Empowering Small Farmers in India through Organic Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation

Empowering Small Farmers in India through Organic Agriculture
and Biodiversity Conservation
Anna Marie Nicolaysen, Ph.D.
University of Connecticut, 2012
“Empowering Small Farmers in India through Organic Agriculture and Biodiversity
Conservation” investigates how, through conversion to organic agriculture, with its
postulated socioeconomic, environmental and health benefits, and through biodiversity
conservation, by, for example, creating community seed banks, local farming
organizations enable and empower small farmers to become independent and self-
sufficient. Local farming organizations are defined as movements to improve the
economic, health, and social status of independent farmers in the face of global
agribusiness through the adoption of sustainable agriculture. I explore the philosophy of
these organizations; the agricultural and political ideas they transmit; the challenges they
face in involving small farmers; and how farmers who become involved assess this
experience.
Fieldwork for this study was carried out during 2007 and 2008 in the Indian states of
Punjab, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. Living in villages in these states–
approximately three months per state–I completed 89 in-depth and 16 focus group
interviews with female and male farmers, and with the farming organizations’ staff, for a
total of 250 participants. Interviews and field observations, primarily those carried out in
Punjab and Uttarakhand, constitute the data for this dissertation.

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I found that farmers who get involved with these organizations do perceive that their
food security is improved through conservation and the revival of traditional crops.
Additionally their economic situation is strengthened with less expenditure on inputs
such as seed, chemical pesticides, or mineral fertilizers. Finally, it is argued, training
provided by these organizations prepares farmers, many of whom become more self-
reliant and confident individuals, to stand up for their democratic rights in the midst of
the formidable power of globalized corporate agriculture.
This study contributes to a growing understanding among small farmers, researchers
and international human rights and farming-focused organizations (e.g., the United
Nations Human Rights Council and the Food and Agriculture Organization), of how
reinvestment in sustainable agriculture is vital to the realization of the right to food, and
to rural economic development, issues that were accentuated by the 2008 global food
price crisis and current return to a pattern of rising food prices that are reaching 2008
levels.

Anna Marie Nicolaysen
Cand. Mag. (B.A.), University of Oslo, 1997
M.A., Northern Arizona University, 2000
A Dissertation
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
at the
University of Connecticut
2012

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© Anna Marie Nicolaysen, 2012
The author has granted ProQuest/UMI a non-exclusive right to reproduce and
disseminate this work through the UMI® Publishing Agreement.
The author retains ownership of the copyright in this dissertation.
Neither the dissertation nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise
reproduced without the author’s permission.

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APPROVAL PAGE
Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation
Presented by
Anna Marie Nicolaysen, B.A., M.A.
Major Advisor __________________________________________
Merrill Singer
Associate Advisor ________________________________________
Samuel Martinez
Associate Advisor ________________________________________
Alexia Smith
University of Connecticut
2012

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Acknowledgements
My first thoughts and gratitude go to all the farmers and the people working in the
farmers’ organizations in India, who happily participated in my research, generously gave
of their time, and accommodated me in the villages. The best part of India is its resilient
people, who struggle and thrive despite abject poverty and widespread corruption.
I would like to thank my major advisor, Dr. Merrill Singer, who was my professional
mentor and colleague before I entered the Ph.D. program and my major advisor during
most of this endeavor; his interest in my research and his contributions and suggestions
have made this dissertation what it is. I would also like to thank my other committee
members; Dr. Alexia Smith, for many constructive alterations and much appreciated
encouragement, and Dr. Samuel Martinez.
I am obliged that I was given the opportunity to work as a research assistant for Dr.
Pamela Erickson and Dr. Merrill Singer, and a teaching assistant or instructor during all
but one of my years at the University of Connecticut. I would like to thank the Head of
the Anthropology Department, Dr. Sally McBrearty, for offering me the valuable
teaching experience and Terese Andrews for making it all work smoothly with her
friendly help in the office. I also extend my thankfulness to the University of
Connecticut and its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for awarding me the CLAS
Dean’s Fund Graduate Fellowship in April 2011 and to the Graduate School for giving
me both a Doctoral Student Extraordinary Expense Award in the summer of 2009 and the
Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship Award in the fall of 2008. I appreciate the Norwegian
State Educational Loan Fund granting me travel funds for annual travel between Norway

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and the United States from the Spring semester 2009 through the Fall semester 2010, as
well as travel funds for my fieldwork in India during 2008.
It was my friend, and colleague at the time, Dr. Claudia Santelices, who inspired me
to start taking classes while she was still a graduate student at the University of
Connecticut. I would like to thank her for her personal and academic interest in and help
with this undertaking.
My mother, Bjørg, is the person who made this possible with her backing in all
aspects and almost endless patience. My father Reidar, who was also always very
supportive of my education, sadly passed away shortly after I started my M.A. program.
I would like to thank my siblings, Øystein, Bente, and Atle, for their help and support and
my sister-in-law, Monica, for her interest in my work.
I am grateful to Dr. Kuldeep Singh Punian for his belief in my abilities,
encouragement, friendship, and affection. I would also like to thank my friends Line
Kampe and Erna Skaug in Norway, Gilbert Ramos, Ashwinee Sadanand, Dr. Sadanand
Nanjundiah, Chris Ogolla and Dr. Evelyn Phillips in the United States, Yoko Ishikawa
and Dr. Kyoko Murakami in Japan, and Josephine Packiam, Jaspal Singh and Abdul
Nasir in India for their support. In addition I appreciate Abdul Nasir’s skills as a research
assistant and his and Mohammad Yusuf’s efficient translation and transcription of my
interviews from Punjab and Uttarakhand.
Last, but not least, I would like to thank Dr. Ernesto Gutierrez-Miravéte for very
useful discussions and comments during the final months of the writing process and
defense preparations and his wife Sylvia Jalil-Gutierrez. All the encouragement and
support is very much appreciated and I could not have completed this task without it.

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Dedication
To my mother, Bjørg, who made this possible with her help in every way,
and to my nieces Mona and Kajsa and nephews Eirik and Mikael:
may they enjoy a biodiverse future.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Abstract
Title ...…...……………………………………………………………………………...… i
Copyright ..…………………..…………………………………………………………....ii
Approval Page ………………...………………………………………………………... iii
Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………....... iv-v
Dedication ...……………...…………………………………………………...………… vi
Table of Contents .……………………………………………………….……...…... vii-ix
List of Acronyms and Glossary ..………………………………………………………x-xi
Map of India …………………………………………………………………………… xii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1
Context of the Study 1
Hunger and Food Riots 1
Trade 3
Global Warming and Farming 8
False Solutions 10
Gender Inequality and Health 14
Motivation for this Study 16
Fieldwork 20
Getting Access to the Farmers 22
Challenges 24
Interviews 25
Ethical Issues 27
Organization and Selection of States 29
CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 33
Early Agriculture 33
Empires Built on Agriculture 35
Colonization 35
Revenue and Landownership 36
Illiteracy 37
Agriculture Suffers 39
Canals, Famines, and Malaria 40
Independence and Partition 42
Land Reform? 43
Continued Marginalization of Agriculture 45
Political Background of the Green Revolution 46
The Green Revolution 48
Critique of the Green Revolution 50
Agricultural Policies and Poverty 52

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CHAPTER THREE: PUNJAB 55
The Green Revolution and its Discontents 55
Introduction 55
Environmental Consequences 62
Implications for Agriculture 64
Effects on Human Health 70
Economic and Social Implications 82
Farmers’ Organizations with an Alternative 91
Training of Farmers 94
Conversion to Organic Agriculture 97
Barriers to Conversion 98
Changes after Conversion 100
Continued Challenges 105
Conclusion 110
CHAPTER FOUR: UTTARAKHAND 111
Mountain Agriculture and Agroforestry 111
Introduction 111
Forests and Social Movements 120
Navdanya in Uttarakhand 124
Environmental Consequences 128
Uncertainty of Income Due to Climate Change 132
Farmers’ Experience with Organic Agriculture 136
Training of Farmers 139
Conversion to Organic Agriculture 159
Changes After Conversion 152
Activism at Navdanya 154
Hybrid Seeds 156
Seed Saving 158
Marketing Organic Crops 161
Continued Challenges 164
Conclusion 168
CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION 171
Contrastive Experiences with and
Reactions to the Green Revolution 171
General Overview 171
A Second Green Biotechnology Revolution 176
The Alternatives 181
Kheti Virasat and Navdanya 183
Seed Banks 183
Local Knowledge and Climate Change 186
Environmental Degradation and Organic Agriculture 188
Food Security 191

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A Romanticized Past? 192
Traditional Gender Roles 196
Backward and Anti-Modern? 198
The Agrarian Question 202
CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION 206
Key Findings 206
Significance of Findings 211
Thoughts about the Future 214
APPENDIX: Interview Guidelines 217
REFERENCES: 221

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LIST OF ACRONYMS:
AIIMS All India Institute of Medical Services
AKST Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology
AoA Agreement on Agriculture
B.C.E. Before the Common Era
BDO Block Development Officer
BHC Benzene Hexa Chloride
BKU Bharatiya Kisan Union (Indian Farmers’ Union)
BSE Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
Bt Bacillus thuringiensis
C.E. Common Era
CIKS Center for Indigenous Knowledge Systems
CIS Center for Interdisciplinary Studies
CPI Communist Party of India
DAP Di-Ammonium Phosphate
DDT Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane
DNA Deoxyribonucleic Acid
DRCSC Development Research Communication and Services Centre
EED Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (Church Development Service)
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GHG Greenhouse Gas
GM Genetically Modified
GNP Gross National Product
GR Green Revolution
GWP Global Warming Potential
HCH Hexa Chlorocyclohexane
HYV High Yielding Varieties
IAASTD International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and
Technology for Development
IFOAM International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements
IGADA Indo-German Agriculture Development Agency
IMF International Monetary Fund
IMO Institute for Marketecology
IMR Infant Mortality Rate
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change
IPM Integrated Pest Management
IPR Intellectual Property Rights
IRB Institutional Review Board
IT Information Technology
JFM Joint Forest Management
LPG Liberalization, Privatization, and Globalization
MAPs Medicinal and Aromatic Plants

