The Green Revolution re-assessed: Insider perspectives on agrarian change in Bulandshahr District,...

Geoforum 38 (2007) 73–89www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

The Green Revolution re-assessed: Insider perspectives on agrarianchange in Bulandshahr District, Western Uttar Pradesh, India

Sarah Jewitt a,¤, Kathleen Baker b

a School of Geography, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdomb Department of Geography, Kings College London, Surrey Street, London WC2 2LS, United Kingdom

Received 3 May 2006; received in revised form 7 June 2006

Abstract

In spite of raising Asian per capita food production by 27% and making India food self-suYcient, the Green Revolution has receivedmuch criticism for its environmental and socio-economic impacts. Taking on board post-development critiques of ‘speaking for’ ThirdWorld ‘others’, this paper seeks to examine the Green Revolution from the points of view of people directly aVected by it. Comparative,historically-informed research in three villages for which 1972 baseline data exist reveal that the Green Revolution has ensured, in thewords of one marginal farmer that ‘nobody sleeps with an empty stomach nowadays’. Most villagers associate the Green Revolution withincreases in living standards and weakening community-based wealth hierarchies. Nevertheless, socio-economic inequalities between cer-tain Scheduled Castes and other villagers are still very apparent.© 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: India; Bulandshahr; Green Revolution; HYVs; Agriculture; Socio-economic impacts

1. Introduction

Since being hailed as the solution to world hunger in the1960s, the Green Revolution has had a turbulent reception.In spite of raising Asian per capita food production by 27%since the mid-1960s, creating substantial extra employmentfor the rural poor and restraining food prices (Lipton,1999),1 critics argue that the Green Revolution has been any-thing but green in practice. The literature on India suggeststhat in addition to creating agrarian class diVerentiation(Johnston and Kilby, 1975; Byres, 1981, 1983; Brass, 1994,

* Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Jewitt), kathy.

[email protected] (K. Baker).1 The rural poor in India consist mainly of landless or near landless

labourers who gain entitlements to food according to the number of daysthey work. Their main concerns are with the price of cereals, the availabil-ity of work and the wages they receive. Gupta (1998) suggests that rural la-bour markets tightened throughout the 1980s and labourers beneWtedfrom an increase in both agricultural and non-agricultural labour oppor-tunities.

0016-7185/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2006.06.002

1995) and severe environmental problems (Berry, 1980; Lip-ton and Longhurst, 1989; Swaminathan, 1996), its mostrecent phase has been characterized by stagnating yields anddeclining soil quality which have brought diminishingreturns to agriculture for many farmers (Greenland, 1997;Pingali et al., 1997; Lipton, 1999; Kapila and Kapila, 2002).

Indeed, the bitter criticism aimed at India’s Green Revo-lution for its environmental and socio-economic impactshas been eVective in drawing attention away from otherconstraints to agricultural production. Examples includethe fragmentation of formerly viable land holdings and thecontinuing need for land reform that the Green Revolu-tion’s remit as a ‘technological shortcut to development’(Atkins and Bowler, 2001, p. 222) enabled successive Indianpoliticians to avoid.2 With the failure of land reforms to

2 Dreze and Gazdar (1996) criticise early Uttar Pradesh state govern-ments for their limited eVorts to promote land reform legislation which,when Wnally enacted, allowed higher land ceilings than in any other stateand contained loopholes that enabled many landlords to retain much oftheir holdings.

mailto: [email protected]





74 S. Jewitt, K. Baker / Geoforum 38 (2007) 73–89

aVect the power of large landholders, many of the otherinstitutional reforms championed by Nehru such as Com-munity Development Cooperatives and Panchayati Rajhave fallen ‘under their control, served their interests ƒ andfailed to realize signiWcant improvements in agriculturalperformance’ (Corbridge and Harriss, 2000, p. 64).

In recent years, the Green Revolution and top-downdevelopment initiatives like it have attracted criticism aspart of a post-development backlash against development’stendency to ‘speak for’ Third World ‘others’ thereby silenc-ing their own voices. Radical post-development critics suchas Escobar have gone further, arguing that developmenthas created ‘massive underdevelopment and impoverish-ment, untold exploitation and oppression’ (Escobar, 1995,p. 4) while development discourses have portrayed thedeveloping world as ‘a broken world of poverty disease anddeprivation, which needs to be mended by infusions ofwestern capital and know how’ (Corbridge, 1999, p. 69).Populist writers like Vandana Shiva, meanwhile, look tothe past for solutions to India’s agricultural failings as the‘large scale experiment of the Green Revolution has notonly pushed nature to the verge of ecological breakdown,but also seems to have pushed society to the verge of socialbreakdown’ (Shiva, 1991, p. 172).

