Agriculture and Food In India (A Half-Century Review from Independence to Globalization)

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More than a fifth of the world's farmers live in India, which has over a billion inhabitants to support and feed. From Independence in 1947 to the lifting of trade barriers in 2001, this book explains how the Indian Union has succeeded in becoming one of the world's leading food producers, but also why it is still a land of poverty.

The various aspects of the question are addressed, from the environment (cultural and natural, local and international) to institutions and food products. The ins and outs of the green revolution are obviously discussed, but so are those of other less familiar coloured revolutions (white for dairy, yellow for vegetable oils, blue for aquaculture), not forgetting horticultural and poultry dynamics, as well as products that give India its flavour (spices, tea and other plantation crops).

Three core issues are debated at the end: the unsolved problem of poverty and under-nutrition, the worrying deterioration of natural resources, and the recent economic liberalization.

This half-century review, which takes the form of a handbook for a broad readership, enlightens us on both the past and future paths of the world's biggest democracy.

Bruno Dorin, Ph.D. in economics and postgraduate in agricultural engineering as well as management, is now a CIRAD researcher (Montpellier, France). He lived in India for eight years, first in Andhra Pradesh for his doctoral work (1990-1), then in New Delhi as CSH Director and researcher (1995-2000). His two main books in English are The Indian Entrepreneur (Manohar, 2003) and Agricultural Incentives in India (Manohar, 2004).

Frederic Landy is a professor of geography at the University of Paris X-Nanterre (GECKO laboratory), a fellow of the Institute Universitaire de France and an associate researcher with the Centre d'Etudes de l'Inde et de I'Asie du Sud (CNRS-EHESS).

His publications include Feeding India: The Spatial Parameters of Food Grain Policy (Manohar, 2009) and his co-edited volumes Reconfiguring Identities and Building Territories in India and South Africa (Manohar, 2005) and Globalization and Local Development in India: Examining the Spatial Dimension (Manohar. 2004).

This book sets out to provide a unique overview of the agricultural and food economy of a young Republic that accounts for a sixth of the world's population. The original French version (Inra Editions, 2002), as well as this updated one translated from French to English by Helen Burford (Cirad), also had a second objective: to provide non-Indian readers with sufficiently specialized information to enable them to follow the articles, analyses and debates that punctuate daily life in India.

In other words, we did not aim at writing one more book on Indian agriculture full of research details, tables, footnotes and references, but rather a general introduction to Indian agriculture in the form of a scientifically-based synopsis reviewing almost six decades of changes and revolutions. Since these changes are complex and multidimensional, we have addressed and crossbred as far as possible various approaches (technical, economical, spatial, political, cultural) during a rather long historical span. In spite of this, the size of the book has been kept minimal, with an internal design as attractive as possible (small paragraphs and index on specific issues like in a textbook, almost no tables but graphs and maps summarizing thousands of statistics). Hence not only scholars, but also students, decision makers and businessmen should easily find precise (but short) information on a specific topic before going more into detail with other materials available in the market or on the Web (see also our bibliography). All in all, our endeavour focused here on synthesis, not on analysis, within the framework of a system approach trying to bring and link together various teachings mainly drawn from numerous compartmentalized scholarly literature, besides other materials including our own field experience in India.

The book thus has a broad target readership (diplomats, entrepreneurs, engineers, researchers, teachers, students, any world citizen concerned about food and agricultural issues), which has its drawbacks: some will find it too technical, others not sufficiently scientific. We merely hope that the attempted compromise will satisfy the majority.

India has over a billion mouths to feed, but it is no longer plagued by famine like it was prior to Independence in 1947. In a good year, it even manages to export cereals. Has it shown other countries the way in terms of agricultural and food policy?

Apparently not. The Green Revolution it has implemented is very similar to those adopted by other countries in the 1960s, in Asia (e.g. the Indonesian BIMAS programme) or elsewhere (e.g. the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy). Time and again, the priority has been self-sufficiency, based on State-funded agricultural intensification. It has also introduced a subsidized food distribution programme, like many other countries ranging from Egypt, Zambia and Pakistan to the United States, since the idea is also to guarantee 'food security' to poor consumers, or in other words, to provide 'access by all people at all times to enough food for an active and healthy life' (World Bank, 1986).

Any food policy has indeed to appreciate the most appropriate means to provide each and every citizen with a diet that is satisfactory in terms of nutrition, i.e. sufficiently rich in carbo-hydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, iron and other micronutrients. This goes far beyond merely guaranteeing a minimum calorie intake, primarily from cereals. However, in 2001, when India apparently had no idea what to do with its 60 million-tonne State wheat and rice stockpile, 300 million Indians were still below the absolute poverty line, with many women and children suffering from severe nutritional deficiencies. That figure is almost equivalent to the total population of the fifteen European Union countries at the time. How can we explain these figures, except as the result of a serious lack of governance and of an important gap between agricultural policy and local requirements in a federation that nevertheless claims to be the world's largest democracy?