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MSP Minimum Support Price
NGO Non Governmental Organization
NOFA Northeast Organic Farming Association
NSDP Net State Domestic Product
PAU Punjab Agricultural University
PBR People’s Biodiversity Registers
PKZU Punjab Khetibari Zamindara Union
(Punjab Agricultural Landholder’s Union)
REDD Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation
RFSTE Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology
SEZ Special Economic Zones
UN United Nations
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
UOBC Uttarakhand Organic Commodity Board
UPL United Phosphorus Limited
USAID United States Agency International Development
USOCA Uttarakhand State Organic Certification Agency
WB World Bank
WHO World Health Organization
WRI World Resources Institute
WTO World Trade Organization
GLOSSARY:
Bigha 1 bigha = between one-fifth and two fifths of an acre
Desi In the context of agriculture desi refers to native or traditional breed
(of e.g. cattle)
Jan Life of the soil
Lassi Traditional yoghurt-based drink
Paddy Rice in the field, or after harvesting before the husk and bran has been
removed
Ryotwari Tax system where peasants pay tax directly to the government
Quintal 1 quintal = 100 kilogram
Urea Nitrogen
Zamindars Landlords
Rs. Rupees (Rs. 50.00 ≈ $1.00)

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MAP OF INDIA
The four fieldwork states: Punjab, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Context of the Study
Hunger and Food Riots
In the world today, almost one billion people are hungry, over 70 percent of the
people suffering hunger are rural, and around 80 percent of these are either working on a
farm, or are farmers themselves (IFAD 2011). These people depend upon agriculture for
their livelihoods, but loss of soil fertility, climate change, water shortage and higher cost
of obtaining water for irrigation where available, low rates paid in exchange for their
produce, rapidly increasing prices on fertilizers, pesticides, and seed, and loss of
biological and agrobiological diversity, all present critical challenges to millions of small
farmers. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there are 530
million farms in the world, where 40 percent of the world’s population make a living.
Eighty-five percent of these are small farms, defined as having less than two hectares of
land, but because of their considerable number they occupy about 60 percent of the
world’s arable land (FAO 2008). The world population reached equal distribution
between rural and urban locations in 2008, and in addition to the poor farmers, poverty in
urban areas is also increasing (UNFPA 2007), despite the United Nations (UN)
Millennium Development Goals and other international bodies’ aims at reducing it.
Despite the low rates paid to small farmers in many developing countries, the food
price index calculated by the FAO rose by nine percent in 2006, and leaped by nearly 40
percent in 2007, a trend encompassing almost every agricultural product. The wheat

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price in the international market more than tripled since 2000, and the maize price more
than doubled. In the first months of 2008 prices continued to increase, and in March
2008 rice reached record levels (von Braun 2008). Various forces drove this sharp price
increase. These include higher costs for energy, increasingly intertwined with the
mechanical cultivation of agribusiness and its inputs and massive shifts in cultivation
towards subsidized biofuel feedstock like maize—rather than soybean and wheat—
among U.S. farmers. Higher demand for grains used to feed livestock for meat
production, globally, and lastly commodity speculation and poor weather also contributed
to the escalation. In Australia, for example, severe drought for years has reduced the
country’s generally large contribution to the total world wheat harvest (Schneider 2008;
von Braun 2008). Changing patterns in the timing and amount of rainfall affect food
prices, as rainfed farming makes up 80 percent of the world’s croplands, and produces
about 70 percent of the world’s food (Castillo, et al. 2007).
The impact of the price hike has had radically different effects across countries, and
although some net exporters benefited, Argentina, China, India, Mexico and Russia
among others restricted exports to protect consumers. Net food importers on the other
hand struggled to meet domestic food demands. There were hunger riots during 2008 in
over 25 countries, mainly in Africa, where almost all countries were net importers of
cereals, but also in Asia, the Americas and the Caribbean, and the Middle East (Schneider
2008). The price hike caused political instability in Haiti, Egypt, the Philippines and
Indonesia where, as in most places, it harmed the poor the most, limiting their diet and
making it even less balanced, and affecting health in the short and long term.

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Discussing the food riots, Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank (WB), said
to the New York Times in April 2008, “We have to put our money where our mouth is
now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that” (Weisman 2008).
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then managing director of the IMF admitted in the same article
that the food crisis poses questions about the survivability of democracy and political
regimes; “As we know in the past, sometimes those questions lead to war,” he said, “we
now need to devote 100 percent of our time to these questions” (Weisman 2008). At the
same time other leaders such as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned against the
dangers of protectionism in his remarks to the 12th UN Conference on Trade and
Development, in Accra, (Ghana) in April 2008. According to Ban Ki-moon, “More
trade, not less, will get us out of the hole we’re in” (Ban 2008). But the roots of the
global food crisis are deep, and quick responses as well as a continuation of current
policies could do great harm in the long run. Without appropriately diagnosing the
causes of the crisis, well-intentioned treatments could fail or even exacerbate the
problem.
Trade
Many small farmers around the world, such as the members of Vía Campesina
(translates into The Peasants’ Way), a global movement of 148 farmers’ organizations in
69 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, would argue against Ban Ki-moon
when it comes to trade in agricultural products. They contend that shipping more food
around the world only increases the price, and the carbon footprint (Vía Campesina
2007b), and they encourage farmer NGOs to discuss and promote alternatives to

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neoliberal policies for achieving food security. For small farmers and their organizations,
the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994
provided the forum where the international trade agreements that would create major
changes to the structure of their agricultural economies and rural communities were
sealed. The GATT, which created the WTO, seriously altered the relationship between
farmers’ organizations and the state, because from this point on control over national
agricultural policies was passed on to the WTO. In 1995, when the WTO’s Agreement
on Agriculture (AoA) came into force many countries, that until then had been producing
enough food to feed themselves, were required to open their markets to agricultural
products from abroad (Lyson 2005). Mexico started importing maize, Indonesia rice, and
Europe soya, to mention a few examples. The United States became the major exporter
of cereals, and Australia and New Zealand of dairy products. Since that time, most state
regulations concerning buffer stocks, prices, production, and import and export controls,
have gradually been dismantled. As a result, small farmers around the world have not
been able to compete on the world market; rather they collapsed as economic units
(Welch and Graham 1999; Wise 2009). The focus on export left the majority of the rural
poor vulnerable to volatile market conditions and international competition with
subsidized producers in the global North. The globalization of agriculture concentrated
market power away from local producers and into the hands of a limited number or large-
scale trade and retail agribusiness companies. Not only small farmers in the global South
felt the impact of trade liberalization. Farming no longer dominates the rural economy in
the United States. Between 1995 and 2000, 38,000 small farms went out of business and
between 1990 and 2000, farming dependent counties were reduced from 618 to 420

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(among the more than 2,000 non-metropolitan counties) (Ghelfi and McGranahan 2004),
and the debt of the U.S. farm sector was an estimated $240 billion at the end of 2008
(Harris, et al. 2009). In Europe, 20–25 percent of farms disappeared between 1995 and
2005. Central and Eastern Europe were hardest hit during this period, where new
member-states in the European Union (EU) such as Poland lost 30 percent, Estonia 43
percent, Latvia 47 percent, and Lithuania 49 percent of their farms respectively.
Significant reductions were also registered among the old member-states in the West, in
Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and France. From 1998–2003, the
number of farms in Norway decreased by 18 percent (Chivu, et al. 2005).
The globalization of agriculture, from the Green Revolution (GR) through the
development of international structural adjustment programs, regional free trade
agreements, and the WTOs Agreement on Agriculture, was officially aimed at improving
productivity and making large and small-scale farming more prosperous. The idea
driving these changes was that through increased trade and leveled playing fields, the
competition would make the world’s food producers more effective, farmers would
improve their conditions, resulting in a decrease in food scarcity and hunger. However,
the globalization has led to the spread of non-sustainable industrial agriculture, the
destruction of small farmers’ livelihoods, and a dramatic reduction in their incomes as
they experience declining terms of trade and competition with low-cost producers.
Discussing the modern transformations of agriculture, Richard Manning, in his book
Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization, which is based largely on
anthropological work on agriculture through time, concludes that “I have come to think

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of agriculture not as farming, but as a dangerous and consuming beast of a social system”
(Manning 2004:119).
In India, where approximately six hundred million people are farmers, the
globalization of agriculture has been exemplified during the last few decades by small
farmers affected in a drastic way by the introduction of the new paradigm of business-like
food production, an approach in which indigenous crops and knowledge are being set
aside in favor of monoculture practices directed by international agriculture-related
industries (Shiva, et al. 2004; Upreti and Upreti 2002). In several parts of the country the
village economy is in crisis. The number of landless rural farmers had already increased
from around 28 to over 50 million between 1951 and the 1990s (Datt and Ravallion
2002), and almost eight million people left agriculture between 1991 and 2001 according
to the last census (Kapur 2010). Loss of status, uncertainty of income, indebtedness, and
unfulfilled needs are among the factors that drove mostly men and youth to search for
opportunities elsewhere. While they often end up unemployed in urban slum areas,
lacking skills and subsisting through the poorly-paid informal sector, women, the elderly,
children and youth have been left on the margins of economic, social, and political life in
the village (Akram-Lodhi 2009; WDR 2007).
The Chairman of the National Commission of Farmers (government of India),
agricultural scientist, M.S. Swaminathan has expressed regrets about the decades of
ecological neglect and the increasing unsustainability of farming in India. He is often
referred to as the father of India’s GR, but in his foreword to Raman’s Agricultural
Sustainability he now admits to “a growing understanding of the harm done to the basic
life-support systems of soil, water, biodiversity, forests, and the atmosphere by