In the wake of post-development critiques, students andpractitioners of development geography are now moreaware of development’s negative impacts and of how state-centred accounts ‘ignore the multiple ways in which devel-opment is (re)made every day, on the ground or at thegrassroots level, by men, women and children around theworld’ (Power, 2003, p. 200). Since McGee (1974) Wrstcalled for a ‘broader geography of anti-development’, therehas been a ‘welcome recentring of ‘local’ knowledge andpractices which seeks to ground global development in theembedded, in particular places and localities’ (Power, 2003,p. 229). At the same time, participatory approaches andmethodologies have sought to create spaces within whichthe marginal can speak (RadcliVe, 1999).

But despite post-development’s success in questioningoutsider views and recovering unheard voices and subju-gated knowledges (Crush, 1995) there have been limitedrecent eVorts to re-assess the Green Revolution in light ofthe perceptions of those most aVected by it. Of the few con-temporary long-term studies that do examine local opin-ions about the Green Revolution’s impacts, most indicatethat its beneWts are perceived to far outweigh its costs (Lip-ton, 1999; Haddad and Hazell, 2001; Kerr and Kolavalli,1999, 2000; Hayami and Kikuchi, 2000; Adato and Mein-zen-Dick, 2002). Hayami and Kikuchi’s (2000) study ofEast Laguna village in the Philippines, for example, sug-gests that many of the negative predictions dating back tothe 1970s and 80s have not been borne out.

Following McGee’s emphasis on the importance ofunderstanding development ‘in each ecological milieu’ andhis appeal for ‘geographers who work in LDCs to return tothe grassroots; to assert the ‘tradition’ and core of the disci-pline as a Weld subject’ (1974, p. 42), this paper seeks add to

this small body of work. Taking on board Crush’s view thatthe best way to look beyond the language of development isto start by ‘asking what development has meant for thosespaces and peoples who it deWnes as object’ (Crush, 1995, p.21) our research has focused on how diVerent community,gender and landholding groups both perceive the GreenRevolution and have experienced its material impacts.Building upon detailed baseline data collected by one of theauthors in 1972 for six villages in Bulandshahr District,Uttar Pradesh, India (Baker, 1975), our recent Weldworkseeks to provide an historically informed analysis of theGreen Revolution’s impacts from the perspective of localpeople.

Three of Baker’s original study villages (Sabdalpur,Chirchita and Kurwal Banaras) were chosen as our post2001 Weld sites. Our main research emphasis was to identifythe Green Revolution’s material impacts on diVerent socio-economic groups and investigate additional constraints andopportunities aVecting local livelihoods. Given the wealthof data collected in Baker’s baseline study, particular atten-tion has been given to how and why landholding patternsand farming practices have changed since 1972. An attempthas also been made to examine changes in the socio-eco-nomic position of diVerent caste and class groups over thepast 30 plus years and investigate villagers’ views on thereasons for these changes. To provide a context for the laterempirical sections, the following two sections will summa-rize the methodologies used for our village-based researchand provide an overview of socio-economic conditions andagrarian change in both Uttar Pradesh and the researcharea more speciWcally.

2. Methodology

The data contained in this paper were collected duringWve main periods of Weldwork; the Wrst being in 1972 andthe other four in 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005. The data col-lected in 1972 were obtained from a questionnaire survey of196 farmers coupled with direct observation, the collectionof soil and crop cutting samples and the examination ofsecondary source materials (Baker, 1975). The primarymethod of analysing these data was with the use of statisti-cal tests.

Although it would have been possible to replicate thesemethods of data collection in the 2001–2005 surveys, wedecided against this as the original survey, reXecting datacollection methods of the time, allowed little scope forfarmer engagement. As a result of our own desire toobtain local perspectives on agrarian change and reXect-ing the shift away from more ‘extractive’ and statistically-oriented forms of development research (Chambers, 1992),we felt it appropriate to conduct a more informal and par-ticipatory form of Weldwork for the post 2001 follow-upstudies.

