DRAFT CHINA / INDIA PAPER

I. Introduction

India and China are key examples in the transnational and comparative study of the Green
Revolution, since each is in some ways representative of one side of the Cold War divide, but each also
existed in considerable tension with the U.S./Soviet poles. The U.S. interest in promoting Green
Revolution in India grew from the concern that India might be swayed by the logic of communism.
Chinese state officials understood the intended anti-communist symbolism of the Green Revolution and
lambasted Indian leaders for supporting it. In contrast with U.S. technocratic assumptions and Soviet
"revisionism," radical Chinese leaders insisted that technological change could never replace revolution
in the social and political spheres. Thus in China, the new seeds, chemicals, and associated
technologies of the Green Revolution had to be pursued within a "rural scientific experiment
movement" that created a radical epistemology combining peasant wisdom, party ideology, and the
modern technological knowledge of "educated youth."
If the major motives of the U.S. agencies were to forestall communist insurrections and promote
a free-market economy, the Indian government was more concerned to avoid a "crisis of sovereignty"
and retain the moral legitimacy to rule, distinguishing Indian from British rule through better food
security and thus avoidance of famine-related suffering. Moreover, Indian political leaders did not
passively accept a position on the U.S. "side" of the Cold War, but rather actively explored alternative
possibilities and in fact some looked not only at Soviet accomplishments but also at China as a third
potential model. In contrast with radical Chinese perspectives, in India the Green Revolution effected a
strong shift toward a technical rendering of the food question. And while the Chinese "rural scientific
experiment movement" sought to produce a nation-wide network of peasant agro-technicians
supporting socialist agriculture, in India the Green Revolution was intended to transform what they
considered to be traditional and backward farmers into “risk-taking”, profit-making individuals.
This paper will consider Indian and Chinese approaches to transforming agricultural science
and technology in the larger context of Cold War-era geopolitics and the transnational Green
Revolution. We will begin with an exploration of the different perspectives on the relationship between
socio-political and techno-scientific change articulated by Indian and Chinese actors engaged in
agricultural modernization efforts. We will then move to a discussion of how political orientations
framed understandings of the identity of farmers and the role they played in modernizing (or blocking
the modernization of) agriculture.

II. Revolutions Red and Green

The U.S., the World, and the Construction of Sociopolitical vs. Technoscientific Change

In 1968 the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), William
Gaud, coined the term "Green Revolution." He said,
Record yields, harvests of unprecedented size and crops now in the ground demonstrate that
throughout much the developing world—and particularly in Asia—we are on the verge of an
agricultural revolution... It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a

1
 White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution.1
Thus, in the eyes of its U.S. creators, the Green Revolution was not just a set of agricultural
technologies designed to increase crop yields. It was also an ideologically explicit sociopolitical
strategy. If farmers around the world could be raised from poverty through technological improvements
to agriculture, they might be less likely to seek political solutions to their problems. This was the
premise behind USAID, which John F. Kennedy founded in 1961 to encourage economic development
in impoverished countries lest communist rivals exploit the potential for revolution and "ride the crest
of its wave—to capture it for themselves."2
If the Green Revolution as developed in the U.S. for global deployment was both a set of
technologies and a political strategy, it moreover reflected a specific, historically contingent and
politically constructed understanding of the relationship between the technoscientific and sociopolitical
realms, a relationship that encompasses both the relationship between scientific knowledge and social
organization, and that between technological transformation and political change. For William Gaud
and others who have shared his essentially technocratic perspective, science and technology are
inherently apolitical forces; in fact they are not just themselves politically neutral but even have a
neutralizing effect on potential political activity. They satisfy social needs and so prevent revolutionary
movements from gaining steam.
The epistemological and political assumptions behind the technocratic model of development
have provided much fodder for scholarly critique. As Ferguson wrote in 1990, "What is 'development'?
It is perhaps worth remembering just how recent a question this is. This question, which today is apt to
strike us as so natural, so self-evidently necessary, would have made no sense even a century ago." He
goes on to argue that the "development apparatus" is an "'anti-politics machine,' depoliticizing
everything it touches, everywhere whisking political realities out of sight, all the while performing,
almost unnoticed, its own pre-eminently political operation of expanding bureaucratic state power."3
And in his landmark Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity, Timothy Mitchell delivers a
devastating critique to technocratic approaches to economic development specifically in the context of
technology transfer. [We are going to do an in-depth historiographical exploration in the final version
of the paper]

State, Social Reforms and Scientific Research in Indian Agriculture

In the early decades of Indian independence with feelings of nationalism still riding high, the
political and the scientific community wanted to think of techno-science in terms of its contribution to
nation-building projects. Science as well as technology, Nehru was confident, had a benevolent nature;
techno-science will help to bring about economic growth as well as contribute to social-cultural
regeneration. It was in the nurturing of a “scientific background, a scientific approach, a scientific mind
and scientific temper,” that Nehru was hoping to transform India from a “static” to a dynamic, modern
society with a prosperous economy.4 Commenting on the wide social and economic valence of techno-
science in the early years of India’s independence, Srirupa Roy observed that practices of techno-

1 William Gaud, "Revolution: Accomplishments and Apprehensions," address before The Society for International
2 See "President Kennedy's Special Message to Congress" (May 25, 1961), The Pentagon Papers, v. 2, p. 804. [CHECK]
3 James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (New
York : Cambridge University Press, 1990), xiii and xv.
4
Nehru, opening ceremony, Rare Earth Factory (Bombay, 24th December 1953), G.P. collection, National Library,
Kolkata, India (GPNL).

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science in India were inextricably linked to the “needs” of the nation-state. The “need discourse” to
which Srirupa Roy refers to in her work underlined a collection of persistent and unfulfilled problems,
failures, and needs’ of the nation-state that were meant to be solved through the “application of the
objective methodologies and neutral rationalities of science.”5
Nehru believed that science provided the national leadership with “peaceful method of change”-
key to many of India’s economic “needs”; techno-science was especially critical in “the development
of the human and material resources of the rural community”.6 The plans to use techno-science in the
development of a modern agricultural sector in India came deeply embedded to the larger social goals
of the nation-state. The Planning Commission under Nehru’s leadership, therefore, stressed on the
importance of “institutional” measures to enable the majority of farmers to take advantages of the
technocratic reforms. Of the institutional measures, establishment of farmers’ cooperatives and series
of legislations to facilitate putting a ceiling on how much land a farmer could own became most closely
associated with technological modernization of agriculture in independent India. Commenting on the
necessities of such reforms in “underdeveloped economies” with “rigid social structure and unutilised
resources”, the First Five-Year Plan observed, “To change the social pattern built round the ownership
of land and to bring new resources and technology into every day operations become, therefore, central
to the process of development. It is the purpose of planning to bring about rapid changes in such a way
that the economy moves forward in a balanced, integrated manner, keeping in view at all times the
major objectives of community development, increased production and equitable distribution.”7
Though Nehru was sharply critical of use of “violence” in many of the political aspects of
communism, during his prime ministership government delegations visited People’s Republic of China
with an intention to understand how the Chinese government was modernizing their agriculture.8 On
returning, the committee comprising of M.V. Krishnappa, P.N. Thapar, Tarlok Singh, R.J. Kalamkar
and S.R. Sen-all well known believers in socialist principle, reported on “priority of ‘social reforms” in
Chinese agriculture. The members observed that “For the achievement of targets laid down in the Plan,
the Chinese authorities rely primarily on three sets of measures, namely, i) agrarian reorganization or
“social reforms”, (ii) economic and financial measures, or tax. Price planned purchase and credit
policy, and (iii) technical reforms. Of these three measures, they place the greatest priority on the first,
by which they primarily mean land reform and cooperation.”9 To underline the relevance of social
reforms for the success of technical reforms, the Report quoted from the Chinese Communist Party
documents, “Agricultural producers’ cooperatives can organize labour power rationally so that
productivity can be raised more rapidly, they can systematically and effectively use land and extend the
area under cultivation; they can resist or reduce the ravages of nature and, with State help gradually
introduce technical reforms in agriculture.”10 To Nehru, who saw the two countries to be at comparable
economic situation, farmers’ cooperatives and land reforms, therefore, had the potential to play equally
important role in India as these did in China.
In a country marked by inequitable physical and social infrastructure, such as India, these
reforms carried the potential to address the differences in rights over means of production and give the
farmers the will and ability to adopt improved techniques. Similar to the institutional reforms, the
production plans involving the use of techno-scientific inputs carry the unmistakable marks of