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ecologically insensitive technologies and public policies” (Raman 2006:xiv). He also
coined the term “Evergreen Revolution,” defined as improving productivity without
associated ecological or social harm, in order to emphasize that yield improvement
should be environmentally sustainable (Raman 2006). One expression of the crisis in
Indian agriculture is that almost 200,000 farmers committed suicide between 1995 and
2009, many as a result of rising debt from increased cost of cultivation, and the resulting
economic and existential despair (Posani 2009; Sainath 2007). In the last week of
January 2010, the Indian president, Pratibha Patil, called for a “Second Green
Revolution” to stem spiraling food prices and declining supplies (Kapur 2010). Is this
possible, or even the best way to go? Many among the more than 400 scientists, experts,
and development specialists who worked on the International Assessment of Agricultural
Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) think not, and rather
call for a change in current mainstream farming practices (IAASTD 2009). An initiative
of the FAO and the World Bank, this international assessment of agriculture started in
2002 as a global consultative process, and the IAASTD published reports in 2009
(accepted by the governments of 58 countries) that draw lessons about which agricultural
systems have been positive or negative for humans and ecosystems. The reports
formulate potential opportunities to move away from destructive and chemical-driven
industrial agriculture, and rather to focus on environmental, modern methods, which
could benefit biodiversity and local communities, and improve the situation for poor rural
people (IAASTD 2009:viii). The reports were not fully approved by the large
monoculture producing countries, Australia, Canada and the United States, and the
biotechnology industry left the process a few months before the signing of the reports

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took place, in April 2008 in Johannesburg. Representatives from Canada, for example,
say in their reservations “there remain a number of assertions and observations that
require more substantial, balanced and objective analysis” (IAASTD 2009:12). The
move of these large countries and the biotechnology industry had no effect on the overall
acceptance of the reports, which, similar to the World Climate Report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a global scientific stocktaking of
the state of agriculture, an evidence-based guide for policy and decision-making that can
provide the basis for designing agriculture in a way that mitigate detrimental
development dynamics such as growing disparities and the degradation of ecosystems
(IAASTD 2009).
Global Warming and Farming
The global food system produces almost half of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions, partially due to the fossil fuel used for food processing and transportation, and
is therefore the single most important factor driving global warming (IEA 2006; Vía
Campesina 2007a). While carbon dioxide is the most prevalent GHG, causing more than
80 percent of GHG emissions related to human activity, agricultural practices contributed
to about 15 percent of the global emissions, primarily as a result of nitrous oxide release,
mainly from nitrogen fertilizers, and secondly because of methane release from enteric
fermentation in livestock and flooded rice fields (IAASTD 2009; Smith, et al. 2007).
Global agricultural emissions increased by 17 percent from 1990 to 2005 (US-EPA
2006). According to the global warming potential (GWP) concept, which uses carbon
dioxide as the reference with a value of 1, methane and nitrous oxide have values of 23

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and 296 respectively, so these gases trap much more heat in the atmosphere and
contribute many times the impact of carbon dioxide to global warming (Massey and
Ulmer 2010). The increased pressure on agricultural land is likely to lead to more
deforestation and thereby add further to GHG emissions (Nabuurs, et al. 2007). Over the
last 50 years the use of fertilizers, primarily nitrogen fertilizers, has increased rapidly, and
while this has contributed to an increase in crop production (IFA 2006), only a portion of
the nitrogen supplied is taken up by crops; the remainder is lost in to the environment and
causes progressively serious environmental problems (MA 2005).
In the same time period there have been great investments in irrigation systems, but
aquifer depletion and groundwater pollution now threaten the livelihoods of millions of
small farmers in South Asia, for example (Shah, et al. 2007). In the United States,
agriculture is the main cause of pollution in rivers and contributes to 70 percent of all
water quality problems identified in rivers and streams (Walker, et al. 2005).
The destruction of the forests and environmental degradation caused by the
agricultural sector are products mainly of industrial agriculture. Large agribusiness
plantations and vast monoculture fields make extensive use of oil-based chemical
fertilizers, pesticides and machinery. They convert carbon-rich forest and prairie into
“green deserts,” called so because they are poor at retaining soil and water and
unproductive, compared to the original vegetation, and in the end depend on a long and
energy consuming chain of secondary processing and transport links (Smith, et al. 2007).
In addition to implications for the environment, agribusiness, or “factory farming,” has
been shown to have negative impacts on both humans and animals; not only in the form
of producing unhealthy food, or severely mistreating the animals, but by being a source

10
of deadly pandemics, like the recent swine flu (H1N1), which possibly had its origin on
large pig farms in Mexico (Singer 2009). In the cases of Bovine Spongiform
Encephalopathy (BSE) in cows and avian flu (H5N1), transmission was linked to low
standards in the animal feed industry and the increase of antimicrobial resistance arising
from the use of antibiotics in industrial farming systems (Taylor, et al. 2001). Three-
quarters of the new human diseases that have emerged over the past decade have arisen
from pathogens originating in animals and animal products. Complicating this situation,
many countries lack effective public health or veterinary systems, and even less the
multi-sector environmental health practices, to prevent the spread of this type of disease
(WHO-VHP 2010).
False Solutions
As scientific predictions of climate catastrophe continue to grow, world leaders met
in Copenhagen in December 2009 for the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC), and discussed “solutions” that will continue to allow large
energy consumers to pollute with impunity, while paying others to implement projects
intended to capture carbon (Lohman 2010; Smith, et al. 2007). Previously, the Kyoto
protocol and the market mechanisms it implemented had failed to reduce GHG emissions
and to slow down climate changes. In the eyes of many climate scientists, the situation is
urgent, but the Copenhagen convention failed to radically question the current models of
consumption and production. Instead carbon, for example, has become a new privatized
commodity for trade in the hands of speculators, who use it as a new product in the same
economic pattern that lead to the current crisis (Kill, et al. 2010; Lohman 2010). For

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many small farmers around the world, some of the solutions proposed during the climate
talks at the UNFCCC meeting in Copenhagen, for instance “the Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Degradation initiative (REDD), the carbon offsetting mechanisms
and geo-engineering projects are as threatening as the droughts, tornadoes and new
climate patterns themselves,” according to Vía Campesina (2009). Other proposals that
were considered, such as producing biochar, or charcoal, by burning crop-residues,
manure or wood, and genetically modified (GM) seed, are those of agribusinesses, that
many analysts believe will only further marginalize small farmers (Vía Campesina
2007a; 2009). Genetic modification can be done through various methods. One is to
incorporate a small piece of DNA “in a bacterium that has the capacity to insert its own
genes into another plant genome,” and incubate this with tissue from the target plant.
The DNA can also be “coated onto small particles of metal and shot into the target plant
tissue at high velocity” (Tripp 2009a:11). An important issue in the GM debate is food
safety. There is very limited data available concerning effects of long-term nutritional
consumption of GM foods, and potential concerns include allergenicity, for example
when proteins are transferred across species boundaries into completely unrelated
organisms, or toxicity, antibiotic resistance, or just alteration in nutritional quality of
foods (Arregui, et al. 2004; Seralini, et al. 2007). While concepts and techniques used in
evaluating food and feed safety have been outlined (WHO 2005), the procedures for
authorizing GM crops are considered insufficient (Spök, et al. 2004), and often left to the
industry itself.
The general discourse of seed companies is that industrial GM and hybrid seed are the
best solutions, in that these seed will have the capacity to respond to irregular climatic

12
conditions, and feed future generations. But these seed, called “stable and uniform” by
the industry, are not well suited for adapting to varying conditions, because they are
reproduced as the exact same specimens. Tested for use in a research station or other
atypical favorable locations, these seed have demonstrated to be poorly adapted to small-
scale farmer conditions and environments. They also often do not meet the farmers’ need
of multipurpose use, e.g. fodder and seed, or postharvest characteristics like ease of
threshing, good taste or good storability (Curran, et al. 2004; Witcombe, et al. 1998).
The seed the farmers replant each year, on the other hand, are continuously improved
through their selection in the field, and these seed’s variability and diversity are what
make them better suited for adapting to their environments (Witcombe, et al. 2001). The
hybrid seed, produced by artificially cross-pollinated plants, lose some of their yield
potential in the second generation, and this makes them not worth saving. The farmers
who start using hybrid seed must therefore purchase new seed each year from the
industry. The seed companies also have other mechanisms that provide intellectual
property protection and control access to their crop varieties such as the GM crops,
including patents, purchase agreements and seed laws (Tripp 2009b). When the farmers
stop replanting their traditional seed, the biodiversity of crop varieties grown is reduced
or eliminated. This reduction of biodiversity reduces societal capacity to adapt to the
challenges of climate change. In addition the seed sold by the industry are tied to
industrial forms of production, require energy use in the form of chemical fertilizers,
more water, and are destructive to the fertility of the soil. These crops have much lower
capacity to sequester carbon because it is the organic material in the soil that stores
important quantities of carbon (Matthews, et al. 2000). Industrial forms of agriculture, by