ReXecting the success of agrarian ethnographies in reveal-ing insider perspectives on agrarian change (Brokenshaet al., 1980; Chambers, 1983; Richards, 1985; Breman, 1985),

S. Jewitt, K. Baker / Geoforum 38 (2007) 73–89 75

post 2001 Weldwork was based primarily on qualitativemethodologies including semi-structured interviews, directobservation and participatory appraisal triangulated withsecondary source data and interviews with key informants.We were particularly fortunate in the selection of ourmain research assistant, Dr. Yadav; an agronomist withextremely detailed knowledge about agricultural practicesin Bulandshahr and expertise in facilitating participatoryappraisal methods. Informal discussions took place with atotal of 181 villagers from diVerent generations, communi-ties and landholding groups. To minimize the tendency formixed group discussions to be dominated by men, ‘womenonly’ discussion groups were conducted whenever villagers’work commitments permitted and a total of 62 womenfrom four diVerent landholding groups were interviewed. Inan attempt to reassure ourselves that conditions in Sabdal-pur, Chirchita and Kurwal Banaras were not speciWc tothose villages, we interviewed 44 people in Wve other vil-lages (Nausana, Naibasti, Lalpur, Basrauli and Chola),which were not included in Baker’s original study. Themain participatory techniques used were time lines (illus-trating changes in technology, crop variety, wealth, incomeand labour), matrix ranking (of crop varieties and genderdivisions of labour) and pie diagrams (illustrating the shareof wealth held by diVerent community and landholdinggroups, plus the proportions of crops grown in each sea-son).

2.1. Methodological considerations

Despite the attractiveness of a longitudinal study such asthis, we acknowledge a number of shortcomings. Firstly,the adoption of participatory appraisal techniques in thepost 2001 study means that some of our results lend them-selves more to discursive analysis (using information suchas ranked variables, diagrams and time lines) than statisti-cal testing. Although eVorts were always made to triangu-late information derived from participatory appraisal withmore quantitative data collected during semi-structuredinterviews, certain readers may be unsettled by the ‘propor-tionate accuracy’ (Chambers, 1992) associated with someparticipatory appraisal techniques.

Secondly, it is important to recognize that despite itsorigin as a part of a new ‘learning paradigm’ seeking topromote more appropriate development (Pretty and Cham-bers, 1994) participatory appraisal is by no means immuneto the inXuences of the powerful (Scoones and Thompson,1993). As we were undertaking academic research ratherthan development work (involving the disbursement offunds), however, there was less incentive for villagers to tryto inXuence the outcome of the participatory appraisal. Inaddition, our longstanding links with the study villagersand the combination of participatory appraisal with morelong-term Weldwork methodologies in our ongoing researchshould (we hope) have helped us to avoid some of the prob-lems of using this technique in a more ‘snapshot’ manner(Gujit and Kaul Shah, 1998).

Thirdly, it is impossible to compare like with like over aperiod of 30 plus years. India has changed along with thestudy area and the villagers themselves (almost 90% ofthose interviewed in 1972 are now dead) so precise compar-isons are very diYcult. Fourthly, the Weldwork objectivesand approaches are diVerent as theoretical/methodologicaldebates have moved on with the result that the pertinentquestions are no longer the same as they were in 1972. Nev-ertheless, we feel that Baker’s baseline data provides a valu-able starting point for our 2001–2005 Weldwork and as wehave now interviewed more villagers in Sabdalpur andChirchita than Baker interviewed in 1972 and have madeextensive eVorts to triangulate our results, we are conWdentof our Wndings. Consequently, we feel justiWed in presentingthem here.

3. The research area

Uttar Pradesh (UP) is primarily an agricultural statewith 80% of its population classed as rural, so the distribu-tion of agrarian assets, especially land, has a major inXu-ence on the material condition of its inhabitants. Themajor landowners in UP have traditionally belonged tohigh ranking castes with a martial tradition, commonlyidentiWed as Kshatriya, Thakur or Rajput (Dreze andGazdar, 1996). These ‘dominant castes’ have longheld substantial power at the local level through a combi-nation of numerical strength and economic advantage –usually land ownership (Srinivas, 1960). The rapid subdi-vision of land associated with the prevailing system ofpartible inheritance, however, has encouraged many largelandowners to seek oV-farm incomes for their sons sincethe early 1970s (JeVrey and Lerche, 2000; JeVrey, 1997,2002).

The combination of ritual authority with landowningpower held by UP’s dominant castes initially made it hardfor lower caste/class groups to challenge socio-economicinequalities. But the spread eVects of agricultural growthopened up lucrative non-agricultural employment opportu-nities (such as brick making and construction work) whichallowed many marginal/landless Muslim and lower casteHindu households to shift away from agricultural labourand the dependence on large farmers that this brought(Gupta, 1998).