5
Srirupa Roy, Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism (Duke University Press, 2007) ch.3.
6
First Five-Year Plan, Ch. 9 http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/index1.html
7
First Five-Year Plan, Ch. 9 http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/index1.html
8
Jawahar Lal Nehru on Community Development, Panchayati Raj and Cooperation (Ministry of Community Development
and Cooperation, GOI) 47-48
9
Report on the Indian Delegation to China on Agricultural Planning And Techniques July-August, 1956, 689
10
Report on the Indian Delegation to China, 690

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negotiation between capitalist enterprises and the professed goal of social equity. This had been
brought out clearly by Francine Frankel in her study of the political economy of independent India. In
support of her argument Frankel pointed out that the final version of the First Five Year Plan (FYP)
overruled the draft that called for a “predominantly technocratic strategy based on incentives to greater
private investment on modern inputs and concentration of resources in the irrigated areas having the
highest production potential.” She argued that the approach of the draft plan was abandoned because it
“might have yielded maximum gains in output, but only at the social cost of widening the gulf between
large landowners and the mass of subsistence farmers on the one hand, and the most advantaged the
impoverished regions of the other.”11 The underlying claim of the FYP instead had been that “higher
levels of output depended less on the application of scientific methods to agriculture-which few
cultivators could afford-than on the transformation of the institutional framework to provide small
farmers and agricultural workers with adequate incentives to increase production through more
efficient application of traditional labor-intensive techniques.”12
Thus though deeply committed to the universal valence of science, the political-administrative
and the technocratic apparati of India, driven by their economic goals and political objectives, tried to
reach an accommodation (rather than replicating it in its entirety) with the techno-scientific model of
development that the ideologues of developmental economics were strongly urging in the United
States. Unlike Western Europe and the Midwestern U.S.A where capital had deeply penetrated and
shaped agricultural practices, the scientists in India mainly experimented on organic fertilizers, bred
“improved” varieties of locally used indica seeds and explored most effective labor-intensive methods
to produce food crops. Not only were other forms of biochemical inputs rare in a country with nascent
industrial set up, but also there was little or no credit infrastructure to sustain its uses, not to mention
the deep ambivalence among the political leadership to limit the uses of scarce resources only in
selected regions. For close to two decades after India’s independence, therefore, contemporary research
reports from government agricultural research institutes, such as the CRRI and the IARI indicate only
occasional work undertaken on capital-intensive agricultural practices among Indian scientists or its
uses among large sections of the country’s farming population. To the agricultural scientists of the
developed countries who were keen on modeling tropical agriculture along a capital-chemical intensive
line these very political and economic reasons that underlined techno-scientific choices in India
appeared as a deterrent to the modernization project.
At the heart of the modern agricultural practices was the widespread use of high doses of
chemical fertilizers. To the agricultural scientists coming from the developed countries of the temperate
zone, the agricultural practices associated with the tropical farming of India appeared primitive, the
farm technology appeared “under developed” being labor-intensive in nature, the soil was the main
source of concern because of its depleted nature.13 Scientists working with farming in tropical countries
often complained that soil types in these regions displayed chronic nutrient deficiency. The explanation
of the deficiency was partly ascribed to intrinsic tropical condition(s) as well as because of very little
use of chemical fertilizers in farming.14 On assuming the responsibility to modernize food production
in India, the scientists from American land grant institutes concentrated on incorporating use of
chemical fertilizers as an integral part of the country’s farming, encouraging the scientists in Indian
universities to undertake serious research on the same. In the initial decades after independence,

11
Francine Frankel. India’s Political Economy, 1947-2004, 95
12
Frankel. India’s Political Economy, 95-96
13
Harold Tempany and D.H. Grist, An introduction to tropical agriculture (Longman, 1958).
14
Max F. Millikan & David Hapgood, No Easy Harvest: No Easy Harvest: The Dilemma of Agriculture in Underdeveloped
Countries (Little Brown, 1967)

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therefore, a significant part of India’s collaboration with American institutions and transfer of agrarian
technique consisted of huge chemical fertilizer demonstration projects.15 To illustrate its benefits to the
farmers, they introduced radiotracer technology to develop soil maps of India that indicated the varying
nutrient composition of Indian soil types.16
However, in spite of all the prodding towards orienting agricultural practices and research
towards a capital and chemical-intensive model similar to that being practiced in Western Europe and
the Midwestern belt of the U.S., it remained a challenge to orient Indian agriculture towards higher
doses of synthetic fertilizer application and this cannot be explained entirely either in terms of the
Indian government’s professed preference for institutional reforms over technocratic reforms or its
prioritization of industrial over agricultural modernization. The role of capital-intensive inputs in
Indian agriculture was limited by specific enviro-technical factors, such as the “lodging” of the existing
indica varieties on application of high doses of chemical fertilizers and the consequent crop loss as well
as the inability of the Indian breeders to evolve anti-lodging rice and wheat varieties prior to the ones
released by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican program in the early 1960s.
The significance of the environmental and technological factor had been largely overlooked in
understanding the dynamics of agricultural modernization in independent India that preceded the Green
Revolution period. Institutional reforms, with its underlying goal of achieving social equity had
recurrently surfaced, as an important consideration of how to modernize Indian agriculture.
Notwithstanding its centrality in government policy, both the plans for farmers’ cooperative and land
reforms faced stiff resistance from different political factions in India. Ashutosh Varshney in his study
of the rural-urban conflict in India has commented on the state bosses’ support for technocratic reforms
over any attempt to change the entrenched political and economic power structure in the Indian
countryside.17 The worldwide debate over depleting food resources in face of “population explosion”
and recurrent famine in India further convinced good many people and agencies working with Indian
agriculture that capital-intensive technological inputs would be the panacea to complex social and
economic problems of hunger and poverty. This disassociation of the social from the technological
comes out forcefully in the Ford Foundation’s report on how to tackle the growing “food crisis” in
India. Published in 1959, it advocated “an all-out emergency” program build around large-scale
adoption of expensive biochemical resources, credit supply, water conservation and price support
measures to farmers. They wanted adequate number of personnel trained and assigned to the job of
increasing production. With a plan to use more chemical fertilizers and hybrid seeds to push up the
yield, the Foundation experts discouraged land reforms as a way of improving the Indian agrarian
sector. They considered “insecurity of tenure” brought about by land ceiling measures as having a
“retarding” effect on food production. The Foundation representatives reasoned that if the well-off
farmers could be assured that no further reforms would risk their possession, they would be encouraged
to make the requisite investment in acquiring the new inputs and thus push up the production towards
diffusing the food crisis. 18
In urging technology as a solution to hunger in India, the Ford Foundation ignored the most
obvious problems, namely India till then had a very limited capacity of producing sufficient amounts of
chemical fertilizers and most farmers lacked the means to purchase expensive inputs. The Report tried

15
M. S. Randhawa, A History of Agriculture in India, 281.
16
“Soil Research in U.P.” Times of India, 29 March 1954, http://www.proquest. com/ (accessed 20 April 2011).
17
Ashutosh Varshney, Democracy, Development, and the Countryside, (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998. 70-
80
18
Ford Foundation, Report on India’s Food Crisis and Steps to Meet It (Government of India, 1959), 6