13
impoverishing the soil and replacing the organic matter with synthetic inputs, liberate the
carbon stored in the soils, thus increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the air
(Wassmann and Vlek 2004). Agricultural systems collect carbon when organic matter is
accumulated in the soil, or when above-ground woody biomass acts either as a permanent
sink or is used as an energy source that substitutes for fossil fuels (Pretty and Ball 2001).
To address global warming by subsidizing and encouraging conversion of maize,
sugarcane, and other food products into substitutes for oil is another controversial
solution. Competition between land for food production, energy and environmental
sustainability (Kojima, et al. 2007) can already be seen for example in Brazil, Indonesia
and Malaysia, where expansion of crop plantations for biofuel production have led to
deforestation and draining of peat lands (Curran, et al. 2004). The development of
biofuel monocultures on lands previously occupied by forests or by small-scale farming
practices weakens the capacity of the soil to store carbon because younger plantation
forests have lower capacity to store carbon than older natural forests (Dauvergne and
Neville 2010; Smith, et al. 2007). Consequently, many climate scientists believe that the
solution to the energy crisis and to climate changes is not to substitute fossil fuels with
biofuel and that it is therefore necessary to change our production and consumption
methods and patterns and, in industrialized countries, to drastically reduce our
consumption of non-renewable energy (Nabuurs, et al. 2007). The heavy promotion of
industrial monoculture plantations and biofuel as solutions to the crisis actually increase
pressure on agricultural land and available water resources as massive afforestation
grasslands may reduce water flow into other ecosystems and rivers (Jackson, et al. 2005),
change soil fertility and properties, contribute to soil erosion (Carrasco-Letellier, et al.

14
2004), and reduce biodiversity (Wagner, et al. 2006). The economic competitiveness of
biofuel is also debated, and depends on local market conditions and production methods.
Even in Brazil, the world leader in efficient ethanol production, biofuel is competitive
only under particular favorable market conditions (Kojima and Johnson 2005). It has
already led to massive “land grabbing,” or the purchase or lease of agricultural land by
transnational companies, foreign investors, or other nations. From 2006 to 2009 around
40 million acres of farmland was secured for the production of biofuel, but also of food,
in poor developing countries, in order to produce crops for export, while expelling the
local farmers from their land and pushing indigenous communities, sometimes with non-
traditional land titles, out of their territories (Borras Jr., et al. 2011; Shepard and Mittal
2009; 2010). To these farmers, rather than being a solution, the development of
industrial biofuel is a peril. The land grab that is going on today is only increasing the
food crisis, displacing food production and its producers. Instead of promoting an
agriculture that can feed everyone, it focuses on large-scale monocultures that eliminate
plant biodiversity and on fossil fuels. It gives priority to feeding cars over people, and
will enrich a few, but not alleviate poverty for the many. Further, investment is
channeled towards huge farms controlled by a few large owners, instead of the local
markets and the four billion rural people globally that currently produce most of the food
consumed on the planet (McMichael 2010; Shepard and Mittal 2010; Zoomers 2010).
Gender Inequality and Health
Gender inequality is a central issue in agriculture, as it relates to poverty, hunger,
nutrition, health and natural resource management. Women and men have different roles

15
and responsibilities in productive households, and these vary widely by context and
culture, but while women often have a key role in agricultural activities, they tend to have
limited access to and control of productive resources, such as land and capital. In Asia
women produce at least 60 percent of the food, and in Africa it is as high as 70 percent,
but their work is underestimated and does not normally appear as part of the Gross
National Product (GNP) (CED 2003). Proportional representation is nowhere the rule,
and financial dependence and lack of access to political processes often excludes women
from participating in public life. Agricultural developments have often strengthened
patterns that are not favorable for women, for example in rural extension systems, where
men generally act for the state and its agencies, control information and communication,
and represent the farming household in public matters. Industrial agriculture implies
more investments, which again often exclude women, who sometimes are not eligible for
credit (McC Netting 1993). Less than ten percent of women farmers in India, Nepal and
Thailand own land, for example, and even if these women live and work in close
association with natural resources, their power to make decisions regarding these
resources is socially restricted (FAO-Gender 2010).
Health is also a major concern. The fatal accident rate in agriculture is twice as high
as in other industries, and exposure to pesticide and other agrochemicals constitutes one
of the main hazards leading to illness and death. The WHO reports a rough estimate of
between two and five million cases of pesticide poisoning each year, some unintentional
poisoning, others suicide attempts, in either case leading to at least 40,000, but maybe up
to 220,000 fatalities (WHO 1986). In developing countries there is widespread use of
toxic chemicals banned in other countries, often accompanied by unsafe application and

16
lack of information to the farmer about safe use and storage (ILO 1999). Living and
working conditions may raise the threat of environmental spillover from pesticide use in
the form of contaminated groundwater, food, or diversion of chemically treated seed for
human consumption.
South-Asian countries like India and Bangladesh have the highest mortality and
morbidity rates of diarrhea and malnutrition attributed to climate-change, and these are
expected to increase (McMichael, et al. 2004). In general their often extremely
rudimentary living and working conditions, frequently without adequate food, water
supply or sanitation, let alone health care, determine the morbidity-mortality pattern
among poor farmers. A poor diet combined with the presence of diseases like malaria,
tuberculosis, gastrointestinal disorders, and anemia create a vicious circle of poor health,
reduced working capacity, low productivity and shortened life expectancy, especially
among those in subsistence agriculture, or who are wage workers in plantations, landless
laborers, migrant workers or child laborers. It is estimated that around 175 million
children are engaged in labor on farms and plantations around the world, and national
policies to prevent agricultural child labor are lacking (ILO 2006).
Motivation for this Study
Since the mid-1980s, several social movements and farmers’ organizations have
opposed the farming trends driven by agribusiness by promoting the conversion to
sustainable, organic agriculture, and the re-validation of indigenous knowledge. In 1987,
for example, Navdanya (translates into nine crops, representing India’s collective source
of food security), a social movement led by Dr. Vandana Shiva, a physicist,

17
environmentalist, and agricultural activist from India, engaged in the struggle against
neoliberal economic globalization and the industrialized model of agricultural
development. Navdanya started as a program of the Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), a participatory research initiative founded in 1982 by
Dr. Shiva, “to provide direction and support to environmental activism” and undertake
“independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues, in
close partnership with local communities and social movements” (Navdanya 2009b).
Navdanya started to work with local farmers, educating them about chemical free organic
agriculture, creating local seed banks, fighting against the establishment of intellectual
property rights (IPRs) on traditional knowledge, and defending their food rights and food
sovereignty in the face of national and international agribusiness (Shiva 2003).
As a member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA), I attended their
annual summer conference in Amherst, Massachusetts in August 2004. Vandana Shiva
was invited to give the keynote speech at that year’s conference, and she talked about
organic farmers as “the heroes of tomorrow” and why industrial agriculture cannot feed
the world. Food production has to be addressed, she argued, not by a few corporations,
but by millions of microbes and millions of people. She caught my attention, and I
became curious to see her organization’s work in India, and learn more about conversion
to organic agriculture among small farmers there. In March 2006, I traveled to attend a
course on organic agriculture organized by Navdanya at its research farm, Bija
Vidyapeeth (translates as School of Seed, or Seed University), outside Dehradun, in the
northern state of Uttarakhand, India.

18
I wanted to look more closely at how this, and similar organizations work, how they
teach small farmers about organic agriculture and biodiversity conservation. The course
gave me a glimpse into Navdanya’s work, and the opportunity to meet some farmers, and
the Navdanya employees at their research farm and those who worked in the nearby
districts. I decided to go back and do fieldwork in some of the states where Navdanya
works, because even though a growing body of research indicate that the farmers using
sustainable, organic methods are better off, both economically and in terms of health
(Brandt and Molgaard 2001; Gala and Burcher 2005; Magkos, et al. 2003) little research
has been conducted on the work that social movements like Navdanya have done in
facilitating this conversion in India, and more importantly on how the local farmers
perceive, and adopt or reject this “traditional,” now called “alternative,” farming
philosophy and strategy.
I wanted to focus on understanding the socio-economic and political conditions that
led small farmers to accept an alternative model, how and to what extent they have
converted to it, or more importantly, who has adopted it and who has not and why. Some
key questions: Are they actively and consciously resisting mainstream industrialized
agriculture through the Navdanya model? How do they view their role in an increasingly
globalized agricultural economy? How do they view their futures? I also wanted to look
at the scope of the rural grassroots resistance directed towards the adjustment programs,
the free trade agreements, and the patenting of plants. Who are the ones taking part in
this resistance and who is opposing it, how does this type of resistance manifest itself?
There are many types of social movements, but most have in common a collective
identity, and their efforts through organized protest or resistance to obtain or prevent a

19
certain social change (Hamel 2001). Navdanya is one of several new social actors, such
as women’s organizations, environmental or human rights groups or peasant
organizations, that create new structures of collective action among traditional social
actors and a space where their concerns and demands can be articulated, negotiated and
accommodated in the context of a contested globalization and a continuing debate over
development (Escobar and Alvarez 1992). In this political struggle for greater control
over their traditional means of production, the farmers also fight a cultural struggle, for
traditional knowledge and indigenous beliefs. Rejecting the notion that neoliberal
globalization is the only possible framework for development, Navdanya seeks to
construct an alternative, sustainable path, where the farmers convert to organic
agriculture and maintain community seed banks to protect themselves from the regime of
chemical, industrial agriculture and GM seed. Navdanya proclaims the farmers’ right to
biodiversity, and to not cooperate with imposed intellectual property rights systems that
make seed saving and exchange a crime.
This research examines how Navdanya is working with the farmers to conserve
biodiversity and establish community seed banks, how they advocate conversion to
organic agriculture at the farmers’ level in India, and how their effort to empower the
rural community through promotion of indigenous knowledge is implemented. Do the
farmers perceive that their local food security is improved through biodiversity
conservation and control over their own seed and other inputs? To answer these
questions, I examine how Navdanya’s and other organizations’ work are affecting small
farmers and their communities, why their work is having the effects it is, and I explore
the nature of the social and political economic context in which this is occurring.