Further changes occurred when the Bahujan SamajParty came to power in UP in 1995 and 1997 under theleadership of Mayawati (a Scheduled Caste woman) anddemonstrated that UP’s Scheduled Castes (SCs) were vot-ing for themselves rather than for those who held economicpower over them (Corbridge and Harriss, 2000). Since 1995,the party has succeeded in redistributing small amounts ofland to SCs and has successfully strengthened the ‘Ambed-kar Village’ scheme under which a village in each adminis-trative Block with a high percentage of SCs is earmarkedfor special funding. Many Ambedkar Villages have beensuccessful in improving SC access to basic services such ashealth and education as well as fostering a more general


sense of ‘self-respect’ (JeVrey and Lerche, 2000): WndingsconWrmed in our own research.

The three villages chosen for our post 2001 researchformed part of a larger study conducted by Baker (1975) insix villages of Bulandshahr District, western Uttar Pradeshin 1972. In its turn, Baker’s study was nested in a larger,District-level survey conducted by Allan, also in 1972(Allan, 1973). Both studies sought to investigate the mainadvantages and constraints encountered in growing highyielding varieties (HYVs) of wheat. Bulandshahr Districtwas chosen for these studies as it had been targeted (onaccount of its well developed irrigation and agrarian infra-structure) in 1966 for India’s High Yielding Varieties Pro-gramme which sought to increase cropping intensities byintroducing daylight insensitive HYV wheats with shortmaturation periods (Lipton and Longhurst, 1989; Swami-nathan, 1996).3 Our information on agricultural conditionsin Bulandshahr District in the early days of the Green Rev-olution draws heavily on Baker’s 1972 Weldwork (Baker,1975) which provides valuable background for our morerecent Weldwork. Some of the main Wndings from this studyare presented below.

4. Agriculture in Bulandshahr in the early days of the Green Revolution

Agriculture in Bulandshahr district was, and still is char-acterized by three main cropping seasons: the Kharif seasonwhich takes advantage of monsoon rainfall between Juneand October, the drier Rabi season between October andApril (for which irrigation is required) and the short pre-monsoon Zaid season between late March and June. In1972, maize was the dominant Kharif crop with sugar canean important cash crop and rice and millets being grown asminor additional food crops. In the Rabi season, wheat wasdominant with small amounts of barley, pulses, oilseedsand sugarcane. The Zaid was devoted to cash crops such asgrams, pulses and chillies (Bulletin of Agricultural Statis-tics, 1972; Atkinson, 1903).

Adoption of the new HYVs within Bulandshahr Districtwas very rapid. By 1971, almost 65% of Bulandshahr’s totalcultivated area in the Rabi season was planted with wheat,and of this over 90% was sown with HYVs (Bulletin ofAgricultural Statistics, 1972; PNB, 1971). Discussions in theWeld showed that even farmers with marginal landholdings(less than 0.4 ha) were reaping more wheat from the sameunit area, and those unable to produce a marketable sur-plus beneWted from a signiWcant increase in food security.

3 Bulandshahr has beneWted from irrigation since the mid-19th centurywhen it was linked to an extensive canal network built by the British in re-sponse to the 1837–1838 famines (Atkinson, 1903; Whitcombe, 1971). TheGanga Canal was completed in 1854 and its irrigation waters reached Bu-landshahr the following year. Thereafter, agricultural change was veryrapid as the irrigated area increased by 565% between 1871 and 1883 andthe cultivable area increased from 54% to 73% of the District between1854 and 1902 (Atkinson, 1903).

In Baker’s (1975) study, 191 out of 196 sample interviewees(97.4%) believed that the shift to HYVs had been worth-while as fears of food shortages, the dominant concern intheir lives during the late 1960s, had abated as a conse-quence.

Following the introduction of wheat HYVs, signiWcantshifts in Rabi and Kharif cropping patterns occurred in thestudy villages. Although wheat has been the principal Rabicrop and Bulandshahr’s main staple since at least 1883, itbecame much more dominant as a monocrop between 1955and 1972. Also evident was a corresponding decline inintercropping and a fall in the area under other Rabi crops,particularly pulses and barley. In the Kharif, cropping pat-terns also changed between 1965 and 1972, with traditionalvarieties of rice and maize gradually being replaced withHYV of these crops.

