and, therefore, finish it not before October.
From mid and late October, they start clearing their fields for the next crop cycle. There is a rush to make the farmland ready for wheat cultivation – the next farming cycle – so, the farmers quickly burn all the paddy straw.
Unfortunately, October onwards, the pre-winter northern wind blows from the Punjab-Haryana region straight towards Delhi. The annual seasonal wind carries the thick smoke from the burning stubble all the way towards the national capital region.
So, shall we conclude here that the Punjab government, therefore, is solely responsible for this pollution mess in Delhi every November? No, it’s not the sole culprit. The story goes far deeper than Punjab’s 2009 law.
In fact, you need to dig into the past to know the actual origin of Delhi’s post-Diwali and pre-winter air pollution spell. To get to the root of the problem, let us look at a timeline of events, starting with the launch of the much-hyped Green Revolution.
It all goes back to the 1960s. That’s when the controllers of Western agribusiness industry decided to launch a devastating attack on indigenous farming cultures around the world. They first cleverly came up with a forward-looking and upbeat name: Green Revolution.
In reality, it turned out to be a Green Disruption for countries such as India and its smaller neighbours.
The plot
The plan under the cover of Green Revolution was simple yet devastating. Western agribusiness and agrochemical companies would use influential international institutions to quietly break into various countries’ farming sectors.
They would then disrupt their indigenous, sustainable, and simple farming practices. They would superimpose chemical-based and machine-driven farming techniques.
The official objective was to increase the production of crops and profits for the local farmers. In reality, the so-called Green Revolution ended agricultural self-sufficiency in the targeted countries, a fact that is well documented by now.
It made small farmers around the world financially weaker by making them rely on costly chemical inputs, such as fertilisers and pesticides. The project poisoned the soil. It ensnared small farmers into loan traps, triggering suicides triggered by financial distress. It eventually ensured local farming industries slowly went into the hands of foreign businesses or the local subsidiaries of foreign businesses.
The plot by Western agribusiness powers to disrupt Indian agriculture involved the efforts of two spin doctors. Norman Borlaug was the American commander-in-chief of the global project. In India, they selected scientist MS Swaminathan to disrupt the culture of natural farming.
The primary target of the Green Revolution in India was Punjab, a state rich in agricultural diversity; a state that was fairly self-sufficient at that time. Four foreign institutions were involved at various times starting in the mid-1960s in the disruption of Punjab’s farming industry.
All four are American institutions: World Bank, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and USAID (United States Agency for International Development).
Dr. Vandana Shiva, a leading food rights and anti-imperialism activist, says the Western push to target Indian farming started well before the 1960s. She says that since the 1950s, World Bank, Ford Foundation, and USAID were working under the influence of various Western agrochemical companies. The three institutions were on a strategic mission to introduce chemical fertilisers in India.
By 1969, says Vandana Shiva, Rockefeller and Ford foundations came together to create international centres for tropical agriculture in two countries – Colombia and Nigeria. In 1971, former US defence secretary Robert McNamara joined the initiative.
When McNamara was World Bank president, he helped set up a research body to fund these agricultural centres. All these moves were part of the overall project that also led to the Green Revolution in India. Much later, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, called UN FAO, also joined the drive to intervene in various countries’ farming systems.
The great disruption
From the 1960s, MS Swaminathan, captained by Norman Borlaug and the four American entities, carried out the Western mission of Green Revolution in India. What was it? To mechanise and chemical-ise the vast farmlands of Punjab, and later, other Indian states.
Historically, Punjab used to the leader of wheat production in Asia. It also produced oilseeds, pulses, corn, and millets. Punjabi farmers traditionally practised wheat-focused farming. They didn’t deal with paddy during those days. Therefore, they didn’t need enormous volumes of water on their farmland. Wheat farming – unlike paddy farming – doesn’t require plenty of water for irrigation.
The Green Revolution changed all of that in one clean sweep. Paddy was artificially introduced widely across Punjab, and the farmers were told to deal with only paddy and wheat, and give up growing all other crops.
As a result of this engineering, rice farming increased five times. In contrast, wheat farming went up two times.
Switching to large-scale paddy farming turned out to be a disaster for Punjab because it demanded too much water input. In Punjab, the set-up of irrigation water at that time was only meant to serve as a back-up if groundwater supply failed or the monsoon was bad.
So, to support water-hungry paddy farming, the state’s entire irrigation system needed to be overhauled. But before that could happen, huge quantities of groundwater started getting pumped out just to feed the thirsty paddy farms of Punjab.
In the initial years of the Green Revolution in India, things went well. But 10-15 years onwards, Punjab started sinking into a crisis. Excess water-use for paddy turned into a nightmare. Groundwater started depleting quickly.
In addition, Punjab’s farming families were dragged into using costly chemical fertilisers and artificial pesticides, which they needed to purchase in the past.
The so-called high yield variety seeds (called HYV seeds) of the Green Revolution turned out to be too expensive. These so-called ‘miracle seeds’ didn’t give high production with existing inputs. Instead, they gave lower production with existing inputs.