5
to overcome the issue of limited resources by advising the government not to dribble fertilizers across
the entire country, rather concentrate these “scarce” resources in areas that were adequately equipped to
utilize them. Following this strategy meant that the resources should be pumped into areas already
enjoying a relative advantage on account of good irrigation facilities, fertile soil, active credit
infrastructure etc. The Ford experts’ recommendation, therefore, in advocating a “selective” approach,
not only carried the danger of bringing about greater regional disparity but also a refusal to understand
the peasants’ life as an integrated whole. Thus in solely focusing on technocratic measures, its views of
agricultural development was different from that laid down in the First FYP, which ambitiously stated,
“the peasant's life and problems have to be viewed together, no doubt selecting the points at which
special emphasis is needed, but aiming always at a comprehensive and many-sided effort to transform
the peasant's outlook and environment.”19
The argument that use of modern technology, especially high doses of chemical fertilizers,
would provide the best solution to the problem of hunger received a great boost through the successful
breeding of fertilizer-responsive dwarf varieties of wheat in the Rockefeller Foundation’s crop-
breeding project in Mexico. The use of new dwarf varieties and high doses of chemical fertilizers in
selected farms of Mexico, with fertile and well-irrigated soil, helped to substantially improve the wheat
production of the country, making it officially self-sufficient in the early 1960s. The success of the
research project convinced “experts” of the multiple uses of the new seeds in the developing world,
which had been reportedly suffering from low food production, hunger, and poverty. The new
technology offered the possibility of not only banishing hunger through higher food production, but
also of improving the economic condition of the farmers. The supporters of the new technology
vigorously asserted that higher production would meet the “rising expectation” of better life in the
countryside and immunize the developing countries from Communist influences.
Similar words of optimism were evident in the work of three other American scientists, E.C.
Stakman, Richard Bradfield and Paul C. Mangelsdorf, who were involved with the Foundation’s
Mexican program. In their book, Campaigns Against Hunger, they credited science and technology
with creating an “agricultural revolution” and of conquering hunger in Mexico. In subsequent chapters
on several other developing countries, including India, they deliberated on how the same results could
be obtained elsewhere through the introduction of the new technological package. Their account read
like a fairy tale, with the good (in this case, techno-science) winning over evil (hunger), thanks to the
valiant struggle of the heroes, the scientists. The book promised that modern research could ensure a
bright future for all, except the traditionalists who were too non-enterprising or too skeptical to
embrace technological change. Stakman, Bradfield, and Mangelsdorf’s assertions about techno-science
as a solution to hunger should be seen in the light of ongoing political arguments over dwindling food
resources and population explosion, as well as the Cold War necessity to refute the call of the
Communists for land reforms. The position increasingly hardened towards thinking that food crisis
could not be solved through land redistribution because it might satisfy the hunger of the landless for
land, but not satisfy their hunger for food. It was ONLY science and technology that would empower
nations to fight drought, soil infertility and crop loss, they argued.20
The reports of “spectacular” production by using the new technology appeared very promising
to a significant number of agricultural scientists and statesman from the developing countries, including
the Union Food and Agriculture Minister of India, C. Subramaniam and the Chair of the Botany

19
First FYP, Ch. 9 http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/index1.html
20
Elvin Charles Stakman, Richard Bradfield, Paul Christoph Mangelsdorf, Campaigns Against Hunger (Belknap Press,
1967), Ch.5.

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division of the IARI, Dr. M.S. Swaminathan. India, like many of these developing countries, had been
living on international food aid as it struggled with recurrent famine, poverty and public criticism
Sensing a political danger arising from galloping food prices, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri who
succeeded Jawaharlal Nehru brought in C. Subramaniam to tackle the recurrent food crisis.
Subramaniam drew from his previous experience as the Minister of Steel and Mine to define the
problem of hunger & famine in India as essentially one of low production. By 1965 he proposed to
introduce a “New Strategy in Agriculture”. The fulcrum of this strategy would be fertilizer and better
seeds: “To produce more food with less fertilizer is as impossible a task as to produce more steel with
less iron ore…Better seeds for agriculture are as crucial as better machine tools for industry…”
Subramaniam reasoned.21 Not only did Subramaniam’s agricultural strategy ignore hunger as a
structural problem, arising out of social and economic inequality, inefficient food distribution system &
limited access to resources, but it also bypassed the social and agro-ecological complexity of the food
question.
Faced with a growing disapproval about the food situation, however, the Indian government
decided to implement some of the recommendations of the Foundation report in launching the Intensive
Agricultural Development Programme (IADP) in 1961. The Union Ministry of Agriculture released
improved varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers to saturate areas under cultivation in selected
districts. The government strictly defined what made an area eligible to be under IADP, a huge part of
India, growing rice and wheat, remained outside the scope of the new program. More than three years
into the program, only 314 districts covering a little over five percent of the total cultivated area in the
country, were considered having the infrastructure, irrigation facilities and the soil types to be brought
under the IADP.22 Thus, though the use of chemical fertilizers and “improved” varieties of seeds did go
up in certain districts under the IADP, there was little tangible improvement to the overall food
scenario. Evidently, IADP though largely ineffective in overcoming the “food crisis” was, however,
successful in rendering the issue of agricultural development in technical terms. It began a new trend in
agricultural policy making in India where questions of social inequity, income and food distribution,
and farmers’ access to resources were significantly muted.
IADP’s launching was soon followed by a series of political and military crises for the Indian
state; the war with China and Pakistan instigated serious concern about the food situation. The tension
accentuated over the outbreak of drought in various parts of India in the mid-1960s. Terrified that the
dire situation indicated a type of reverting back to the colonial situation fraught by famine and
starvation, the confluence of events galvanized the entire debate on agricultural development into a
discussion on technological backwardness. Significant members of the scientific community, such as
M.S. Swaminthan reiterated that the situation could be tackled through the introduction of “better”
technologies—the product of cutting edge scientific research in agronomic practices, especially in
fertilizer application and water management.23
To orient the research establishment to the needs of the new agricultural strategy, Subramaniam
proposed institutional reforms that gave significant autonomy to the Indian Council of Agricultural
Research (ICAR), the body that had been primarily responsible for drawing up of India’s agricultural
policy. Since independence the government had been appointing a member of the union’s civil service
to head the ICAR to ensure a close alignment of the state’s planning objectives with that of its
technocracy. Subramaniam altered the custom by appointing Dr. B.P. Pal, a prominent geneticist to
take up the post. As a career scientist, Pal was expected to display a better grasp of any problems facing

21
Quoted from Ashutosh Varshney, Development, and the Countryside, 53.
22
Second Report on Intensive Agricultural District Program, 1960-65, 5
23
M.S. Swaminathan, “Plant Breeding Opens New Vistas in Crop Production”, Indian Farming (April 1965)

7
a researcher or a research project and take quick actions accordingly. Next, Subramaniam transferred
all the national agricultural research institutes out of the Department of Agriculture and to the new
jurisdiction of ICAR.24 Through this move, Subramaniam, arguably, intended to achieve two
objectives: facilitate centralization, while also restricting political factors from influencing agricultural
research, education and extension services. The more decentralized a research structure is, the more
difficult it is to impose a homogenous model and carry out research towards the fulfillment of specific
goals. Through centralization, therefore, he hoped to achieve better coordination among different
agricultural institutes in India, enhance IARI’s authority-financial as well as administrative in shaping
agricultural policy and contain the influences of other political-administrative bodies from intervening
in the work of agricultural research institutes.
The period after Nehru’s death through the Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s
administration, therefore, witnessed the members of the political establishment reaching a general
consensus, amidst heated debate and discussion, on a technocratic set of solutions to address India’s
agrarian issues. It received further encouragement from the state bosses who from the days of Nehru’s
prime minister-ship had been evidently resisting structural/institutional reforms in the agrarian sector.
Their main argument was that Indian agriculture needs to be modernized but without challenging the
exiting power status quo. Their preferred way of achieving it was through price support for agricultural
products. To the Union Food and Agricultural Minister, therefore, it became clear (and he endorsed the
position) that the only way to introduce technoscientific innovations to Indian agriculture was not
through social or political reforms but in giving price incentives.
Having heard that Subramaniam was prioritizing a move towards adoption of capital-chemical
intensive technology in India, the Director of the Ford Foundation in India came to meet him with a
proposal to try out the new dwarf seeds that scientists were already growing in the test plots of Indian
Agricultural Research Institute. Impressed with the high-yield achieved by the new fertilizer-responsive
dwarf seeds that did not lodge like the tall traditional varieties, the Indian government took a decision
to release it in selected parts of India, especially in Punjab which had fertile soil, with high
concentration of irrigation and well-off farmers who could purchase the new seeds.
By the time Indira Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India at the death of Lal Bahadur
Shastri in 1966, the new technological package comprising mainly of dwarf seeds and chemical
fertilizer became the anchor of the new government to sail out of the food crisis. Acutely dependent on
food aid to tide over the crisis, many in the political as well as the scientific establishment were
convinced that achieving “spectacular” rice and wheat production would be most viable mean to
transform India from a food importing to food self sufficient country. The discussion over science and
technology’s social and political role in modernizing India was pushed to the margin as productionist
logic acquired a centrality in scientific discourse,. This was particularly evident in the Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi’s speech to the nation on 12 June 1966; she characterized the moment for India as one of
“frustration, agitation, [and] uncertainty” and constantly reminded fellow politicians and scientists that
the need of the hour was to increase production, especially food production. “Unless we increase
agricultural production rapidly, control our population, and thus achieve self-sufficiency in the next
few years, we will have forfeited our right to call ourselves a free country, let alone a great country. We
must become self-reliant. Aid and help should be a temporary phase,” she insisted.