4.1. HYV adoption, yields and inputs by landholding group and community

Virtually all farmers involved in Baker’s study had beenwon over by HYVs, especially the new HYV wheats whichproved to be reliable and high yielding, as long as theyreceived adequate and timely inputs of irrigation water andfertilizer. Average wheat yields in Bulandshahr in 1968were 1825 kg/ha (compared to the national average of810 kg/ha), but rose to 3000 kg/ha in the study villages by1972. Although the earliest HYV wheats were pink andcoarse grained, domestically bred HYVs were rapidlyintroduced. Their high yields made these varieties economi-cally attractive to farmers as well as providing them withgreater food security in a situation where ‘the stork wasbeginning to outrun the plough’ (Brown, 1970, p. 5).Another economic factor boosting wheat growing was theshift in US aid policy from long- to short-term food aidallocations (Corbridge and Harriss, 2000) which raisedIndian wheat prices from their previously depressed levels(Baker, 1975).

Although Baker’s research clearly showed that Buland-shahr’s farmers had great enthusiasm for the new wheats in1972, it also challenged early critiques of the Green Revolu-tion’s resource neutrality and accessibility to diVerent land-holding groups (Ladejinsky, 1969; Chakravarti, 1973). Forexample, the assumption that larger farmers were the earli-est to adopt HYVs while smaller farmers were the laggardswas only borne out to a limited extent in Bulandshahr.Large farmers (owning and cultivating over 25.9 ha) weregenerally, but not exclusively, the Wrst to adopt HYVs priorto 1968–1969. Some small farmers were early adopters too,however, and demand for wheat HYVs was such thatshortly after 1969, two-thirds of the smallest landholders(cultivating 0.1–0.2 ha) had started growing these. By 1972,farmers from all land holding groups were cultivating atleast some HYV wheat, thus the beneWts of HYVs spokefor themselves.

When Baker’s yield data were examined in relation tolandholding size, there was some evidence that larger farmers


obtained higher yields, although this was not always thecase. Across the sample of 196 farmers, it was clear thatyields had increased as a result of the HYVs, but the datawere reluctant to reveal any further patterns at this scale.However, when yields and farming practices were analysedaccording to community, clear patterns began to emerge.4

Resonating with Lipton’s idea of a ‘casteocracy’ (Lipton,1973) and Srinivas’s (1960) account of India’s ‘dominantcastes’, Baker’s (1975) study revealed caste to be the mostinXuential variable regarding rate of HYV adoption, theyields achieved from HYVs and a range of managementpractices including the application of inorganic fertilizerand irrigation water. The data indicated that the most pro-gressive farmers were the politically dominant Brahmins,Rajputs and Jats (identiWed by Baker, 1975 as ‘group 1’)who owned the lion’s share of village landholdings. At thetime of the study, the Jats were the most progressive farm-ers within this lead group. A second group who were lessoften innovators but were swift to follow the lead of theJats, Brahmins and Rajputs, were lower caste Lodhas andGujars, identiWed as ‘group 2’. The most backward groupof cultivators in 1972 included Scheduled Caste Chamars,Muslim–Rajputs,5 and Muslims (‘group 3’) who typicallyowned the smallest farms. Although there were some aZu-ent Muslim and Muslim–Rajput farmers in Sabdalpur andChirchita who could be classed as progressive, the majorityof Muslims tended to be numbered among the smallerfarmers.

Data on farming practices showed that in 1972, therewas a positive relationship between inputs and yield withthe abiotic needs of HYV wheats not being met equallyacross the sample population. Irrigation was identiWed asthe key input aVecting yields with questionnaire datarevealing that the 16% of farmers who had privatelyowned tube wells achieved a mean yield of 3200 kg/hacompared to 1420 kg for farmers with no reliable irrigationsource. Yields also varied signiWcantly according to thetype of irrigation used, with private tube well irrigationproducing the highest yields and canals providing limitedyield gains over open wells (see Table 1). The low yieldsassociated with government tube wells were due to fre-quent power cuts which interrupted irrigation and oftencaused farmers to miss their turn. Predictably, ‘group 1’households had access to the most reliable water sources asit was they who largely owned private tube wells. Lowercaste Hindu farmers and the poorest Muslim and Muslim–Rajput landholders, by contrast, were either towards the

4 This was despite the fact that at every stage in the study, participants(including academics, government oYcials, interpreters, village oYcialsand farmers) denied that community was of any relevance to the analysis.

5 Muslim–Rajputs, otherwise known as Mewati Muslims were descend-ed from Meos, Rajput tribes living in Mewat, a Gangetic plateau in north-ern India. These Meos converted to Islam in the 12th and 13th centuries.At that time they retained many socio-religious practices from their Hindupast. Islamization of Mewati Muslims was brought about by the teachingsand work of Mawlana Ilyas in the Mewati region in the 1920s (Ahmad,2004).

lower end of a list of recipients of canal irrigation (bywhich time the supply had diminished), were dependent onbuying tube well water from richer neighbours (at a timeconvenient to the latter), or depended on unreliable gov-ernment tube wells.