20
I will also discuss the critique Navdanya and similar organizations are facing from
several quarters. In addition to agricultural related industries, producers of chemical
inputs and hybrid and GM seed, which dismiss organic agriculture and other natural ways
of food production as ineffective and something that would create widespread hunger and
scarcity, there are critiques from scholars who argue that what they call the “new social
movements,” like Navdanya, are romanticizing pre-capitalist society and being backward
looking (Brass 2000; Guha 2000b; 2002; Rangan 2000). Some suggest that the small
farmers are being convinced to continue a rural lifestyle with few amenities, while others
argue they are distracted away from more important and basic class struggles (Brass
2006; Das 2007). There are also those who critique what they see as the new social
movements’ lack of grappling with gender inequalities, for example concerning property
rights, especially in land, economic rights, and the division of labor and also for situating
women in a special relationship with nature (Agarwal 1998; Cochrane 2007). I would
like to take part in this ongoing debate by attempting a more nuanced analysis. While I
think the critique is very useful to consider for the new social movements, and much of it
is on target, I would challenge the analysis that dismiss traditional agricultural knowledge
as backward, and emphasize the important environmental perspective of movements like
Navdanya.
Fieldwork
Following my initial visit in March and April 2006, I returned to start fieldwork in
February 2007, and during the next two years I spent twelve and a half months in India,
and divided my time between field sites in the states of Punjab, Uttarakhand, Tamil

21
Nadu, and West Bengal. Living in the villages, I interviewed farmers and staff from
Navdanya and other farmers’ organizations, and data from these interviews and field
observations are the basis for this study. Specifically, I recruited a total of 250
participants for my study, and conducted in-depth and focus group interviews with
female and male farmers, and social movement and farmers’ organization staff. I
completed 89 in-depth interviews with 62 farmers (15 female and 47 male) and 27 social
movement/farmers’ organizations staff (six female and 21 male), some of whom are also
farmers. I conducted 16 focus group interviews with a total of 51 female farmers, 100
male farmers, and seven female and three male social movement/farmers’ organizations
staff. In addition I carried out informal conversations with many farmers, community
members and social movement/farmers’ organizations staff on the 77 farms in the 56
villages, and in the three towns and five cities, where I did interviews.
I had planned to work first and foremost with Navdanya, but it was not always
possible. This did not create a problem though, because it was informative to get to know
and work with other organizations that cooperate with Navdanya, or had done so in the
past, in addition to independent organizations with similar concerns. In Punjab, where
Navdanya used to work, an organization called Kheti Virasat (The Heritage of Farming)
has taken over at the local level. In Uttarakhand, Navdanya is heavily involved, and has
several “Navdanya Villages” that sell their organic produce through Navdanya’s
distribution net, locally, and to Delhi and other large cities further south. In Tamil Nadu
in the south, Navdanya has worked with several organizations in the past that now do
similar work independently. One of them is the Center for Indigenous Knowledge
Systems, (CIKS), which I worked with in the coastal areas of northeastern Tamil Nadu.

22
In the highland district of Nilgiris in the central part of the state I worked with the Earth
Trust. In West Bengal in the east, Navdanya has field coordinators in several villages,
and I also met with the organization Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, (CIS) which
used to work with Navdanya, and Development Research Communication and Services
Centre (DRCSC), an organization based in Kolkata.
Getting Access to the Farmers
I had discussed with Dr. Vandana Shiva my interest in doing this study during my
first visit in 2006, and she agreed to give me access to her organization’s network of
coordinators in the villages where they work in Uttarakhand and West Bengal. The
Navdanya coordinators are farmers in the respective villages themselves, but often hold
additional leadership roles in the village, like being part of or the leader of the Panchayat,
the village council. Some of the coordinators had higher education and were involved in
agricultural research, independently, or in cooperation with Navdanya, while others were
involved in activities like trekking and mountaineering in the Himalayas, or herbal
farming for export. The Navdanya coordinators worked part time for Navdanya, got a
symbolic compensation of Rs. 1,000 ($20) a month, received training at their research
farm, Bija Vidyapeeth, in Dehradun, and were reimbursed when traveling there for
training and regular coordinator meetings. Lodging and food were included. (As a
reference, a teacher salary e.g. could be Rs. 15,000 a month). I attended these
coordinator meetings a few times and also trainings at Bija Vidyapeeth, which lasted
from one to three days. There I had the opportunity to meet and talk to several of the
coordinators, and make arrangements with them for later travel and stays in their villages.

23
I also did some individual interviews there with coordinators I would not be able to visit
in their home village, and organized a focus group interview with some coordinators
working for Navdanya in Uttarakhand. Several of the coordinators spoke English, and
that was a huge benefit for me in the villages. In addition to traveling with a translator, it
was very useful to have at least one more person in the village that spoke English,
although some places there were many who did. In the village, the coordinators would
introduce me to farmers, and often suggest farmers that could be interviewed, for
example based on their involvement with the organization, or their engagement in
farmers’ issues in other ways, and also farmers who thought organic agriculture was not
viable or not possible for them. As I got to know the place and people, the farmers
themselves often referred me to people who they thought would be interested in talking to
me about their farming, and I also approached people myself, after getting to know them
a little through staying in the village. I talked to conventional farmers, those in the
process of converting to organic farming methods, and those who had been organic
farmers, for a few or several years, in all four states. I mainly talked to small farmers, but
in Punjab and Tamil Nadu I also met and interviewed a few medium sized and larger
farmers.
In Punjab and Tamil Nadu I would approach the farmers in a similar way as I had
done places where Navdanya was present, initially through the staff and coordinators of
the local farmers’ organizations. The organizations were often helpful in finding
appropriate housing for me at one of the farms, with a family who had an extra room, and
also very generous in providing me with the support from the English proficient among
their staff as translators.

24
Challenges
Translation was sometimes a challenge, as I worked in four different states, each with
their own language; Punjabi in Punjab, Hindi and Gharwali in Uttarakhand, Tamil in
Tamil Nadu, and Bengali in West Bengal. That said, many people speak English in
India, and for some urban residents, English is their first language. Although I had taken
one semester of Hindi at my university just prior to traveling to India, and studied the
language full time for ten weeks at Landour Language School in Uttarakhand in the early
part of my fieldwork, most of the time I traveled with a translator. A good translator was
often very hard to get, since it was difficult to find someone who would be available to
travel for weeks and agree to stay in the villages in sometimes simple conditions, and at
the same time not charge too much. It was also a problem finding female translators,
which would make housing issues at the farms easier. Most women are married, and
therefore could often not leave husband and children to travel, and in some places those
unmarried are not supposed to travel alone, or with an unrelated woman. I had to leave a
male translator behind once, when a coordinator who had agreed to have me live at his
farm would not accept a male translator on the farm, because of his unmarried daughters
living there. I worked at one field site, in northern Uttarakhand, with a young woman as
my translator, whose mother worked with Navdanya, and she trusted her to travel with
me, also because she knew the coordinator in the village we were going to live. The
remainder of my fieldwork, with one other exception, in Darjeeling, where I worked with
two local young women who spoke very good English, I worked with male translators.
Transportation was another challenge. Travel can be very time-consuming in India,
and also risky. The roads are often in a poor condition, and in the mountain areas it can

25
at times be rather “exciting,” with steep hillsides, and rarely a fence of any sort on a
narrow road between the car and the deep valley below. I used both buses and trains,
especially for longer distances, but often it was necessary to hire a car and a driver to get
around in the area where I was staying. The farms could be located miles apart, and
sometimes there were no buses in rural areas.
Interviews
I had developed my interview questions after my first visit to India, and the
University of Connecticut’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved them prior to the
start of the fieldwork, (the complete lists of interview questions can be found in the
Appendix, p. 217–220). I used the same list of questions during my whole fieldwork.
During an interview, a participant would often talk more about a certain topic than
another, and in some instances I would not ask a question from my list, because I would
be familiar with the likely response (if for example I knew the person and the situation
after staying some time in the village). Otherwise I did not find that I wanted to change
the interview questions in any significant way. In the in-depth interviews with the
farmers I would start asking about their personal, historical background with focus on
their connection to farmland and agricultural activities, household composition, and type
and size of the family’s farmland. Then we would discuss types of changes;
demographic, socio-economic, political, ecological and agricultural; land reforms, use of
technology and agricultural input and output, as well as gender roles and changes in
relation to agricultural work. I would ask specifically if agricultural work provided for
their families, whether they received any help from the state or other institutions (e.g.,

26
loans to buy fertilizers, pesticides, seed, or farm machinery). We would talk about
indigenous, traditional farming methods, and conventional agriculture, and benefits and
negative aspects of either. Conversation focused on whether they had converted to
organic agriculture, how it worked if they had, and the benefits or negative aspects in
socioeconomic, environmental and health terms. I also asked about cooperation with
other farmers in the community, and the local farmers’ organization. We would discuss
how the local seed bank functioned in the community where they had one, and potential
impact on biodiversity conservation. I would ask them about their experience and
relationship with the local farmers’ organization or NGO, whether they perceived the
organizations as useful to them, disagreements with the NGO, and needs, for training, for
example. Finally I would ask about patents on seed and plants, international trade in
agriculture, and GM seed, whether they had tried them, the results, use of water and
inputs with such seed, and how that would differ from cultivation of traditional seed.
In the focus group interviews I would ask the participants to describe their
community in terms of connection to farmland and agricultural activities, their level of
participation in local farmers’ organizations, and what challenges they experienced and
how they confronted these; and how and to what extent these issues were addressed by
the state, the local government, or their local organizations. We would discuss the level
of cooperation among farmers, and I would ask them to evaluate the role of the
organizations in their area, and what motivated farmers to work with these.
Interviewing the organization staff or the coordinators, I would focus on their work
with the organization, what had motivated them to join this work, and the challenges they
experienced. I would ask them to describe the community they worked for including its

