Green Revolution and Regional Inequalities

HYVP was initiated on a small area of 1.89 million hectares in 1966-67 and was limited to the irrigated Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh. Naturally, the benefits of the new technology remained concentrated in this area only. Moreover, since green revolution remained limited to wheat for a number of years, its benefits mostly accrued to areas growing wheat. Even this is an overstatement because within the area under wheat in HYVP, only regions having assured water supply and a package of other inputs (on whose -availability the success of HYVP crucially depends) derived benefits from the new agricultural strategy. In fact, the combined share of Northern States (Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh) in total foodgrains production increased from 25.2 per cent during 1960-62 to 28.5 per cent during 1972-74 and further to 38.7 per cent during 2004-05 to 2006-07. As against this, the share of all other State-groups registered a decline. One account of the above reasons, it has been argued that the new agricultural strategy has led to an increase in regional inequalities.