The new seeds gave high production only when a lot of expensive chemical inputs and enormous quantities of water were used. Therefore, as it emerged, the seeds of the Green Revolution responded well only when the farmers spent a fortune on chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and heavy-duty irrigation systems.
From the 1980s onwards, Punjab’s farmers were caught in a double trap. They are struggling to buy expensive chemical inputs. And at the same time, they started getting blamed by the mainstream media for depleting groundwater through paddy farming.
Enter Monsanto
A prominent foreign agrochemical company that played a key role in India’s Green Revolution was Monsanto. The US company was the leading producer of genetically engineered seeds at that time. It also produced Roundup, a controversial glyphosate-based chemical herbicide. The company used to sell chemical pesticides, and had ambitions to launch genetically modified (GM) food crops in India.
Vandana Shiva believes Monsanto’s products and activities in India harmed agriculture. Monsanto introduced genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds in India, called Bt cotton. It turned out to be a failure in the long run.
In 2017, The Sunday Guardian published an article in which it claims USAID used to work on behalf of Monsanto. The article also says that several years ago, Monsanto wanted to push GM corn in Punjab because paddy farming was causing a groundwater crisis.
That plan to replace paddy with GM corn eventually didn’t take off. As of now, India doesn’t officially grow any GM food crops.
Monsanto has repeatedly denied playing a negative role in India’s farming sector. It refuted the claims made by the controversial Sunday Guardian article.
In 2018, German agrochemical company Bayer took over Monsanto. Bayer later agreed to pay several legal settlements involving some of Monsanto’s products. One of them is Roundup, the herbicide.
Coming back to the timeline of events, the fall of Punjab’s farming sector continued through the 1980s and 1990s, and also after that. Finally, about 15 years ago, it was clear that paddy farming alone was draining Punjab’s groundwater very, very fast.
It was a desperate situation. The Punjab government responded with a desperate measure, bringing in the much-debated law in 2009 – the law that eventually resulted in smoke from Punjab’s burning stubble choking Delhi.
Haryana also brought in a similar law to preserve groundwater.
Basically, both Delhi and Punjab are now stuck in the mud, thanks to the long-term impact of the Green Revolution in India.
First, Punjab was told to switch to paddy farming. But the state started losing its groundwater quickly. A law came into force, rejigging the cultivation cycles to preserve groundwater. But that move coincided with a seasonal change in wind direction. As a result, Delhi became the sitting target of a pollution crisis. In turn, farmers alone are getting demonised for doing what they are supposed to be doing for a living – burning the paddy straw.
The misconception
Folks sitting in the heart of Delhi need to realise that farmers of Punjab are not doing anything criminal. They are burning the stubble so that the wheat farming cycle doesn’t get delayed – so that we don’t have to wait for rotis and chapaatis to land on our plate in time.
All along, the mainstream media, agriculture experts, and government officials don’t tell you that the main culprit behind this poly-crisis is the Punjab episode of the Green Revolution. The whole purpose of this special report is to give you the larger picture of how the West-led Green Revolution ended self-sufficiency in Indian agriculture. And how it also gifted Delhi an annual pollution nuisance that gets blamed on other things – stubble burning, automobiles, construction, and Diwali fireworks.
You must be wondering that there should have been an easy solution to the problem. Why not simply ban stubble burning? That’s what many people in Delhi want and suggest. However, it is the long-term impact of the Green Revolution in India that caused this situation – the wheat-to-paddy switch, and the rescheduling of the paddy-wheat cycle via the 2009 law.
So, a blanket ban on stubble burning alone is not the answer. The deeper or root problem needs to be fixed, and everything else will start falling back into place.
What is the alternative for the paddy farmers if stubble burning is suddenly banned? If the paddy straw is not set on fire, it will take the farmers months to clear the fields. That will delay wheat farming by a long way and upset Punjab’s whole cultivation cycle.
So, a ban on straw burning will definitely end Delhi’s pollution nightmare. But a bigger nightmare will balloon in Punjab’s farming sector. And with your food system that relies on wheat. How? Wheat production will suffer a disruption because of the delay in Punjab’s wheat cultivation cycle.
Is there a way out?
So, is there a way out of this poly-crisis or collective chronic mess? Yes, there is.
The best way out for India, especially Punjab, is to take agriculture back into their own hands. A simple and practical solution is: Punjab should slowly return to wheat-focused farming and stop growing paddy – and that transition needs to be slow and steady. That will make Punjab return to the good old days before the Green Revolution hit its farmland. There will be a healthy balance of wheat, millets, corn, oilseeds, and pulses. Other parts of India, meanwhile, can grow the paddy necessary for the country’s consumption needs.
Punjab’s groundwater crisis will end. With paddy out of the scene, there will be no requirement for stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana. And so, there will be no smoke-related pollution crisis in Delhi. Both the problems will be resolved: farming crisis in Punjab and pollution crisis in Delhi.
To make this happen, authorities need to stop foreign interventions and end the Green Disruption. That will be the start of the real Green Revolution.
(An earlier version of the article was published on November 14, 2023.)
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