27
attitude toward the organization’s program and assistance. I also inquired about how
many people their organization reached, and relationships with other farmers’
organizations, and the state and local government. Finally I would ask them to evaluate
the success of their organization, and their views on the future of farmers’ organizations
and small farmers in India.
All of the interviews were digitally recorded. Most of the interviews were between
45 minutes and an hour in length. However, a few of the interviews were relatively short,
ten to 20 minutes, if it turned out that the participant did not have much to say, while
other interviews lasted for one and a half hours or more. In some cases, I would do two
interviews with the same person on different days.
All the interviews were translated into English, and transcribed, by two of the
translators I worked with in India, and the brother of one of them who works as a teacher.
Ethical Issues
In some regions of India converting to organic agriculture is controversial. If a
farmer stops buying seed offered in the local shop, for example, it might exclude him or
her from buying anything on credit, or receiving loans for other purposes. Some farmers
said they had been laughed at by other farmers, or considered the “crazy” farmer of the
village, when they first starting converting to organic farming, or even talking about it. I
did not, of course, want to add difficulty to any farmer’s life, and when I encountered
farmers who were in a controversial or challenging position in the village, I always
discussed with them potential positive or negative aspects of their participation in the
study, before doing a recorded interview or taking a photograph. I did have a consent

28
form for them to read, sign, and keep a copy of. Since some of the participants were not
able to read English, the IRB agreed that, in such instances, I could have a consent-
discussion with the participant, using a translator, and then get their oral consent instead
of a signature prior to conducting an interview. All the farmers I approached were happy
to talk to me about their experience though, and nobody declined to do an interview.
They seemed glad that I took interest in their work and situation. Most of the names of
persons are pseudonyms, except for some of the people working in the farmers’
organizations who agreed that I use their names. People were also eager that I take
pictures of their farm, their produce, and themselves, and gave me permission to use
these. I therefore have pictures of all the farmers and other people I interviewed, in
addition to many more I met, and countless children who enjoyed looking at themselves
afterwards in the digital camera.
Some female farmers in Tamil Nadu commented, while laughing, during a focus
group, that they had never had so many visitors to their village interested in agricultural
questions, as after they had converted to organic agriculture, and they said they found that
a pleasant and unexpected side effect. Sometimes people working with farmers’
organizations would be very frank with me about negative as well as positive aspects of
their organizations. One of them emphasized that I not use all he said, because he was
afraid it would harm “the cause.” I will avoid “internal” organizational matters, because
that is not my focus here, and rather try to portray the situation of the farmers.

29
Organization and Selection of States
I kept in contact with Navdanya after my initial visit, and we discussed potential field
sites. I realized that I wanted to include places where Navdanya was not present and the
decisions to include Punjab, and Tamil Nadu were mine. I was encouraged to visit
Navdanya villages in several other states, but since traveling is time-consuming, and I
wanted to stay for a few months in each state, I limited myself to four states. I had two
“main” field sites in each state, and spent roughly half of the time allocated to that state in
each place. I say “main” sites, because I also talked to people I met while traveling, and
on several occasions we would stay a day or more at a farm on the way to the next site,
and I would sometimes use the opportunity to do an interview or at least talk informally
with the farmers, and look around while there. The order in which I traveled to the
different states was arranged ahead of time, but plans changed due to availability of
translators to travel with, presence of coordinators in the villages, and other situational
factors. I started in Punjab, the breadbasket of India and the cradle of the GR, and I also
returned there over a year later, at the end of the fieldwork. From Punjab I traveled to
Uttarakhand, where I stayed long periods at Bija Vidyapeeth because of all the activity
there, and the ease with which I could visit other farms nearby. The second field site in
Uttarakhand was high up in the hills, at the entrance to the Himalayas, and a few villages
we visited on the way going there. I returned several times during the two-year period to
Uttarakhand, where I studied Hindi in Mussoorie during the first year, a beautiful hill-
station with spectacular views of the mountains. After Uttarakhand, I flew to Kolkata, in
West Bengal, but while travelling experienced a general strike there due to the unrest
concerning Special Economic Zones (SEZ). The state government in West Bengal was

30
involved in distributing farmland for industrial development, and there were protests and
discussions regarding prices paid to the farmers for the land, and other issues. No one
could leave the airport, and there was no transportation into town; I was able to get
another flight going further south to Tamil Nadu, and therefore changed the order in
which I visited these two states. I was able to go to West Bengal the following year, for
three months during the spring, before I again returned to Tamil Nadu, and Punjab, later
that year. I spent some time in urban settings as well, when I visited the offices of
Navdanya in Delhi, Development Research Communication and Services Centre
(CDRCS) in Kolkata, and Center for Indigenous Knowledge Systems (CIKS) in Chennai.
The four states where I did fieldwork not only differ in terms of landscapes and agro-
ecological zones, but also in language and traditions. They have quite different cultural
and political histories as well as place in India’s political economy. In Punjab, the
farmers have landholdings three times the size of the national average and are much more
mechanized. They therefore have a very different relationship to credit and subsidies
from that of farmers in many of the other states and small farmers are a minority there.
Uttarakhand, on the other hand, is a relatively new state, separated from Uttar Pradesh in
2000, where small farmers abound. West Bengal and Tamil Nadu both have greater
diversity in their agricultural economies. Given this complexity, and the fact that I
cooperated with a number of farmers’ organizations, each with their way of working with
the communities, I made the decision to present in detail here two of the four states I
visited; Punjab and Uttarakhand, and therein two of the six organizations I cooperated
with; Kheti Virasat and Navdanya. In terms of conversion to organic agriculture—the
farmers’ attitudes towards this and the barriers they encountered—the trend was the same

31
in all four states. The farmers are positive towards conversion, but most small farmers
feel that there is a need for support for the first few years of conversion, if not always
economic, at least in terms of practical education in the alternative methods, and help in
producing inputs and acquiring seed. Punjab and Uttarakhand are very different in many
aspects and therefore allows for a comprehensive presentation of the variations existing
in the ecological environment, farming practices, as well as in socio-economic structures,
and the contrasting of these. I also think the presentation of my findings will be clearer
when discussing two, instead of all fours states here, especially because comparing the
work of six organizations in one act could easily become repetitive. I will therefore
present the work from Tamil Nadu and West Bengal separately elsewhere.
The remainder of the dissertation therefore proceeds as follows:
Chapter Two provides a brief review of the history of agriculture in India.
Agriculture has been practiced on the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years, and the
Indus Valley civilization was one of the pristine states. The colonial period saw radical
changes in land and agricultural matters, and the purpose of this chapter is to show briefly
the background for much of the state of agriculture in India today.
In Chapter Three, I focus on the place where my fieldwork started, in Punjab. In
Post-Independence India agriculture was modernized, and in the mid–1960s the GR was
introduced in Punjab and in neighboring Haryana and the western parts of Uttar Pradesh,
of which Uttarakhand was carved out. It later spread to other states, to varying extent.
While it started with imported seed, India soon began its own GR production of plant
breeding, and agrochemical production. Punjab is a state of large, mechanized,

32
conventional farms, and many farmers explained the viewpoints of those who do not
convert to organic practices, for various reasons, such as the struggle with cost of
conversion and of certification and not least political and structural constraints. This
chapter shows evidence of the lack of sustainability of conventional farming, at the
individual farmer level, as well as on the larger environmental level.
Chapter Four continues in Uttarakhand, also in the north, east of Punjab, and a self-
declared “organic” state. Many social movements and NGOs started their work here,
concerned with forest use, dam constructions, and the new agricultural paradigm. I focus
on Navdanya, and peasant activism, in this chapter, and some of Navdanya’s main issues,
such as farmer control over seed and food sovereignty.
In Chapter Five, I compare and contrast Punjab and Uttarakhand in terms of their
particular conditions, and social and ecological environments. I discuss the impact of
social movements such as Kheti Virasat in Punjab, and Navdanya in Uttarakhand. I
address the questions: Are these social movements able to help empower small farmers
and create social change? In this chapter I also discuss the critiques against the new
social movements, mentioned above, and relate these to my findings.
Chapter Six, the final chapter, draws together the threads of my work; reviews key
findings, and presents thoughts about the future of agriculture and small farmers in India.
As part of this discussion, I review the significance of my findings in a world of rapid
globalization and growing food insecurity.