China's Red-Revolutionary Approach to Green Revolution

The political significance of the far-from-neutral "Green Revolution" was by no means lost on

24
Subramaniam, Hands of Destiny

8
contemporary observers in China, where Mao Zedong had brought a "red revolution" to victory in
1949, and where in 1966, still under his leadership, an even more tumultuous transformation had begun
under the banner of "Cultural Revolution." In 1969, the party organ People's Daily reported that India's
Minister of Food and Agriculture had "cried out in alarm that if the 'Green Revolution'... does not
succeed, a red revolution will follow." For the benefit of its readers, the paper defined "Green
Revolution" as "the so-called 'agricultural revolution' that the reactionary Indian government is using to
hoodwink the people."25 Indeed, India was one of the key targets of Cold War-era U.S. foreign aid
precisely because communism had strong footholds there; throughout the Cold War, there was a real
possibility that India might embrace communism by following the models of one of its two close
neighbors, the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. And so it is not surprising that China's
dominant newspaper, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, should publicly criticize efforts to
bring the Green Revolution to India.
Does this mean that socialist China opposed the new technologies of the Green Revolution or
agricultural modernization more generally? No. Contrary to common perception, even the most radical
leaders in socialist China embraced the causes of science and modernization. But their understanding of
science was profoundly different from that dominant in the West. Most importantly, science could not
be divorced from politics, and modernization could not be separated from revolution. What was
anathema to Chinese radicals about the "Green Revolution" was not that it promoted modernization,
but rather that it presupposed that science and technology were inherently apolitical forces capable of
circumventing social and political revolution.
The dominant socialist Chinese perspective was epitomized by an oft-quoted 1963 statement by
Chairman Mao.
Class struggle, the struggle for production, and scientific experiment are the three great
revolutionary movements for building a mighty socialist country. These movements are a sure
guarantee that Communists will be free from bureaucracy and immune against revisionism and
dogmatism, and will forever remain invincible.26
It is hard to imagine a position further removed from that of U.S. political leaders like William Gaud or
Indian leaders like C. Subranamiam and Indira Gandhi. Implicit in the philosophy undergirding the
Green Revolution was an assumption that science and technology could be divorced from social and
political change, or even that science and technology were powerful precisely because they were
somehow "objective" and so immune from the effects of society and politics. For Mao and other
radicals in socialist China, however, science was a "revolutionary movement" alongside the more
familiar political commitments of class struggle (i.e., the effort to combat the reemergence of power
inequities favoring the formerly elite classes) and the struggle for production (i.e., the effort to increase
the material base of the economy through a socialist organization of labor). And so for Mao and others
in China the introduction of Green Revolution technologies could be politically legitimate only if it
proceeded through red revolutionary means. This meant, for example, the establishment of grassroots
"scientific experiment groups" throughout the countryside in which "old peasants" with practical
experience, "educated youth" with revolutionary zeal, and local cadres (officials) with correct political
understanding would work together to identify needs and develop solutions. They would overturn
"technocratic" approaches ("technology as #1," jishu diyi) promoted by scientific elites and "capitalist
roaders"; instead, they would place "politics in command" (zhengzhi guashuai).27
Many scholars have pointed to the early 1960s as a key moment in the history of the People's

25 "政治经济危机日益加深," 1969.10.25第5版 .
26 Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1966), 40.
27 山西省忻县地区革委会农林水利局科技小组. 忻县地区农业科学实验. 1971.

9
Republic: in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward, Mao temporarily took a back seat and left open
the possibility that Liu Shaoqi and other so-called "moderates" might steer China down a different path.
The result was a brief period when the agricultural economy accommodated more family-based
farming and sideline industries, and scientists and other intellectuals advanced an agenda more in line
with a professional, even technocratic model of research and education. Still, Mao's seat was not very
far back and not for long. In 1962, the tenth plenum of the Central Committee produced a mixture of
economic pronouncements reflecting post-Great Leap moderation and political language that signaled a
clear leftward turn.28 The move to develop "scientific farming" spoke to both sets of priorities.
Policy directives in late 1962 ordered the rebuilding of the system of agro-technical extension
stations (nongye jishu tuiguangzhan) initiated in 1950. Each station was required to have three to ten
cadres with degrees from agricultural schools and experience in production and extension.29 From
February to April 1963, the National Conference on Agricultural Science and Technology Work,
mandated by the Tenth Plenum, undertook a "major planning session for agricultural science and
technology as well as for overall agricultural development in the 1960s."30 Among the conference's
most influential decisions was the expansion of demonstration farms (yangbantian, literally "model
fields"), where newly introduced seeds and agricultural methods could be tested for suitability to local
conditions and their worth demonstrated to local people.31 A technocratic vision dominated the
conference. Nie Rongzhen gave a speech in which he called (among other things) for the realization of
the "four modernizations" in agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology—the
first such explicit reference in the People's Daily to what would become Deng Xiaoping's famous
platform.32 In an April article entitled "It's Time for Scientists to Fully Display Their Capabilities,"
People's Daily reporters trumpeted the research of distinguished scientists like marine biologist Zeng
Chengkui and approvingly quoted Liu Shaoqi as saying that the four modernizations "will depend on
the hard work of everyone in the nation, depend on the hard work of the scientists, and especially will
require the leadership of the old scientists." The "masses" were an afterthought at most, appearing only
ceremonially in last line.33
By mid-1964, the rhetoric had shifted profoundly. In May, the People's Daily reported the
emergence of a "new thing": mass scientific experiment small groups (qunzhongxing kexue shiyan
xiaozu).34 The demonstration farms became a means to bring together the "expert research" of the

28 Roderick McFarquhar, The Coming of the Cataclysm, 1961-1966 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 286.
29 Benedict Stavis, Making Green Revolution: The Politics of Agricultural Development in China (Ithaca, N.Y.: Rural
Development Committee, Cornell University, 1975), 174-6; Dangdai Zhongguo congshu bianji weiyuanhui, Dangdai
Zhongguo de nongye (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1992), 570-571; Leslie Kuo, The Technical
Transformation of Agriculture in Communist China (New York : Praeger, 1972), 22.
30 Stavis, Making Green, 161.
31 [I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS. Stavis uses unproblematically, but evidence is from 1964 RMRB article
which claims demonstration farms mandated by 1963 conference... however, doesn't really hit RMRB until 1964, when
rhetoric is already much different, much more mass-oriented. (Very first RMRB mention of demonstration farms is in
1958.) ]
32 "Chanming nongye kexue gongzuo renwu" (阐明农业科学技术工作任务), Renmin ribao, 22 Feb. 1963, 1. In January,
Zhou Enlai had referenced the "four modernizations" at a Conference on Scientific and Technological Work held in
Shanghai, but had not explicitly spelled out what they comprised. See "Zai Shanghai juxing de kexue jishu gongzuo
huiyi shang Zhou Enlai chanshu kexue jishu xiandaihua de zhongda yiyi," Renmin ribao, 31 Jan. 1963, 1.
33 Lü Xinchu (吕新初) and Gu Mainan (顾迈南), "Shi kexuejia daxian shenshou de shihou le: Quanguo nongye kexue
jishu gongzuo huiyi ceji" (是科学家大显身手的时候了——全国农业科学技术工作会议侧记,), Renmin ribao, 6
April 1963, 2.
34 "Ba puji xiandai nongye kexue jishu jianli zai qunzhong de jichu shang"
(把普及现代农业科学技术建立在群众的基础上), Renmin ribao, 21 May 1964, 1.

