Green Revolution: Agricultural and Social Change in a North Indian Village-- Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History Number 85

312 Pages·1965·3.66 MB·English

by  Stanley A. Freed

G R
REEN EVOLUTION
A S C
GRICULTURAL AND OCIAL HANGE
IN A
N I V
ORTH NDIAN ILLAGE
Stanley A. Freed
Curator Emeritus, Department of Anthropology
American Museum of Natural History
Ruth S. Freed
Research Associate, Department of Anthropology
American Museum of Natural History
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PAPERS OF
THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
NUMBER 85, 312 PAGES, 63 FIGURES, 6 TABLES
ISSUED DECEMBER 2002
ABSTRACT
In the mid-1960s, rural India passed through a period of rapid technological
and social change known as the Green Revolution. It was the transition from
basically subsistence peasant farming at a low technological level to expen-
sive commercial farming with modern technology. Five major sociotechno-
logical innovations were basic to the Green Revolution: the development of
high-yielding varieties of food grains, especially wheat and rice; land consoli-
dation; private tubewell irrigation; mechanization; and the use of factory fer-
tilizers and pesticides. New sources of energy, electricity and the internal com-
bustion engine, which replaced bullock power, and the financial infrastructure
that enabled farmers to buy the new equipment—tractors, tubewells, and
threshers—represented a fundamental change. If the Green Revolution is taken
in its broadest sense to include much higher educational levels and new
employment opportunities in modern occupations, then the economy of Shanti
Nagar, whose principal component is still agriculture, has been transformed.
This work is the 11th in a series of monographs, all published in the
Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, devoted
to the description and analysis of life in Shanti Nagar (a pseudonym), a village
in the Union Territory of Delhi. Our research is based on holistic fieldwork
carried out in the village in 1957–1959 and 1977–1978, dates which make it
possible to compare the village just before and after the Green Revolution. The
most visible results of the Green Revolution were substantially increased pro-
duction of the new high-yielding varieties of grain and increased prosperity for
farmers, and indeed for almost all villagers. Because of the Green Revolution
and associated developments in education and employment, the villagers of
Shanti Nagar now lead a modern style of rural life supplemented by urban
employment. These changes have also had the effect of enhancing equality,
one of India’s greatly desired social goals.
COVER ILLUSTRATION
Women winnowing wheat in 1958, before the Green Revolution of the mid-
1960s.
Copyright © American Museum of Natural History 2002
ISSN 0065-9452
CONTENTS
LISTS OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS v
PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION 1
Shanti Nagar: An Overview 1
Fieldwork, 1957–1959 8
Return to Shanti Nagar 13
The Green Revolution 19
1: LAND AND MODES OF CULTIVATION 31
Area and Ownership by Caste 31
Consolidation 35
Comparison with Land Consolidation in Peyrane, France 48
Transfer of Title and Mortgage 64
Modes of Cultivation, Land, and Labor: 1950s 82
Modes of Cultivation, Land, and Labor: 1970s 91
2: AGRICULTURE, KHARIF SEASON 101
Sugarcane 103
Tomatoes versus Sugarcane 115
Tomato Cultivation 117
Delhi Vegetable Market 125
Finance 130
Jowar 133
Bajra 135
Paddy 138
Maize 145
Cotton 146
San, Sani, and Daincha 148
Gowar and Lobiya 151
3: AGRICULTURE: FLOWERS, FRUIT, AND TREES 152
4: AGRICULTURE, RABI SEASON 161
Wheat 161
Wheat, 1958, from Plowing to Harvest 165
Wheat, 1977–1978, from Plowing to Harvest 175
Wheat, 1958, from Harvest to Storage and Sale 194
Wheat, 1978, from Harvest to Storage and Sale 200
Barley 219
iv CONTENTS
Clover (Berseem) and Oats 219
Peas 220
Additional (zaid) Rabi 221
5: DOMESTIC ANIMALS 226
Bullocks 228
Male Water Buffalo 230
Zebu and Buffalo Cows 234
6: THE SECOND GREEN REVOLUTION:
GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS 250
7: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 263
APPENDIX 269
Transcription of Hindi Words and Nomenclature 269
Money and Measures 270
NOTES 272
REFERENCES 281
INDEX AND GLOSSARY 287
TABLES
1. Population of Shanti Nagar by Caste in 1958–1959 and 1977–1978. 7
2. Education (Years) by Gender, Caste, and Age, 1958–1959 and
1977–1978. 18
3. Land Transfers. 65
