Page 6 - Lessonnote_Change and Development in Rural Society

▪ The rapid social and economic transformation in these areas led to debates about
the impact of Green Revolution.

▪ Agricultural productivity increased sharply because of the new technology and India
became self-sufficient in food grain production.
▪ Green Revolution was considered a major achievement.

Negative social impacts
▪ Because of Green Revolution, it was mainly the medium and the large farmers who
benefited from the new technology.
▪ It was because the inputs were expensive and the small and the marginal farmers
were not able to afford to spend as much as the large farmers on purchasing the
inputs.

▪ When the farmers produced primarily for themselves and were unable to produce
for the market, it was called ‘subsistence agriculture’. Such farmers are usually
termed as peasants.
▪ The farmers who were able to produce surplus, over and above their family needs,
were linked to the market.
▪ These farmers reaped the maximum benefit from the Green Revolution and from the
commercialization of the agriculture that followed.

First Phase of Green Revolution

➢ In the first stage of Green Revolution, there was an increasing inequality in the rural
society.
➢ As Green Revolution crops yielded more produce, the well to do farmers who had
access to land, capital, technology etc. could invest on new seeds and fertilizers and
earned more money from their produce.
➢ It also led to the displacement of tenant-cultivators as the landowners began to take
back the land from the tenants and cultivated it directly as it was more profitable.
➢ This made the rich farmers better and worsened the condition of the marginal
farmers.
➢ The introduction of machineries such as tillers, tractors, threshers and harvesters

also led to displacement of service caste groups. Manual labour was no more
required in the fields. This displacement also led to the increase in the pace of rural
urban migration.
➢ The ultimate outcome of Green Revolution was the process of differentiation in
which the rich became richer and the poor became poorer.
➢ However, employment and wages for agricultural workers increased in many areas
because the demand for labour increased.
➢ Also rising prices and shift in the mode of payment of workers from payment in kind
to cash worsened the economic condition of most rural workers.