10
scientific research establishment and the mass scientific experiment movement.35 In February, 1965 a
National Conference on Agricultural Experiment launched a new "agricultural experiment movement"
(nongye kexue shiyan yundong).36 A report on the conference in People's Daily tied the movement for
mass science in agriculture to the Tenth Plenum, bringing the radical and technological together under
one umbrella: "In September, 1962, the Tenth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee emphatically
declared that we must strengthen scientific and technological research with special attention to research
in agricultural science and technology. In May, 1963 Comrade Mao Zedong further called for... the
three great revolutionary movements..." The article highlighted the multiple forms of three-in-one
"integration" in progress: not only were cadres, science workers, and the rural masses coming together,
but also "demonstration farms, laboratories, and experiment fields," and "experiment, demonstration
[shifan], and extension." All of this, "under party leadership," was resulting in "a revolutionary
movement with demonstration fields as the center, specialized science and technology teams as the
backbone, and mass scientific experiment activities as the foundation."37
Here we find a crystallization of what was to remain a central principle in agricultural research
and extension throughout the Cultural Revolution: the sociopolitical and technoscientific were
necessarily intertwined. The system of "four-level agricultural scientific experiment networks" made
famous by Huarong County, Hunan exemplified this. Created in 1969, the network model prescribed
specific roles for a county agricultural science institute, commune agricultural science station,
production brigade agricultural science team, and production team agricultural science group. By 1973
many counties in Hunan and other provinces had established four-level networks of their own. And in
October 1974 the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, together with the Chinese Academy of
Sciences, held a National Conference for the Exchange of Experiences in Four-Level Agricultural
Scientific Experiment Networks in Huarong attended by more than four hundred people. The summary
report of the conference emphasized, "Using the four-level agricultural science network to organize the
masses to carry out scientific experiment will not only raise the level of science and technology, and
promote the development of production, but will simultaneously play a role in revolutionizing
ideology."38
Let us move now to consider a few further examples of how this relationship between scientific
development and revolutionary ideology was cultivated. The integration of the sociopolitical and
technoscientific realms meant first that scientific knowledge should be produced through socially and
politically revolutionary means. In official reports, one of the most universally noted characteristics of
scientific experiment groups was the "three-in-one" (sanjiehe) composition that brought cadres,
"educated youth," and "old peasants" together. A typical explanation of the value of the system can be
found in a 1969 report from Guangdong: "Cadres have confidence, youth have technology, and old
poor peasants have experience." The report went on to elaborate that cadres grasp all aspects of the
situation, such that they can determine what kinds of experiments will best serve production needs; old
peasants are down-to-earth and unconcerned with profit and fame, understand the rhythms of
production, and have a wealth of practical knowledge; and youth have technological knowledge and are
accepting of new technologies, such that they "dare to think and dare to act."39 This constantly cited

35 "'Yangbantian' shi nongye kexue wei shengchan fuwu de zhuyao zhendi"

("样板田"是农业科学为生产服务的主要阵地), Renmin ribao, 25 Oct. 1964, 1.
36 Stavis, Making Green, 164-5; Kuo, The Technical Transformation, 23; Dangdai, Dangdai Zhongguo de nongye, 571.
37 "Banhao sanjiehe de yangbantian, cujin nongke kexue shiyan yundong"
(办好三结合的样板田，促进农业科学实验运动), Renmin ribao, 28 March 1965, 2.
38 Henansheng geming weiyuanhui kexue jishu weihuanhui, Banhao siji nongye kexue shiyan wang (n.p., 1975), 2-3.
39 Guangdongsheng keyan lingdao xiaozu zhu Hainan, "Jieshao yige nongcun kexue shiyan xiaozu" (Introducing a rural
scientific experiment group), Nov. 23, 1969, Guangdong Provincial Archives, 306-A0.02-7-28, 7.

11
model is an example of highly articulated, structured standpoint epistemology in which three groups
each perform a specific socially engendered role in the production of politically legitimate scientific
knowledge.
These three groups were each of enormous practical and symbolic significance to the state.
Cadres were the key factor in determining whether scientific farming would be carried out locally and
whether it would hold to the party line: they often appear in official sources quoting Mao or otherwise
providing political guidance when agricultural experiments faced technical or social obstacles. Given
the low per capita numbers of scientists, educated youth (especially rural educated youth) were critical
human resources needed to establish "scientific farming" at the grassroots. Moreover, the close
connections among youth, science, and revolution dated back to the May Fourth Movement of the early
twentieth century and continued to play a powerful role in state propaganda. They were expected to
take the lead in boldly overthrowing conventional practices and bringing their scientific "culture" to
bear on revolutionizing farming. As the backbone of the revolution, "old peasants" carried the
weightiest political symbolism, but they were often the hardest to convince of the benefits of new
technologies. Official documents tacked deftly between two contrasting approaches to the dilemma: on
one hand, old peasants were praised when they learned new tricks; on the other, they were praised
when their resistance could be framed as emerging from practice-based knowledge that held in check
the over-reliance on book-learning and individualist tendency to seek personal fame that too often
plagued educated youth.
Scientific experiment groups were not only expected to derive from revolutionary social
relationships, but were further expected to actively transform rural society and culture even as they
were transforming agriculture. For example, when a team of teenage girls, named the March 8th
Agricultural Science Group in honor of International Women's Day, used pig manure as fertilizer to
increase production in a lackluster field, they struck a blow for "scientific farming"—not because their
method involved a new technology, but because they overturned unscientific, old, sexist ideas about
women's farming abilities. They reportedly faced criticism from people who said, "Women have never
done anything important. Girls doing scientific farming?! That's like frogs at the bottom of a well trying
to grow feathers and fly away!" Their response was to "struggle fiercely against this pattern of
declining sexist class consciousness.... Engaging in struggle made us realize that women practicing
scientific farming constitutes a deep revolution in consciousness."40 Far from being viewed as an
apolitical force capable of solving problems without revolution, agricultural science in socialist China
was itself a means for the radical transformation of society.
Another vivid example comes from a 1966 compilation entitled Collected Experiences
Nationwide from the Agricultural Scientific Experiment Movement. In 1961, a community in Jiangxi
Province had reportedly experienced a major outbreak of swine disease. There were very few
veterinarians available, and so some folk vets stepped forward, but they charged very high prices and
the pigs still died. A local "housewife," Wu Lanxian, went to the party secretary to talk about learning
to provide veterinary services herself. The party secretary encouraged her along with three other
housewives to the county veterinary station to study for several months. When they came back, they
opened a clinic in an unused building and hung a red paper outside with their name on it: "Four Sisters
Vet Station." Even before they started work people began spreading slander and making sexist
comments. Wu's mother-in-law even forbade her to come back in the house. Especially problematic
was their decision to keep a boar that they could take around to sows around the community for
breeding. Wu's father said that it disgraced the family for three generations to have women doing that
kind of work. But the real resistance came from the locals who had been performing this service in the

40 壮族姑娘学大寨：科学种田夺高产 . 广西农业科学 , 编辑部邮箱 1975年 07期

12
past. The local boar-keepers charged 3 yuan for their services, while the Four Sisters Station charged
only 1 yuan. And so the Four Sisters came into competition not only with folk vets but also with the
local boar-keepers, who began threatening sow-owners, noting that the Four Sisters kept only one boar,
and that if that boar died sow-owners who had switched allegiances could not expect to resume
business relations with the locals again. The perseverance and eventual victory of the Four Sisters
testified to the power of scientific farming to transform vestiges of patriarchy and of petty-capitalism,
two key targets of the Cultural Revolution.41

III. Science, Risk, and the Construction of the Modern Farmer

“Arrival of Modernity”: The Green Revolution and the making of “modern” Farmers in India

The promise of the Green Revolution technological package as an antidote to starvation and
traditionalism animated the imaginations of agricultural scientists working on the new technology.
Borlaug for instance wrote to J.A. Pelissier, the Head of the Product Research Division of ESSO
Fertilizer Company that he and his researchers were at the verge of “trigger(ing)” of a “real revolution”
in wheat production. The new ways of production, Borlaug was confident, would introduce “dynamic
new methods in one stroke…[and] kill old ideas and methods”.42
Since the yield factor could be maximized the most through the application of dwarf seeds and
chemical fertilizers purchased from the market and use of industrial technology, it arguably was the
shortest path that Indian agriculture needed to travel from being traditional to achieving modernity.
Thus, the researchers working with the Green Revolution technology worked towards establishing a
simple linear relation between the use of chemical fertilizers, high yield and strong chances of profit to
convince anyone doubting the utility of the technological package.
Agricultural economists employed in the various government funded research institutes in India
collaborated with practitioners of other branches of agricultural science to develop a new framework of
persuasion based on economic profitability. Under the new framework, using high doses of chemical
fertilizers to push up the crop yield appeared the most profitable thing for the farmers to do. The
economists undertook series of studies centered on high-doses of fertilizer application. The goal of
these studies, Deborah Fitzgerald observed, was to marshal evidences by which ordinary people would
be ‘inclined to change the way they did things…”43
The agricultural economists in India were part of a transnational “rationalizing elite” who
worked to convince the cultivators the economic benefits of the new technology. Agricultural
economist, Bill C. Wright of the Rockefeller Foundation and R.B.L. Bharadwaj was one such
professional duo working on the promotion of chemical fertilizer among farmers. Using the data
gathered by agronomists of the All-India Coordinated Wheat Improvement Project, they calculated that
with the price of wheat at Rs.75 per quintal and nitrogen at Rs. 2 per kilogram, farmers would gain a
net profit of Rs. 825 per hectare for an application of 40 kg N per hectare; this profit would continue to

