Suchergebnisse

A brief examination is presented of the impact of the green revolution in aggravating sociopolitical tensions as it spreads over areas in India which are characterized by very high man-land ratios, large proportions of tiny, often uneconomic, holdings, & vast masses of agricultural laborers: Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, the coastal rice belts of West Bengal, Orissa, Andra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, & Kerala. The tensions directly traceable to to the green revolution are: rise in land values & the profitability of owner-cultivation tending to encourage landlords to evict tenants; rise in rents, & to the extent that it contributes to raising agricultural wages it also provided incentives for labor-displacing mechanization; breakdown of traditional production relations has been quickened by the emergence of "gentleman-farmers" who are the first to introduce the labor-displacing machinery; an increasing resentment against the social rituals legitimizing economic disparities with a rising resentment & antagonism on the part of the poor; the appearance of a new source of tension among the agricultural laborers themselves at the introduction of migrant laborers from areas where the wages are much lower (the Thanjavur riots, 1968). The conclusion is that in the inequitable institutional framework of India's Ru economy, the green revolution is likely to accentuate the sense of relative deprivation on the part of the poor. The 1969 Report of the Ministry of Home Affairs Government of India, on "The Causes and Nature of the Current Agrarian Tension," cited 62 outbreaks of agrarian agitation in 1967-68, of which 51 were led by the landless against the landed. E. Loomis.