Over 50 years since its independence, India has made immense progress towards food security. Indian population has tripled, but food-grain production more than quadrupled: there has thus been substantial increase in available food-grain per capita.
In country such as India where still around 64% of cultivated land is dependent on monsoons, imagining the condition way back prior to the mid 1960's, when the country was struggling with droughts, famines and high dependence on international aids and imports to feed its people, is not a difficult task.
Two years of severe drought in 1965 and 1966 convinced India to reform its agricultural policy, and that India could not rely on foreign aid and foreign imports for food security.
India adopted significant policy reforms focused on the goal of foodgrain self-sufficiency. This ushered in India's Green Revolution. It began with the decision to adopt superior yielding, disease resistant wheat varieties in combination with better farming knowledge to improve productivity. The Indian state of Punjab led India's green revolution and earned itself the distinction of being the country's bread basket.
An Indian geniticist, M. S. Swaminathan, played a leading role in turning the dreams of 'Green Revolution' into reality. Swaminathan, the son of a surgeon, was educated in India and at the University of Cambridge (Ph.D., 1952) as a geneticist. During the next two decades he held a number of research and administrative positions (mostly in the Indian civil service). While working in these positions he helped introduce Mexican semidwarf wheat plants to Indian fields and helped to bring about greater acceptance of modern farming methods.
He was highly influenced by Norman Borlaug (who is known as the Father of Green revolution). In the 1990s, several environmental writers began describing the agriculture scientist Norman Borlaug, who has died aged 95, as the saviour of "more lives than anyone in history". He was awarded Nobel peace prize of 1970 for his great contribution to the mankind. I found this very nice video on Norman's contribution to agriculture and his response to the challenges faced by farmers worldwide.
Green revolution brought about a phenomenal growth in the food grain production. A hectare of Indian wheat farms that produced an average of 0.8 tonnes in 1948, produced 4.7 tonnes of wheat in 1975 from the same land.
By 2000, Indian farms were adopting wheat varieties capable of yielding 6 tonnes of wheat per hectare.
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