41 江西省南城县关镇四姐妹兽医站副站长吴兰仙， “不怕干‘丑’事，敢于换新天”, pp. 17-23 in

河南省南阳专员公署科学技术委员会，河南省南阳专区科学技术协会, ed. 全国农业科学实验运动经验汇集, vol.
1 1966.4
42
Letter, Norman Borlaug to J. A. Pelissier, 26 July 1965, in Special Collections, Norman Borlaug Papers, box 5, folder 20,
Iowa State University (hereafter ISU).
43
‘Exporting American Agriculture: The Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, 1943-53’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 16,
No. 3 (Aug., 1986), pp. 457-483.

13
soar with every additional 40 kilogram of fertilizer use until it starts sending a negative return with an
application of 120 kg N per hectare.44 P.N. Saxena, another agricultural economist working with IARI
made a comparative estimate between the traditional and the Mexican varieties to conclude that Indian
farmers would achieve the highest return by cultivating the Mexican variety, S-227, which would give
back Rs.6 for every rupee invested. The nature of the experiments indicate that the effort of the
agricultural economists were primarily motivated by the idea of bringing numerical and quantitative
insight into the agricultural questions to overcome “romantic and impractical ideas” of existing farm
practices.45 It was only in discarding the ways of local and cheap input based agricultural production
for the promises of high yield and possibility of high economic return lay the deliverance of the country
and its people from hunger and poverty.
Instances of unprecedented yield achieved through the use of new technology by any Indian
farmer were widely reported by the print media throughout this period. Scientists, such as M.S.
Swaminathan made repeated references to these accomplishments to justify what the new technology
could do to transform the productivity of Indian farms. In the saga of war against hunger, the experts
reminded that the farmers needed to be the heroes in adopting the improved varieties and by producing
more in their fields. Such a farming hero was Kanwar Mohinderpal Singh. A farmer from the Delhi
region, Singh became a familiar name to many. His claim to fame rested in the fact that he harvested
nearly 8.4 tons of crops per hectare, which was the highest yield so far recorded anywhere in the world
in 1967 for a crop of 150 days duration. Eager to project Singh’s achievement as an instance worthy of
emulation by other farmers, Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, the Director of IARI and Dr. S.P. Kohli, the
Coordinator of the All India Coordinated Trial often referred to him in their writings. Mohinderpal
Singh came to represent all those “progressive farmers (who) adopt(ed) the high-yielding varieties for
improving their financial conditions.”46 The vision of a hunger free India came to revolve around these
progressive farmers who, the development experts believed, in discarding traditional ways of farming
showed the way to overcome backwardness.
Equating progressivism with the adoption of the new technology amounted to reducing the
whole reality of a person’s life to a single feature or trait.47 Analyzing local situation was not part of the
discourse on agricultural modernization or in understanding what keeps some farmers away from
adopting the dwarf seeds. Bent on providing a professional or experts’ view on the subject rather than
dwell on the peasants’ perspective “one never finds in these accounts consideration given to peasants’
struggle and oppression, nor accounts of how the peasants world may contain a different way of seeing
problems and life,” Escobar observed in his critique of development.48 “Risk-averse” farmers were as
much a problem as were “malnourished” and often the two categories coincided. The only solution was
to fix them through “effective” development. The agenda of effective development involved
stereotyping farmers into risk-taking and risk-averse categories. It involved fragmenting their
experiences and labeling them based on some of these experiences. Whether farmers were willing to
take “risks” or at least approach the question of investing in the new technology with an extent of “risk-
neutrality” became an important topic of discussion over the Green Revolution years. A “risk neutral”
farmer was good for capitalist development in agriculture, because such a farmer would try to
maximize average or expected net returns, resulting, according to the agricultural economists, to the

44
Bill C. Wright & R.B.L Bharadwaj, “Fertilizer Needs of Wheat”, Indian Farming, March 1969, 15-20.
45
Fitzgerald, “Accounting for Change”, 194.
46
K.K. Das & D.R. Sarkar, “Attitude of Native Farmers Toward ‘Taichung Native I’, A High-Yielding Variety of Rice in
Indian Journal of Agricultural Science, Vol. 40, No. 1 January, 1970, 63-64
47
Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton University Press,
1985), 110
48
Escobar, Encountering Development, 111

14
highest returns over long run. In contrast a “risk-averse” farmer would not be keen to invest if there
were some possibilities of loss and would be willing to forego some expected returns, if that meant
reducing the variability of his income stream. As instilling higher production through investment in the
new technology was slowly gaining ground among professional circles of agricultural scientists and
economists, the image of a “risk-neutral” farmer gained significance. This essentializing of the farmers’
approach to the use of the new technology to define their identity helps explain the importance that
scientists accorded to Kunwar Mahinderpal. In investing in the dwarf seeds and chemical fertilizers and
achieving high yields, he became a representative example of a “risk-taking” farmer.49
Much of the labeling, therefore, depended on the sole criteria of whether the farmer did or did
not take to the new technology. The strategies of agricultural growth that the experts recommended
excluded considering the interests, needs, concerns, as well as dreams of the farmers who did not. For
instance, the experts’ strategy to ensure high yields was abstracted from the realities of the farmers’ life
in India. No matter how good might have been the economic prospect of the new technology, the
possibility of crop failure from pest attacks and drought was very serious in the early days of Green
Revolution in India. Moreover, inadequate measures of crop insurance accentuated the economic cost
of a crop loss. The very specific requirements of the new varieties made the farmers growing the crops
more vulnerable to a loss in case of any deviations from the recommended practices. Focusing on the
dissemination of the new varieties primarily in the water-assured areas might have diminished the
chance of crop loss due to droughts, but the threat of pest attack or outbreak of diseases was very much
present. This threat was not always obvious to agricultural scientists fascinated by the yield capacity of
the new seeds over the traditional cultivars. “Below the white mountains was a stretch of terraced fields
covered with dark green and pale green strips of wheat. The dark green wheat had been fertilized with
calcium ammonium nitrate and super-phosphate and gave promise of a bumper crop,”50 wrote M.S.
Randhawa, the Director General of the country’s Intensive Agriculture Area Program. An impressed
Randhawa surmised that nitrogen was changing the landscape of the Punjab Himalaya and found this
change very gratifying. The fields sown with the new rice and wheat varieties uniquely displayed to
many, just like Randhawa, “the arrival of modernity”.51 The dark shoot, stubby looking plants aside the
thin pale-green strips was a visible metaphoric representation of modernity and tradition. What
remained a less appealing feature and perhaps, therefore, not mentioned in the writings of Randhawa
was that the new varieties with “dark green leaves” produced an ecological condition in the fields that
was more favorable to diseases and pests, requiring cultivators who decide to grow these varieties to
always have the resources to counter such possibilities of crop loss.
In case of cultivating the dwarf varieties, a farmer’s susceptibility to losing crop in pest attacks
was, therefore, undeniably more —especially if he lacked the wherewithal to purchase chemical
pesticides on which the crop protection measures of the new seeds were primarily dependent. In face of
challenges that agricultural scientists were facing in breeding pest resistant varieties, the Ford
Foundation sponsored review team in 1971 endorsed extensive use of pesticides. Being largely
imported, however, most farmers found chemical fertilizers to be an expensive input as was equipment
for aerial spraying. Moreover, non-availability of dusting and spraying equipment also discouraged the
uses of pesticides. Although arrangements are frequently made by the development block officials to

49
Agricultural economists in a study conducted towards the later years of 1970s, however, strongly argued that to encourage
greater investment in agriculture there should be effective crop insurance system, which would enable the farmers to
shift the risks to the insurance system as a whole rather keep it on their own shoulder. Hans. P. Binswanger, “Risk
Attitudes of Rural Households in Semi-Arid Tropical India”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.13, No.25 (Jun. 24,
1978), A49-A62.
50
M.S. Randhawa, “The Miracle of Nitrogen”, Indian Farming, June 1965.
51
Cullather, The Hungry World, 159.