33
CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Early Agriculture
Agriculture is an inseparable part of India’s history, as it has been adapted to its
different ecological regions for thousands of years. People are thought to have settled
down to an agricultural way of life around the middle of the sixth millennium B.C.E. in
the foothills of Sindh and Baluchistan, in today’s Pakistan, and there is evidence of the
adoption of agriculture and domestication of animals by the Harappan culture along the
Indus River, (which gave its name to India). The Harappan culture developed around
3000 B.C.E. and had a broad agricultural production based on wheat and rice, a diversity
of fruits and vegetables, and cotton, which was woven and dyed for cloth (Fuller and
Madella 2001; Kulke and Rothermund 2004; Vishnu-Mittre 1974). After centuries of
stability, the Harappan culture declined around 1600 B.C.E., arguably due to flooding,
causing soil salinity and subsequent desertification, but elements of this tradition were
inherited by later cultures (Heitzman and Worden 1995; Kulke and Rothermund 2004).
During the first centuries of settled agriculture, division of labor became increasingly
sophisticated, and a hierarchical system that subordinated people into different caste
groups developed. These castes later became hereditary, as Vedic “religion” gradually
evolved into Hinduism between the sixth and second centuries B.C.E., and still exists in
urban, and to a larger extent in rural India today (Leach 1990; Robb 2002), where
untouchability, although now an illegal custom, persists to distress the lives of millions of
people (Shah, et al. 2006). Already in the Upanishad and Brahmana texts, reference is
made to wealthy men, villages and food grains, and it is believed that agriculture came to

34
be regarded as the foundation for Indian society from about 600–300 B.C.E., and it likely
had much deeper and older roots than that. Land control and water management
consequently became important and enduring parts of social and political organization,
and are still often at the center of controversy and conflict (Heitzman and Worden 1995;
Robb 2002).
Throughout the centuries various principles of land use and ownership have existed;
one of the first written sources is found in Arthashastra, from around 250 B.C.E.,
authored by Kautilya, a minister in the Mauryan Empire (326–184 B.C.E.) (Heitzman and
Worden 1995; Kulke and Rothermund 2004). Arguing that royal protection of
agriculture is needed, Kautilya wrote: “He (the King) should allot to taxpayers arable
fields for life. Unarable fields should not be taken away from those who are making
them arable. He should take away fields from those who do not till them and give them
to others” (Shiva and Holla Bhar 2001a:110). During the classical age (C.E. 320–550) of
the Gupta Empire, agrarian conditions were documented and land taxes were introduced.
Under the changing rulers the cultivators who farmed the land could own it, and taxes
ranged from one-tenth to one-fourth of the produce. Prices of grain were at times fixed
through regulations, allowing them to be within reach of the poorest groups of society
during periods of scarcity.
Agriculture improved over time as a result of new canal construction and irrigation
methods, but methods of tax collection often exploited the peasantry. There were
disasters when tax rates were too high, and no provisions had been made to make food
available. Peasants have risen up on many occasions during the centuries (Heitzman and
Worden 1995; Kulke and Rothermund 2004; Shiva and Holla Bhar 2001a; Stokes 1986),

35
but while the peasantry has played revolutionary roles in various parts of the world (e.g.
China, Vietnam), it has never reached that point in India.
Empires Built on Agriculture
In the sixteenth century, the Mughals built South Asia’s first empire based on
agrarian taxation. At that time the revenue demands varied from one-third to one-half of
the crop, and were stipulated according to regional customs of crop growing and soil
conditions. The Mughal emperors transferred the responsibility of collecting the revenue
to land-holding zamindars, who were able to keep a portion as their salary. Overall,
during the Mughal period, the financial situation of peasants deteriorated; there were very
few if any improvements to social structure, instead there was a general decline in
cultivation during parts of the Mughal period as many peasants fled agriculture. The
Mughal’s dependence on land revenue collected through dominant Hindu zamindars and
village leaders, whose self-interest was not the same as that of the empire, was the
beginning of the breakup of one empire, only soon to be replaced by another imposed by
the British (Heitzman and Worden 1995; Kulke and Rothermund 2004; Robb 2002).
Agriculture and the peasants were to suffer to an even larger extent during British rule.
Colonization
With arrogant authority, the British introduced harsher taxes and appropriated
communal land, the fallows and the forests. These vast areas that the new government
called “wasteland,” had been part of the foundation for agriculture in India, as an
important source of fodder and fuel. Through control of the land the British colonialists

36
controlled the economy, destabilized village resource management institutions, and
subverted the country’s social process. Rather than creating a positive impact in India
through Western intellectual or technological innovations, the British added to the
consolidation of feudalism. The revenue was not invested in domestic economic
development, or industrialization (as occurred in European feudalist states to some
extent), but was shipped back to Britain, or used to expand the Empire (Agarwal 1998;
Sethi 2006).
The degree of impoverishment from increased taxation soon became evident, as the
first of many tragic famines during the era of the British struck in the Bengal Presidency
in 1769–70, after months of drought. The price of rice increased, and resulted in a
famine that took the lives of one-third of the population—total of nearly ten million
peasants in one year (Greenough 1983:265)—in what had been fertile and abundant
provinces (Visaria and Visaria 1983:477). Rather than lessening the pressure on land
revenue after this disaster, the British governor-general from 1786–93, residing at the seat
of British power in Calcutta, Charles Cornwallis, was worried about the consequences of
the lack of income, and made an agreement with Bengali zamindars in a Permanent
Settlement system, which allowed the zamindars to continue residing on their large
estates in exchange for efficiently collecting taxes for the British (Heitzman and Worden
1995; Sethi 2006).
Revenue and Landownership
Under British rule, peasants were completely powerless when trying to claim their
traditional land-use rights; centuries old landownership arrangements concerning the land

37
they lived and worked on. For the vast majority of peasants and tribal groups, the
historical land-tenure system of their communities was delegitimized and replaced by the
institution of private property. The land became the legal possessions of the zamindars,
or landlords, in bargains facilitated by the British. The landlords could then develop their
added acreage for cash crop plantations or other projects as they saw fit for the best
possible economic outcome from the land and the cultivators (Heitzman and Worden
1995; Sethi 2006; Shiva and Holla Bhar 2001b; Whitcombe 1972). The zamindari
system later became the template for colonially imposed feudalism in large parts of
northern India, while in the south, a system called ryotwari, was often used, in which the
peasants paid their taxes directly to the government. In the northern areas, the zamindars
routinely acted as the moneylender for the tenant farmers, who sometimes had to borrow
to pay their taxes. Often, unable to even keep up paying the huge interests on their debt,
an initially small amount could go on to haunt their children to continue the toil, even
after the death of their parents (Heitzman and Worden 1995; Sen and Deb 2001; Shiva
and Holla Bhar 2001b).
Illiteracy
The British added force to the caste and class discord in society, and their education
policies increased the levels of literacy and education only among the urban elite, not the
rural masses. English replaced Persian as the language of public administration and
instruction after 1835, and this further increased the divide between the illiterate peasants
and the rulers. Education of the farmers was left up to each landlord, but among the rural
elite, education of the peasantry was not in their interest. Their fear was that teaching the

38
peasants “the three Rs” (reading, writing and arithmetic), would open their eyes and they
would learn to resist, a pattern also seen in American slavery (Guha 1983; Heitzman and
Worden 1995). Many farmers looked upon writing as a symbol of dominance, which
they often had felt through their own painful experience. Any landlord, judge, or lawyer,
could rob them of their livelihood and property, or claim they had a bond that could keep
a farmer and his family in servitude, by referring to official papers. For the peasant,
writing was therefore frequently perceived as one of his oppressor’s mysterious weapons
(Guha 1983). A similar view of the written word was put forward by Lévi-Strauss:
The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the
creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals
into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes . . . it seems to have
favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment . . . The use
of writing for disinterested purposes, and as a source of intellectual and aesthetic
pleasure, is a secondary result, and more often than not it may even be turned into a
means of strengthening, justifying, and concealing the other. [Lévi-Strauss,
1974:299]
During the colonial era there were many uprisings among the peasants, and virtually
all of these were at least partially focused on destroying written evidence of peasants’
debts, rent rolls, bonds and deeds. Ranajit Guha (1983:52) calls this “the objectification
of the peasants’ hatred of the written word.”
Literacy in India is still very low in many of its states, and India has the largest
illiterate population in the world. The last census from 2011 reveals a literacy rate of
74.0 percent: 82.1 for males and 65.5 for females. The state of Bihar has the lowest
literacy rate at just 63.8 percent, 73.5 for males and 53.3 for females, while Kerala retains
its top position with a 93.9 percent literacy rate. Kerala also occupies the top ranking
both in male and female literacy with 96.0 and 92.0 percent respectively. The urban–
rural divide is still extreme, with rural literacy rates as low as 34.8 percent for males and

39
25.0 percent for females in the most disadvantaged districts. The states I worked in have
average rural literacy rates of 72.5 percent in Punjab, 73.0 percent in West Bengal, 73.8
percent in Tamil Nadu, and 77.1 percent in Uttarakhand (India Census 2011).
Lévi-Strauss observed during fieldwork in villages in East Pakistan in the early
1950s, an area that today is part of Bangladesh, how moneylenders also often held the
roles as the local scribes, giving them a sway over the peasant that they knew how to take
advantage of. Virtually everyone with a hold over the peasant during the last centuries,
from officials to landowners, used writing as a method for operationalizing this power
(Lévi-Strauss 1974). Unfortunately, with today’s continued low literacy levels in rural
areas, this problem is still a reality in the villages. The illiterate farmers are unable to
fully understand the calculation of interests, and may be manipulated by the local supplier
of seed and fertilizers when their harvest is sold.
Agriculture Suffers
Despite subjugating the cultivators and appropriating their land, the British did not
take much interest in changing the agricultural methods or investing resources in order to
increase the food production. Peter Robb argues that “the crops and methods of
production in ancient India would have seemed broadly familiar to the early nineteenth-
century observer, except for the introduction by that time of the New World crops such as
the tomato, chili and potato” (Robb 2002:47). The focus was instead on increasing
production of cash crops for exports, and this meant that subsistence crops increasingly
were cultivated in less fertile areas, contributing to scarcity and increasing prices (Robb
2002). Although there is no evidence indicating that pre-modern cultivators invariably