The use of fertilizer, the second key input, increased sig-niWcantly after 1966 when HYVs became available. Previ-ously, farmers had relied exclusively on green and organicmanures, but started to adopt chemical fertilizers inresponse to their distribution as part of the Green Revolu-tion package. By 1971, Bulandshahr’s farmers as a wholewere consuming over 10,000 tonnes of nitrogenous fertilizerand over 3000 tonnes of phosphatic fertilizer a year, com-pared with under 1000 tonnes of each in 1960 (Ministry ofAgriculture and IBRD, 1972). Although no direct relation-ship was found between yield and fertilizer application, the37% of sample farmers who used adequate, or more thanadequate fertilizer (i.e. above government guidelines),reaped signiWcantly higher yields 99% of the time. Despitethe fact that ‘group 3’ farmers tended to use the newer andmore costly fertilizer no less than ‘group 1’ farmers (Baker,1975), there were clear community-related variations infarmers’ abilities to obtain good quality fertilizers on time.6

In summary, Baker’s ‘group 1’ (Jats, Brahmins and Raj-puts) included many of the largest and wealthiest landhold-ers who were in a strong position to aVord essential inputsof irrigation water and fertilizer, and who belonged tostrong social networks which gave them access to fertilizerat a time when availability was limited in North India.Smaller and less wealthy ‘group 3’ farmers whose access toessential resources for HYV wheat was more limited, oftenachieved slightly lower yields. An attempt was made to tri-angulate questionnaire results with data generated fromcrop cutting samples taken from 35 Welds. The samples werethreshed locally and conWrmed the positive relationship

6 The safest place for farmers to get fertilizer was from the cooperative,but if they had not re-paid existing loans, they could no longer get creditfrom this source. The cooperative system eVectively restricted small farmerinvolvement by linking loan disbursement with the ability to sell surpluswheat, which few small farmers could produce.

Table 1Mean yields from wheat irrigated from diVerent sources

Source: Baker (1975).

Irrigation source Yield data from 1972questionnaire (kg/ha)

Yield data from 1972 cropcutting samples (kg/ha)

Privatelyowned tubewell

3200 3560

Neighbour’stube well

2550 2950

Canal 1960Open well, pits,

etc.1840

No reliablesource

1420

Governmenttube well

1115 1530


between high yields and high levels of inputs applied at thecorrect time. The crop samples also conWrmed that ‘group 1and 2’ farmers produced higher wheat yields than ‘group 3’farmers.

In our post 2001 Weldwork, we were interested to under-stand how the Green Revolution’s material impacts variedwithin the study villages. In order to maximize the range oflocal perspectives on the GR’s beneWts and failings, wesought to hear the stories of villagers from diVerent land-owning, community, religious and gender groups. Afterseeking a general assessment of the GR’s impacts on localquality of life, we examined the main environmental prob-lems that villagers had encountered, who had gained andlost out in socio-economic terms and how traditional land-holding and community hierarchies had been aVected. Theresults of our investigations are presented below but forreasons of space, the paper focuses mainly on the GR’ssocio-economic impacts with environmental issues beingcovered only brieXy.

5. Impacts of the Green Revolution

After revisiting Bulandshahr in 2001, Baker’s Wrstimpression was that quality of life in the study villages hadimproved signiWcantly since the early 1970s. In particular,she noticed that open wells had largely been replaced bydomestic hand pumps, brick houses had replaced mud-builtones and cars and tractors were numerous. With respect tothe villagers themselves, she found that standards of dresswere much higher, the eye infections and septic wounds sofrequently evident on limbs in 1972 were virtually absentand most people seemed a great deal healthier and betterfed.

Subsequent discussions with diVerent socio-economicand gender groups revealed that the widespread food crisesof the 1960s were a distant memory. Discussions with mar-ginal and landless farmers in Chirchita suggested that‘before the GR, poor people had only enough food for 3–4months of the year ƒ Nobody sleeps with an empty stom-ach nowadays’. With the exception of some of the poorestlandless Muslim and ‘sweeper caste’ Balmiki villagers (whohave long formed the lowest rung of local socio-economichierarchies), there was a strong feeling in the study villagesthat the Green Revolution has beneWted almost everyone asit ‘brought higher yields, cheaper food and more work’(Marginal/landless men’s group, Chirchita). Farmers of allcommunities were regularly harvesting over 4500 kg/ha ofwheat with an average yield of around 4000 kg/ha. Thiscompared very favourably with traditional wheats whichyielded 1000–1500 kg/ha and early HYVs which yielded2500–4000 kg/ha in 1972.