4. Families Renting in Land (in bighas) and Their Landlords,
1977–1978. 86–87
5. Cattle in Shanti Nagar by Date of Study. 169
6. Cultivating Families by Number of Bullocks and Average Amount
of Land Cultivated. 229
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Map of Shanti Nagar. 2
2. Sketch map of Shanti Nagar, 1958–1959. 4
3. Sketch map of Shanti Nagar, 1977–1978. 5
4. Cartoon, Charles explains land consolidation. 50
5. Cartoon, French policy of developing the countryside. 53
6. Delhi urban agglomeration. 62
7. Tea shop. 97
8. Planting sugarcane. 104
9. Standard wooden plow. 105
10. Cultivating and weeding sugarcane. 108
11. Sugarcane crusher. 109
12. Making gur. 111
13. Sugarcane crusher, cooling tray, and hut. 112
14. Saving tomato seeds. 118
15. Picking tomatoes. 122
16. Sorting and packing tomatoes. 123
17. Loading tomatoes into cart. 126
18. Opening baskets of tomatoes at the vegetable market. 127
19. Sales agent settling accounts. 130
20. Farmer on platform driving away birds. 136
21. Farmer on ground hurling pellets with a sling. 136
22. Threshing bajra. 137
23. Watering rice seedlings. 140
24. Woman drawing water for rice seedlings. 141
25. Threshing paddy with baskets. 142
26. Threshing paddy with low earthen mound. 143
27. Spinning cotton. 147
v
vi TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
28. Transplanting onions. 156
29. Transplanting tobacco. 157
30. Cooking bread. 159
31. Bullocks plowing. 165
32. Camel plowing. 166
33. Leveling a field. 167
34. Women carrying headloads of grass. 168
35. Sowing gochni. 172
36. Sowing wheat. 173
37. Tractor rigged for plowing. 175
38. Smoothing a plowed field. 176
39. Irrigating a wheat field. 180
40. Tractor rigged for making bunds. 181
41. Broadcasting fertilizer. 188
42. Wheat seeder. 189
43. Sowing a wheat field. 189
44. Women harvesting wheat. 194
45. Gleaning in a wheat field. 195
46. Threshing wheat with bullocks and no drag. 196
47. Threshing wheat with a drag of brush. 196
48. Threshing wheat with a stone roller. 197
49. Women winnowing wheat. 198
50. Wheat chaff stored outdoors. 199
51. Woman harvesting wheat, 1978. 201
52. Paying the harvesters. 204
53. Loading wheat sheaves onto a trolley. 207
54. Feeding wheat sheaves into a thresher. 208
55. Threshing mustard with a stick. 213
56. Sohan Lal’s partially dismantled chaff pile. 216
57. Manually operated fodder cutter. 239
58. Powered fodder cutter. 239
59. Woman loading dung onto a tray. 240
60. Making thin dungcakes. 241
61. Large dungcakes drying on the ground. 242
62. Girl milking a water buffalo. 243
63. Woman churning buffalo milk. 245
PREFACE
WITH A POPULATION that recently passed the one billion mark, India will soon
become the most populous nation on earth. India is still predominantly rural; about
75% of her people live in some 560,000 villages spread over more than three million
square kilometers of variegated terrain. So many villages spread over such a vast ter-
ritory means that there can be no typical Indian village. On the other hand, every vil-
lage is in some ways typical of India. Believing that India could best be understood
by studying life in one of her many villages, we settled in Shanti Nagar in 1958 to
begin fieldwork that was ultimately to extend over two decades. When analysis and
writing are taken into account, we have devoted the better part of 45 years to trying
to explain why this small place is worthy of notice.
One reason is our belief that life in Shanti Nagar is generally typical of a large
populous and prosperous rural region that extends from Punjab and Haryana to west-
ern Uttar Pradesh. The north Indian plain is one of the world’s great agricultural
regions. One of today’s major global problems is managing the complex relations of
sustainable food production and secure access of every person to basic nutritional
requirements while population increases and the natural resource base may be
impaired, for example, by “mining” the soil and/or by lowering the water table. Daily
and her colleagues argued that the problem has to be studied at the local level. “The
influence of household decisions is felt through local interactions ... and thence
upward globally.... Fine-tuning a system as complex as the food system ... will
require much more detailed local information than is typically available today” (Daily
et al., 1998: 1292). A reliable, practical understanding of the social and environmen-
tal milieu of food production needs the local perspective in the form of comprehen-
sive village studies.