40
exercised wise restraint in their use of resources (Sivaramakrishnan 2009), many
traditional and ecologically sound harvesting and management systems were changed
during this process, and scarcity of water and manure became apparent (Shiva 1992).
The commercial endeavor of the new government exploited Indian production on many
fronts.
During the Mughals, Indian textiles were renowned, and sold on national and
international markets. The British introduced heavy taxation not only in agriculture, but
also in the Indian textile- and other industries. The domestic industry became unable to
compete with the textiles produced from Indian raw materials in Britain’s mills.
Thousands of factory workers lost their jobs because of this, and increasing numbers had
to subsist on agriculture (Heitzman and Worden 1995). A “deindustrialization” occurred
within many production areas, and even if there had been landless laborers in India for
centuries and the social structure was certainly already one of inequality—with
oppressive caste and class divisions afflicting the poor, the lower castes, and women
worst—all these aspects of society were aggravated under colonialism (Agarwal 1998;
Kumar and Desai 1983).
Canals, Famines, and Malaria
In the 1850s, the railroad and telegraph were introduced in Bengal, and this work was
then continued to connect the colonial capital, Calcutta, with other cities. The forests
were cut down in vast areas, used to build ships and railways, and for construction and
fuel, often causing significant ecological degradation. One example of this took place on
the fertile Doab plains between Ganges and Yamuna rivers in North India two decades

41
earlier. Deforestation destroyed the natural resource base and caused drought, and
indirectly the famine of 1837–38. To prevent another disaster like the drought in the
Doab region and to be able to effectively continue revenue collection, the British invested
heavily in canal construction from the Ganges and Jamuna rivers in the 1870s, partially
renewing canals built by the Mughals, but also adding many new lines and distributaries.
The canal system destroyed the well-irrigation system, which had served the production
of semi-dry millets and pulses—the staple crops—and instead encouraged the production
of wheat, sugarcane, indigo and opium. The price of water was doubled after the
renovations, and producing cash crops aided in paying increased revenue for the irrigated
lands. This displacement of staple crops contributed to the famine of 1877, when drought
struck again, and the canal-irrigated land was used to grow cotton, indigo, and sugarcane
(Whitcombe 1972). Unfortunately, a developmental theme emerged as what was
intended as sincere attempts at developing infrastructure and improving production
conditions, instead often caused ecological adversity, followed by increased social
suffering. The canals brought changes in the environment that the cultivators did not
have resources or knowledge to adapt to. Swamping created breeding places for
mosquitoes carrying malaria, which reached an alarming extent during the 1870s
throughout the canal irrigated areas including Punjab. Road and railway embankments
also caused water logging, and added more of the same negative consequences that the
canals had created. This way, artificial irrigation and improved means of
communications meant to reduce the destruction and the often high numbers of victims
after erratic monsoons, instead caused deadly diseases to flourish and spread (Visaria and

42
Visaria 1983). In 1936, endemic malaria was estimated to have an annual mortality of
two million people, and a many times higher morbidity rate (Whitcombe 1995).
Between the two World Wars, India suffered economically, as did most countries
involved in the worldwide recession, the following depression, and the disruption of
international shipping caused by the wars. The last full-scale famine in India was the
Bengal Famine in 1943, when an estimated three million people died, and poor rural
women were amongst the hardest affected (Agarwal 1990). There are several theories as
to the cause of this famine: interference of the wholesale rice market (Greenough 1983),
continued export of food grains, and lack of food distribution by the British government,
along with accumulation among the rich, are among these. There was not a lack of rice
per se, but the price was too high for starving people to buy it. Many of those were from
rural areas, moving into cities to get help, but often succumbing along the roads (Sen
2004). The difficult situation in agriculture and food production during the first part of
the 20th
century was not going to improve soon, with independence, and simultaneously a
partition of the country.
Independence and Partition
The partition of Punjab province in the west and of Bengal province in the east,
contributed to a crisis in the food production after independence. Punjab was the
country’s most fertile, naturally irrigated agricultural area, and Bengal had been among
the most fertile areas before the British rule, but was now impoverished after almost two
centuries of revenue extraction. The dislocation of over 12 million people during
partition, which devastated the Sikh community in Punjab and caused loss of life in the

43
hundreds of thousands among all religious communities, created lasting hostilities and
political disputes that still rank among the top of India’s security issues (Shiva 1992).
At independence, India had a semi-feudal agrarian system, with the control and
ownership of the land in the hands of a relatively small number of landlords and
intermediaries. The cash crop production and long-distance trade, developed primarily
under colonialism, continued after independence. While this had enriched many among
the Indian elite, in addition to the British, it had damaged the lives of the vast majority of
the population (Robb 2002). In this system of inequality and oppression, excessive rent
and uncertainty surrounding tenure, there was no economic incentive for tenant farmers
or sharecroppers to try to improve cultivation methods or the soil, to increase cultivation.
Agricultural production stagnated, and the repression of the tenants caused increasingly
depressing conditions (Sethi 2006).
Land Reform?
In the years after independence, several five-year plans initiated by the central
government included land reforms; targeting the elimination of intermediaries, protection
for those who rented land, and limits on the size of landholdings. While certain changes
were implemented in some districts, and in a few states, most of these plans were never
carried out. A considerable share of land therefore remains with the large landowners,
which in the Indian context means five acres of land or larger, and these constitute less
than three percent of the landowners (Rawal 2008:46). There is substantial variation
from state to state in terms of inequality in ownership holdings. Punjab and Tamil Nadu
have the largest inequalities in landownership, and Tamil Nadu also has the highest level

44
of landlessness. Most of the large landowners are found in Punjab, followed second by
neighboring Haryana, formerly a part of Punjab. The three states where significant land
reforms have taken place are Kerala, Tripura, and West Bengal, and in these states large
landholdings occupy only minor land areas (Rawal 2008:47). Kerala is a successful
exception in terms of literacy, land reforms, and healthcare, and also has the highest life
expectancy in India; 74.7 years, well above the country’s average of 63.6 years (India
Census 2011).
On the whole, inequalities in India have not diminished, but rather amplified in the
years since independence. The landholdings among the most affluent ten percent of the
population are larger now than six decades ago; about 15 million acres are part of
holdings of 20 acres or more. In 1951, 82.7 percent of the population was rural, while in
2001 that had been reduced to 72.2 percent, and the class structure and landownership
within the rural populations changed even more. Whereas 71.9 percent of the rural
population was farmers and 28.1 percent landless agricultural laborers in 1951, the
proportion of farmers had been reduced to 54.4 percent, and that of landless laborers had
increased to 45.6 percent, by 2001. This is a large rise in a very vulnerable and uprooted
part of the population, often without any representation, and landlessness continues to
increase with roughly half a percent every year (Herring and Agarwala 2006; Rawal
2008:47). These figures indicate that there is room for land reforms in several states, but
the farmer lobby and the rural landholding class of today is no more likely than their
predecessors to agree to redistribution of land if they experience it as a “loss” of property.
In addition, increased agricultural exports have created a new group of middle-income
farmers with newly required status and economic influence that they are not willing to

45
share with the less fortunate. Land reforms have largely been left aside by the
government and the urban, educated elite, who are the decision makers. Their new focus
is on “liberalization, privatization, and globalization” (LPG) (Sethi 2006:74), where land
is investment, infrastructure, and housing for the privileged. Land as a basis of livelihood
such as subsistence farming is struggling in this battle. Agriculture’s part of the Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) has dropped in recent years, but almost 58 percent of India’s
population still depends on agriculture for their livelihood, and the larger part of these
(nearly 63 percent) are peasants, with tiny holdings; less than one acre in size (Sethi
2006:75).
Continued Marginalization of Agriculture
In the last couple of centuries, agrarian life has played an important part in the
formation of nation-states in many parts of the world. People of the countryside often are
part of the “origin myth” of many nations’ rural-based, national identity. This image of a
national rural identity also exists in India, but many people living in urban areas today are
very detached from, and often simply disinterested in the problematic reality of poor rural
dwellers or small farmers, land reform policies, or how the use of land in rural areas is
connected to the wider economy (Sethi 2006). The image of a romantic countryside has
unfortunately not contributed to improving the life of rural populations. At
independence, the new government of the Congress Party had extensive plans of
eradicating poverty, in the spirit of Gandhism, and of creating economic progress and
development. Nehru was, despite what is called “Nehru socialism,” more like his
predecessors and not in favor of allowing just anybody to participate in governance, but

46
saw that as the responsibility of the privileged. His government continued the trend of
the British, who had focused on developing the cities and educating the urban elites
during their rule. These policies marginalized the villages and agriculture, while the
brunt of investment was in industry. It was assumed that the majority of the country’s
population could carry on in a traditional lifestyle and produce inexpensive food and raw
materials, without even basic infrastructure or proper education in the rural areas
(Omvedt 2005; Sethi 2006).
Political Background of the Green Revolution
In the political climate of the 1950s, the United States was wary of India’s ties with
Russia, and feared a move towards communism. Given the impoverished situation after
independence and the conflicts after partition, India was in need of food, and the United
States could provide food aid. In China, land reform was implemented after the Chinese
revolution, and this had increased their agricultural production. Nehru proposed to the
Indian parliament that they could try out a cooperative land management system in India,
between the landowners and the tenant farmers, but this never caught on among the
landowners or their representatives. Even if the vast majority of the country’s population
was in favor of land reforms, the government did not dare oppose the politically powerful
landowners or urban upper classes. The food aid from the United States did not
encourage increased food production domestically. Indian farmers were in no position to
compete with the American subsidized wheat, and Indian investments were still focused
on urban industrialization, not rural development. During the 1960s domestic production

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