In addition to bringing much needed food security, mostvillagers associated the Green Revolution with signiWcantincreases in incomes and quality of life. Improvements tovillage infrastructure, especially electricity provision andmetalled roads were directly associated with the introduc-tion of HYVs. Increases in the availability of non-agricul-

tural work in and around Bulandshahr town were alsolargely attributed to the re-investment of wealth generatedby the Green Revolution rather than to India’s wider eco-nomic development. Eighty-four percent of the villagersthat spoke to us about the impacts of the Green Revolutionfelt that it had improved their living standards and 97%were emphatic that the introduction of HYV wheats hadimproved food security as ‘even the poor eat better nowa-days’ (Muslim man, medium landholder, Sabdalpur). Dis-cussion groups in Sabdalpur estimated that there were over50 televisions, 20 refrigerators and 15 washing machines inthe village and that around 20% of households had gasstoves, 10% had electric stoves and 70% had hand pumpswithin their homes.

The majority of the village women involved in participa-tory appraisal made a strong association between wealthcreated by the Green Revolution and the advent of laboursaving devices that reduced the drudgery of their dailytasks. The most signiWcant was the mechanization of Xourmilling which saved most women at least two hours ofwork per day. Other devices that women associated withwealth generated by the Green Revolution were chaV cut-ting machines, domestic hand pumps for water and newtypes of cooking stove. Participatory appraisal with Jatwomen (from all landholding groups) in Chirchita revealedthat by increasing villagers’ incomes and food security, theGreen Revolution brought increased literacy levels andeducation opportunities as many parents could betteraVord to send their children to school. This was conWrmedby school teachers in the villages and recent secondarysource data which indicated a 60% adult literacy rate in theDistrict compared to 46% in 1991 (Jagran Research Centre,2003).7 Several women also mentioned that the Green Rev-olution had brought improvements to both health care anddiet and ‘as a result, infant mortality has declined, lifeexpectancy has increased and cases of malaria, TB andnight blindness are fewer’ (Women’s agricultural extensionworkers group, Chola): responses that were conWrmed by alocal doctor.

5.1. Environmental impacts

In environmental terms, however, a number of changeshave taken place since 1972 which echo the concerns of rad-ical Green Revolution critics such as Shiva (1991). Over thepast 20 or so years, pulse and barley cultivation havelargely been displaced by rotations of HYV wheat in theRabi season followed by HYV rice in the Kharif.8 Overthe same period, traditional soil fertility treatments such as

7 The corresponding Wgures for Uttar Pradesh as a whole are 77.4 for2001 and 40.7 for 1991. Projected life expectancy in UP for 2001–2006 is63.8 compared to an Indian average of 64.75. Infant mortality projectionsfor the same period are 53 for the State (Tata Services Limited, 2002).

8 HYV rice has taken over from maize as the dominant Kharif crop sincethe release of a high quality HYV rice called ‘Pusa basmati’ which yieldswell (up to 5000 kg/ha) and fetches a good market price.


the use of fallow, green and organic manure9 have declinedin favour of chemical fertilizers. This trend has generatedconcern about the linkages between increased agro-chemi-cal applications, water pollution and human health prob-lems as ‘jaundice caused by water pollution has been on theincrease over the past Wve years’ (Muslim man, large land-holder, Sabdalpur). Several farmers conWrmed that theirinputs of inorganic fertilizer had doubled over the past 10years as ‘without fertilizer, we get no crop’ (Small and mar-ginal male farmer group, Sabdalpur). In addition, over 90%of our larger farmers (owning over 1 ha) complained ofdiminishing economic returns to agriculture caused by stag-nating yields, rising agricultural input costs and cuts tofertilizer and irrigation subsidies.

In part, these problems reXect diminishing returns fromHYV seeds since the mid-1980s as plant breeders failed toreplicate the success associated with the early HYVs (Lip-ton, 1999). They also point to soil micronutrient and organicmatter deWciencies caused by over 30 years of intensive irri-gated cereal cultivation coupled with a reduction in nitro-gen-Wxing pulse cultivation and a decline in organic manureuse. In 1972, Baker’s sample plots showed the soils of thestudy villages to be sandy and dry with a mean organic mat-ter content of 0.69%. On average, only 70.5% of the urea and17.6% of the calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) required bythese soils was actually applied in the early 1970s. Most ofthe farmers that we spoke to about yield stagnation associ-ated it with deWciencies in micronutrients (zinc, sulphur,boron), organic matter and soil fauna and although the ben-eWts of organic manure were widely recognized, villagers fre-quently pointed out that ‘unless you have lots of animals,you can’t produce enough compost ƒ Unless you have agas stove to cook on, most dung gets used to make fuelcakes’ (Yadav man, medium landholder, Naibasti). Farm-ers’ complaints about declining proWt ratios and concernover agro-chemical-related health problems, meanwhile,seem to be well grounded given the excessive use of inor-ganic fertilizer to combat the yield stagnation problem.