The study of Shanti Nagar is important for another reason. From the 1950s to
the 1970s, rural life in North India was marked by rapid social and technological
change. In this regard, Shanti Nagar probably represents many, if not most, villages
of the region. Although many aspects of village life were strongly affected during the
period—for example, education, employment, and intercaste relations—change in
agriculture, the economic base of village life, has attracted the most attention. Even
the term, “Green Revolution”, as the recent agricultural change is called, has a dra-
matic air and compels interest.
vii
viii PREFACE
At the heart of the Green Revolution was the development of high-yielding
hybrid varieties of wheat and rice, the basic food grains. Other features of the Green
Revolution, such as land consolidation or mechanization, can to some extent be seen
as enabling developments that permitted the full exploitation of the new high-yielding
varieties. But whatever may be the connection of the new varieties and another devel-
opment, such as the large-scale introduction of tractors, either of them could have
taken place without the other. The temporal proximity of mechanization and the new
seeds was partly fortuitous. Thus, either of the two events could be studied with lit-
tle regard for the other, but for a more complete understanding, their relations have
to be taken into account.
Yet another reason for taking an interest in Shanti Nagar is that the village rep-
resents the peasant style of life, which for millennia has characterized much of human-
ity. Peasant life is changing, both in India and elsewhere. Forming part of a larger soci-
ety, peasant communities have limited power. It would be almost impossible for
unaided villagers to transform quickly their economic, political, or social institutions.
The source of power and change resides with the nation. Thus, the study of peasant
communities requires that attention be paid to national goals, policies, and politics.
A study of peasantry has to operate on two levels: the village itself and the state.
The people of Shanti Nagar accept, modify, or resist the policies enacted in
Delhi. Villagers are not passive. They carefully examine governmental projects, select
what is useful, resist harmful policies, and generally ignore laws that the Govern-
ment does not intend to implement—at least not soon. Such triage may be the prin-
cipal general feature of social change in peasant societies. Intellectually, it is a decep-
tively simple concept. As it plays out in a particular village, it is seen to be intricate,
subtle, and important both for villagers and governmental functionaries.
What has happened in Shanti Nagar is relevant to its immediate region, but is
it pertinent to changes in peasant life elsewhere? Only comparison with regions that
have little or no connection with North India can place Shanti Nagar in a broader
context and lead to useful generalizations. Moreover, comparison serves to control
the tendency to generalize a particular case. For example, land consolidation and the
widespread use of tractors go together in Shanti Nagar and its immediate area, and
the connection appears to be logical. Tractors are inefficient when used on small
plots of land, and therefore land consolidation is almost necessary. Is this proposi-
tion generally true? Only a comparative study can give an answer. Comparison is most
useful when it is made between two countries that are dissimilar in culture, history,
and social structure, for then contrasts are sharper and the importance of context is
highlighted.
For purposes of comparison, we have selected the village of Peyrane in the Vau-
cluse in southern France. Wylie (1964) studied Peyrane during the 1950s, the decade
of our first residence in Shanti Nagar. The 1950s in France and India were obviously
different, but nonetheless the correspondence in time of the two studies suggests a
point of departure. However, our choice of Peyrane was largely circumstantial. It hap-
pened that we read Wylie’s book while in the early stages of writing this report, and
life in Peyrane brought to mind Marcel Pagnol’s novel, Jean de Florette(Pagnol, 1988),
the tale of two hard, shrewd peasants who schemed successfully to take over valuable
PREFACE ix
land from its ingenuous owner. Set in a rural community near the Vaucluse, Pagnol’s
story, with a few adjustments, could easily have taken place in a north Indian village.
Wylie’s study reinforced our feeling of déjà vu, that we were already familiar with life
in a French village because of what we had seen in India. We are sure that the villagers
of Peyrane and Shanti Nagar would have understood each other very well.
Besides the similarities of livelihood and philosophy of life, there is a direct link
between French and Indian peasants. Some 850,000 Indian soldiers left the subcon-
tinent for service in World War I. Indian troops were in action on the Western Front
in late October, 1914 (Gilbert, 1994: 93–94, 245).1 Sir Malcolm Darling, who served
in the Indian Civil Service from 1904 to 1940, attributes changes in Punjab since the
First World War to the influence of returning veterans and to postwar prosperity:
Many of these changes [e.g., the growing popularity of brick houses] are
due to the war, which revealed to the Indian villager who served in France
an entirely new standard of housing and comfort. He saw there with aston-
ishment and envy how well the peasant proprietor can live, and, return-
ing to his village, beheld its cattle-shed life with a tinge of disgust.... In
France he saw an entirely new order of rural life, and realized with sur-
prise that the village could be as civilized as the town. He found the French
peasant educated, prosperous, and independent, and for the first time he
felt a discontent with his own surroundings, which has been slowly grow-
ing ever since. [Darling, 1978: 140, 263]
Our mode of anthropology is ethnographic, heavy on detailed description orga-
nized in standard categories (e.g., the family, caste, economy, etc.). This orientation
lends itself well to functional analysis, an explanation of social phenomena in terms
of their functions and their connections to other institutions. This approach usually
yields a picture of a more or less well-integrated, smoothly functioning society or spe-
cific unit of a larger society, such as a village. Unabashed functionalism is sometimes
considered old fashioned, but it is one of the bases of solid enduring ethnography. One
of our distinguished professors, the late Robert Murphy, used to say, “In the field, every-
one is a functionalist.” This approach is as useful in a New York office as in the field.
