History of Indian agriculture
Pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial farming and their impacts.
Farming before colonial rule
Agriculture in the Indian subcontinent is very old: the Indus Valley people grew wheat, barley, cotton and pulses. In the pre-colonial period most villages were largely self-sufficient. Farmers grew many crops and local varieties, kept cattle whose dung went back to the fields, and used community-built tanks, wells and channels. Land revenue was collected by rulers, but farming was mainly for local needs, and crop diversity acted as insurance against bad years.
The colonial period
British rule changed the purpose of farming from local needs to revenue and export.
- Land revenue systems: the Permanent Settlement (1793, Bengal, under Lord Cornwallis) fixed revenue through zamindars; the Ryotwari system (Madras and Bombay, linked with Thomas Munro) collected revenue directly from cultivators; the Mahalwari system collected it from the village as a unit. High, rigid demands pushed many peasants into debt.
- Commercialisation: farmers were pushed to grow cash crops such as indigo, cotton, jute and opium for export. The Indigo Revolt (1859–60) in Bengal and Gandhi's Champaran Satyagraha (1917) were protests against forced indigo cultivation.
- Food crops were neglected, irrigation investment was limited to some canal regions, and repeated famines (for example, the Bengal famine of 1943) caused huge loss of life.
After independence
Independent India inherited stagnant, low-yield farming. Steps taken included abolition of zamindari and other land reforms, the Community Development Programme (1952), large multipurpose dams, and in the mid-1960s the Green Revolution. Operation Flood (from 1970, led by Verghese Kurien) brought the White Revolution in milk. These raised output but also brought new environmental problems.
Key points
- Pre-colonial farming was diverse, local and largely self-sufficient.
- Colonial land revenue systems: Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari, Mahalwari.
- Colonial rule commercialised agriculture and neglected food crops.
- Post-1947: land reforms, dams, Green Revolution, Operation Flood.
Common mistakes
- Linking the Ryotwari system with zamindars; it dealt directly with the ryot (cultivator).
- Thinking the Green Revolution began soon after 1947; it began in the mid-1960s.
- Confusing Operation Flood (milk) with the Green Revolution (food grains).