15
keep some equipment in their offices for use by farmers, the frequent complaint was that their number
had been inadequate, their breakdown rate was high, and users did not return them in time. 52 For a
multiplicity of such causes, therefore, farmers’ use of pesticides remained far from satisfactory in India.
By March 1974, the level of pesticide consumption was only 45,000 tons.53
In their adulation for “risk-taking” farmers who took the new varieties, the technocrats
displayed similar nonchalance in factoring in the existing class-caste politics that governed access to
resources in the Indian countryside. Most of them also chose to ignore the problem of bad maintenance
that plagued farmers’ access to water even in regions with deep and shallow tubewells. In a study of
Indian irrigation policy for UNRISD, Elizabeth Whitcombe reported that in her tours of more than 600
Blocks, she rarely found more than a third of the state tubewells in working order. She also reported
that state tubewell users complained of too little water, especially the problem of reductions without
warning, and poor servicing of machinery. Meanwhile, it was only the larger farmers who had easy
access to the private tubewells. Power shortages and a low availability of electricity in the rural areas
further limited the development of tubewells and their actual advantages. In a study of agricultural
problems in India’s eastern region, researchers pointed out that of the 197,550 shallow tubewells
reported in West Bengal, only 24,900 were energized.54
The disassociation of the “experts” from the world of farmers who could not adopt most of the
components of a capital and chemical-intensive agricultural model was, therefore, a consistent feature
in the hey-day of the green revolution technology in India. As the experts persuasively argued in favor
of a technical solution of the food problem, rather than exploring its social and economic dimensions,
the juggernaut of the green revolution technological package could roll over-ignoring the arguments of
its critics, needs of small farmers, and any possible advantages of a research model that considered
social and the material aspects of technology to be important. In reducing hunger as primarily a
problem of low yield, the advocates of the capital-intensive agricultural model could set the direction of
agricultural modernization in India along the technocratic lines, away from its broader social and
political underpinning.

Risk, Revolution, and Resistance in China In India, as we have seen, traditional farmers' "risk-
aversion" was seen as an impediment to the capitalist modernization of agriculture. The goal was to
transform these farmers into "risk-taking" actors whose farming decisions would thus promote
investment and development. Chinese political and scientific leaders also faced the dilemma of how to
engage with risk-averse farmers, but the different political context changed the stakes considerably.
When new technologies failed (and of course, they frequently did), the unwillingness of "old,
poor peasants" to embrace risk was sometimes seen as demonstrating their valuable knowledge, rooted
in long experience of labor (for Mao, the most reliable kind of knowledge there was), in contrast with
the highly suspect fancies of would-be ivory tower scientists with little knowledge of farming realities
and dangerous tendencies to seek personal fame and glory through flashy new inventions. Such
cautionary tales appear frequently in accounts of educated youth participating in scientific experiment
projects in the countryside. In 1972, People's Daily introduced a group of youth sent down from

52
In 1970/72, only 2.73 million acres of cultivated land was covered by aerial spraying, a quarter of it by the state owned
Agro-Aviation Corporation. Organization, Evaluation Study of the High-Yielding Varieties Programme, 1968-69 (Delhi,
Government of India, Planning Commission, Programme Evaluation, 1970).
53
In a sample in West Godavari, Andhra Pradesh, only 30 per cent of the total stock of fungicides and insecticides was sold,
and in another sample from Tikamgarh, Madhya Pradesh, the corresponding figure was 20 per cent. Quoted from Biplab
Dasgupta, Agrarian Change and the New Technology in India (United Nations Research Institute for Social
Development, 1977), 67.
54
Elizabeth Whitcombe, ‘Notes on Indian Policy’ (UNRISD, 1974)

16
Nanjing to a production brigade in rural Jiangsu: "At one time because some of the youth had been
influenced by capitalist-class ideas about fame and profit, their experiment topics departed from the
practical needs" of the production brigade. They were "seeking overnight fame" and kept "holding out
their hand for chemical fertilizer" so they could achieve a high yield.55 The solution in such accounts
was often not just political consciousness raising but specifically better respect for the wisdom of "old
peasants." For example, a group of sent-down youth in Hebei province failed to be guided by the
experience of the "old peasants," instead pursuing impractical ideas in an attempt to "startle" people
with their innovation, such as hybridizing cotton and paulownia to create a perennial "cotton tree."
When local party officials became aware of the problem, they educated the youth about the importance
of uniting with the masses.56 In another account, presented at a conference in 1965, an urban youth
named Deng Yantang who had already spent thirteen years in the countryside, successfully created
hybridized rice strains, but encountered criticism from old peasants, who said that the hybrids looked
good but tasted bad, and that "high lanterns see far, but not close." The party secretary affirmed the
peasants' criticism and reminded Yantang that scientific experiment must serve production.57 In another
account, leaders who sought to increase wheat production acknowledged that peasants were right to
criticize them for their "blind" approach that failed to begin with the needs of the masses to secure the
support of the masses, saying they would "have to sell their wives and children if they farmed like
that."58
On the other hand, when new technologies succeeded (or for political reasons needed to be
acclaimed as successes), risk-aversion was often blamed on "feudal" or "reactionary" elements who
sought to undermine science and the revolution. Many accounts identified resistance to technological
change specifically as a manifestation of patriarchal ideas or class struggle. As discussed above, the
sexist abuse faced by young women promoting "scientific farming" was a running theme in the
literature. In another characteristic story, a poor peasant established an experiment group with a few
youths, but they immediately had to struggle with "class enemies and rightists," who reportedly
chanted, "Experiment, experiment; grain, but no gain" (科研科研，有粮无钱).59
Before the escalation of state-sanctioned violence in 1966, even class-based opposition was
often imagined as redeemable. For example, in 1964 an experiment team in Henan wanted to promote
an early-producing dwarf variety of rice, but a "middle peasant" complained that dwarf varieties would
stuff-to-death the ducks and starve the oxen (i.e., the grain would all be eaten by ducks, and there
would not be enough straw for the oxen). Their response was to do comparative experiments to
demonstrate the superiority of the new variety, such that even the middle peasant agreed to its
promotion.60 A story written in late 1965 similarly recounted the efforts of a youth, Zhang Yankao, to
convince local people of the worth of his new seeds. Yankao planted his experiment field in patches of

55 Renmin ribao, October 16, 1972, 4.

56 Peter Seybolt, ed., The Rustication of Urban Youth in China: A Social Experiment (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1975), 60-
63. This is a translation of a Chinese collection entitled Reqing guanhuai xiaxiang zhishi qingnian de chengzhang (Have
a warm concern for the maturation of sentdown educated youth) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1973). See also
Heilongjiang sheng Binxian Xinlisi dui keyan xiaozu, "Bai ying dadou wang de xuanyu" (The selection of white-breast
soybean king), Nongye keji tongxun 1973.12, 4; Zhang Renpeng, "Houlu duizhang Yang Liguo kexue zhongtian chuang
gaochan" (Houlu Brigade leader Yang Liguo achieves high yields through scientific farming), Xin nongye 1974.14, 26.
57 Kexue zhongtian de nianqing ren, 14-16.
58 河南省南阳专员公署科学技术委员会，河南省南阳专区科学技术协会, ed. 全国农业科学实验运动经验汇集, vol.
1 1966.4, p. 5.
59 Gongqingtuan Shaanxi sheng wei, Dazhai Xiyang qingnian gongzuo jingyan (Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe,
1977), 175.
60 河南省南阳专员公署科学技术委员会，河南省南阳专区科学技术协会, ed. 全国农业科学实验运动经验汇集, vol.
1 1966.4, p. 26.