Our functionalism does not result in a synchronic, static, idealized model of
society. It would be impossible to study Indian life without taking into account India’s
long history, for village life at any moment is a complex of customs centuries or even
millennia old, as well as artifacts and institutions of recent vintage. Our analysis goes
well beyond a narrowly conceived functionalism, restricted to the culture and soci-
ety of this one village, to broader environmental, historical, political, symbolic, and
areal contexts. Moreover, the conflicts and tensions of village life are not passed over
in silence. Arguments, lawsuits, fights, and even murders are constant features of vil-
lage life.
Our ethnographic style has been strongly influenced by over 40 years of work
in a museum. Museum work is based on ethnography, the more detailed, the better.
We still vividly remember the “culture shock” of passing from the world of universi-
ties to museums. Suddenly we found ourselves reading monographs, a kind of publi-
cation now generally considered somewhat anachronistic, written by anthropologists
x PREFACE
who had been rarely—if at all—mentioned in graduate school. It may be less true
today, but university anthropologists for many years tended to regard museum anthro-
pology as outmoded. A year after we joined the American Museum in 1960, one of
our ex-professors asked, “When are you going to go out and get a real job?”
We remain strongly oriented toward descriptive ethnography, not out of loyalty
to a “museum tradition”, but chiefly because the value of detailed ethnography grows
rather than diminishes in the course of time. Description has a faintly pejorative air
in anthropology. The principal kudos are awarded to ideas and theory. However, full
description, which includes interpersonal variation and considerable attention to spe-
cific context, opens the door to the study of change and process. Although the con-
text is literary, Nadeau succintly makes this point in his preface to Madame Bovary:
“Mr. B ... reproaches Flaubert for his descriptive zeal without understanding that the
scrupulous attention that the author devotes to describing ‘little things’ has as its goal
the capturing of life in perpetual change and susceptible at every moment to diverse,
even contradictory, interpretations” (Nadeau, 1972: 16–17).
We nonetheless think it prudent to offer a few words of commentary about the
current climate of opinion in anthropology, for any substantial research effort will
be judged not only by its contribution to the understanding of the subject under
study, but also to some extent in terms of the present anthropological ambience. Many
anthropologists are concerned and disturbed by the colonial context of pre–World
War II anthropology. This postcolonial anguish probably has its origin in a feeling of
cognitive dissonance. It is the disjunction between the paternalism of colonialism and
the avowed confrontation of postcolonial times. Adams writes of his experiences on
the Navajo Indian reservation where he grew up and later did ethnographic fieldwork:
[T]he benevolent paternalism I knew is gone. White man and Indian meet
today as adult to adult, on a footing of avowed confrontation.... I have
trouble accepting the paved roads and the motels and the tourist traps, but
it is far more unsettling to find no surviving trace of the society and the
culture in which I grew up.... As good anthropologists we should prop-
erly be able to accept the inevitability of social change.... Yet I am struck
by how few of us have been able to do effective field work among the same
people both in the colonial and in the post-colonial eras.... The cognitive
shift required of us is too great. [Adams, 1986: 24–25]
Our professional experiences parallel those of Adams. We are of his generation;
we worked with American Indians during the 1950s, as did he; and we even carried
out a small project among the Navajo in the mid-1960s. We did not have similar emo-
tional reactions, partly because the research circumstances were different, partly
because of personality differences. Our first work was with the Washoe Indians, a very
small tribe living in a few small scattered settlements with almost no governmental
officials or traders constantly on the scene and but one rather unobtrusive mission-
ary. The Washoe suffered the ethnic indignities common at the time, but colonial-
ism seems too grand a term to apply in their case.
The Navajo were different, a tribe numbering some 80,000 members in the mid-
1950s and 93,000 in the early 1960s (Johnston, 1966: 138, table 7)2 with a reserva-