17
new and old seeds to demonstrate the different growth and yield patterns (recall the “visible metaphoric
representation of modernity and tradition” in the Indian example above), but some "opinionated"
members of the collective complained that he had taken a perfectly good field and planted it unevenly,
with some patches growing long and some shorter such that the field "looked like a spotted leopard." In
1962-3, a "big struggle" between forces for and against scientific experiment reportedly came to a
head. Yankao established a scientific experiment group with four specialized research teams for seeds,
fertilizer, cultivation, and plant protection. The group received widespread support from poor and lower
middle-class peasants, but the vice team-leader, an upper middle-class peasant named Zhang Jiatao,
thought scientific experiment too "annoying," just a "new fancy" (新玩意) that would waste resources
and lead to food shortages. The dispute was settled through friendly competition, with each side
permitted to pursue its own methods; when Yankao's group achieved better results, Zhang Jiatao
conceded, admitting the reasons for Yankao's success.61 Later accounts exuded more vitriol. In one
story, published in 1974 about an incident in spring of 1969, county leaders called on returned educated
youth in a three-in-one experiment group to hybridize sorghum. When the initial experiments failed,
"class enemies" took the opportunity to attack science. Rich peasants said, "If you're going to do that,
we'll have to prop our mouths open (把牙支起来, i.e., resign ourselves to starving)." But the
production brigade party branch organized the youth with the commune masses to struggle against the
class enemies and study Mao, with the result that the youth learned to sex the sorghum plants more
accurately and ultimately achieved success.62
It was all well and good to criticize members of politically suspect classes for their "reactionary"
resistance to scientific farming. But no amount of political spin could prevent people from noticing that
resistance frequently came from "poor and lower-middle peasants." In such cases, resistance was
frequently blamed on the old bugaboos "backwardness" and "superstition." In the case of the young
women swine specialists discussed above, the "backward masses" were highly resistant to the
injections that the women sought to popularize, saying the women were "beggars from somewhere"
trying to cheat them.63 In another account, "some backward commune members" blamed a bad pea
harvest on ghosts, after which no one wanted to plant the newly promoted variety.64 Superstition was
also to blame in the case of a group of peasants who refused to plant in a "dead people's field"
(死人田), a place where people had died after farming there.65
The methods credited for quelling resistance and producing support for new agricultural
technologies speak volumes to the state's perspective on "science, risk, and the construction of the
modern farmer." Class struggle and political education played a central role in an explicit strategy to
transform people's consciousness. These efforts were often part and parcel of the larger political
campaigns that swept the country one after another. For example, during the Socialist Education
Movement and Four Cleanups period of the early 1960s, the state sought to produce a memory of the
Great Leap famine that pinned the blame on local political and ideological failings and thus absolved
the state of responsibility.66 In lock step, a 1965 report from a rural area outside of Beijing blamed early
failures to introduce new seed varieties on resistant cadres and praised the Socialist Education

61 Kexue zhongtian de nianqing ren, 29, 37 -40.

62 Nongcun zhishi qingnian, 36.
63 p. 18
64 河南省南阳专员公署科学技术委员会，河南省南阳专区科学技术协会, ed. 全国农业科学实验运动经验汇集, vol.
1 1966.4, pp. 4-5.
65 235-1-365-047~049 贫下中农要当科学实验的闯将 花县江启彰 19650000,
广东省贫农下中农代表和农业先进单位代表会议发言之十五, pp. 3-4
66 Cite Wemheuer.

18
Movement for producing a better political orientation and thus paving the way for agricultural
extension.67 In 1974, on the other hand, while the Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius campaign raged,
People's Daily ran articles celebrating peasant knowledge of agricultural maxims and noting that in
ancient times it was the Legalists and not the Confucians who had recognized the value of agricultural
maxims.68
But insisting that science accept "politics in command" did not mean a failure to recognize the
role of evidence-based argumentation. Rather, examples of resistance raised in official and popular
reports typically at least included, and were often dominated by, accounts of successful efforts to
convince peasants through empirical demonstration and rational argument.69 For example, when a 79-
year-old "old peasant" outside of Beijing complained about the promotion of a new method of "close
planting"— saying, "Planting so close is like beating people up, come autumn we won't have any grain
to harvest" [留这么密，又揍人哩，到秋后打不了粮食]— the solution was to allow him to plant one
field, and the experiment team would plant the other. After viewing the results, he reportedly
acknowledged the validity of the new method.70 In Henan, commune members initially resisted the
introduction of a new variety of rice, saying, "Each place has its own water and soil [i.e., natural
conditions], and our place here is too cold to plant this rice"
(一个地方有一个地方的水土，我们这里天凉种不成). They also worried that the new variety was
"clear water rice," whereas they had turbid water. But the team demonstrated the superiority of the new
variety through comparative experiment. Later, the team introduced yet another variety, but it proved
weak in the shoot stage and commune members were discouraged, comparing it to a poorly nourished
fetus. But in the end were convinced of the superiority of this one as well, and more importantly
convinced that "scientific experiment is good (还是科学实验好)".71 In the case of the pea-stealing
ghosts (also from Henan), a variety of methods taken together proved effective to help people whose
thought was "blocked" (思想不通). Cadres took the lead in doing experiments, the demonstration
(样板) fields "spoke" (说话, i.e., provided evidence), a man from another village with excellent pea
crops was brought in as an advisor, and finally people were invited to sample the peas once they were
harvested: "as soon as they started chewing, their thought cleared up" (嘴巴一动，思想通了).72
How does all this relate to what we have seen in India? Modernizers in both places wrestled to
overcome resistance from farmers skeptical of new technologies. Whether cultivating "risk-neutral"
farmers capable of forwarding the capitalist modernization of agriculture or revolutionary teams of
peasants, cadres, and technicians capable of building a "new socialist countryside," the agents of Green
Revolution faced the bogeys of "tradition" and "conservatism." The key difference in China was that
the politics of socialist revolution changed the terms in which this struggle could be conceptualized.
First of all, peasant resistance was always potentially a positive sign—after all, peasants were the

67 "一个社会主义教育运动后成长起来的科技小组: 通县西集公社赵庄大队科技小组", pp. 42-46.

北京市农村科学实验小组积极分子会议文件. Beijing Municipal Archives. 2.22.31. 1965/11/15
68 Cite.
69 The richest documents on resistance and efforts to convince peasants come from 1965 and 1966, when the scientific
experiment movement had just taken off and before the Cultural Revolution dramatically changed the political stakes.
70 "一个社会主义教育运动后成长起来的科技小组: 通县西集公社赵庄大队科技小组", pp. 42-,
北京市农村科学实验小组积极分子会议文件. Beijing Municipal Archives. 2.22.31. 1965/11/15. This source details a
number of similar examples.
71 河南省南阳专员公署科学技术委员会，河南省南阳专区科学技术协会, ed. 全国农业科学实验运动经验汇集, vol.
1 1966.4, pp. 11-12.
72 河南省南阳专员公署科学技术委员会，河南省南阳专区科学技术协会, ed. 全国农业科学实验运动经验汇集, vol.
1 1966.4, pp. 4-5.

19
backbone of the communist revolution and their deep experience of labor made them not just
politically, but epistemically, more trustworthy than scientific elites. On the other hand, this perspective
could only go so far, since the state was in fact deeply committed to modernizing agriculture. The spin
was easiest when resistance could be pinned on "class enemies." However, in reality it was often poor
and lower-middle peasants themselves who presented opposition. The combination of political
consciousness-raising and empirical demonstration that defined the response to such opposition in
official reports suggests a confidence not only in the compatibility of revolution and science, but also in
peasants themselves as politically reliable and fundamentally rational actors. Peasant resistance in
account after account compelled cadres and technicians to increase the rigor of their experiments, or at
least the persuasiveness of their demonstrations.
Despite the obvious frustrations that modernizers in Mao-era China experienced in attempting
to transform agricultural technologies, and despite frequent disparaging references to the "backward" or
"superstitious" tendencies of peasants, the ideological demands of the socialist revolution thus
produced a very different official understanding of the meaning of peasant resistance than that found in
India.73 To what extent that "official understanding" reflected the actual feelings of cadres and
technicians on the ground is another story. If post-Mao writings and oral history interviews are any
indication, actual efforts to celebrate peasant wisdom may well have fallen considerably short of the
ideal presented in Mao-era documents. The ideas articulated in state-produced sources from the Mao
era are nonetheless significant in that they represent a vision of peasants and the Green Revolution
distinct from the dominant vision projected by the United States government and the scientists it
funded.

IV. Conclusion

[NEEDS WRITING – We may be interested in talking about whether, in the end, the
ideological differences and the different ideas about how the sociopolitical does or doesn't relate to the
technoscientific matters in terms of what kind of agricultural science and technology they ended up
with... But that can wait -- maybe other things will emerge... ]

73 Note that it's hard to tell just how deep the

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