In contrast, land salinity which was a major environ-mental issue during the early 1970s (Baker, 1975) has nowbeen largely eliminated. Initially associated with naturallyoccurring alkali soil conditions aggravated by the region’sextensive canal irrigation network, salinization aVectedaround 5% of Bulandshahr’s agricultural land in 1972(Allan, 1973). Nowadays, all but 0.5% of saline land in theWeldwork area has been reclaimed.10 In non-canal irrigated

9 Although 31% of Baker’s respondents used organic manure in 1972,they tended to use it in addition to chemical fertilizers and reported a con-siderable decline in its use after the introduction of HYVs and chemicalfertilizers. Field discussions showed that farmers considered the use ofgreen manure an ‘old fashioned technique, and not in keeping with themore modern approach to farming ƒ for which they had been encouragedto use chemical fertilizers’ (Baker, 1975, p. 389).10 This is usually done by draining the Welds, applying gypsum or pyrite

and organic manure (paddy straw or sugar cane waste) followed by Xood-ing for 15–30 days and the planting of crops such as Crotalaria juncea toincrease the nitrogen content of the soil.

areas, however, declining water table levels are becomingproblematic and have caused some Welds to be abandonedas wells have dried up and their owners cannot aVord deeptube wells. In spite of these problems, however, less thanhalf of our respondents associated the Green Revolutionwith worsening environmental problems. The rest showedquite low levels of environmental concern, viewing prob-lems such as water pollution and soil fertility decline asresolvable and a small price to pay for the socio-economicbeneWts that the Green Revolution had brought.

5.2. Socio-economic impacts

Having established that signiWcant material improve-ments had taken place in all of the study villages, we wenton to examine the extent to which wider socio-economiccritiques of the Green Revolution were borne out in theresearch area (Ladejinsky, 1969; Chakravarti, 1973; Pearse,1980; Byres, 1981; Johnston and Kilby, 1975). To do this,we investigated changes to intra-village landholding pat-terns, wealth distribution and farming practices/constraintsby landholding and community group. Particular attentionwas also given to the changing fortunes of landless house-holds from diVerent communities.

5.2.1. Changes in landholding patterns by landholding size and community

In order to investigate the Green Revolution’s impact onsocio-economic diVerentiation within the study villages, ourinitial participatory appraisal exercises sought to comparecurrent landholding patterns with Baker’s (1975) data. Ineach of our three study villages, three clear patternsemerged; namely a decline in the proportion (though not inthe absolute number) of landless households, a reduction inthe number and proportion of large landholders (over 2 ha)and an increase in the number of small (0.4–0.99 ha) andmarginal (0–0.39 ha) farmers. The data from Chirchita (seeTable 2) provide a typical example of how the percentage oflarge farmers has decreased signiWcantly since 1972 relativeto the proportion of households in the 0.4–0.99 ha category.

Participatory appraisal identiWed four main reasons forthese changes. Firstly, land fragmentation has reduced thesize of many landholdings, creating a larger number of

Table 2Households by landholding group in Chirchita

Source: Baker (1975) and Jewitt and Baker Weldwork (2001–2005).

Landholding category 1972 households(out of 125)

1972(%)

2003 households(out of 550)

2003(%)

Large farmers > 2 ha 26 20 2 <1Medium farmers

1–1.99 ha12 10 28 5

Small farmers0.4–0.99 ha

37 29 320 58

Marginal farmers0–0.39 ha

36 29 150 27

Landless 15 12 50 9


small landholdings as village populations have increased. In1972, the mean landholding in the study villages was 3.54 ha(Baker, 1975) whereas recent Weld visits revealed it to beunder 1.2 ha. Although the Green Revolution has delayedthe impacts of this process by making each unit of landmore productive, land fragmentation has been the inevita-ble result of population increase coupled with partibleinheritance systems where all sons inherit a share of thefamily’s land.

Secondly (and relatedly), there has been a signiWcantincrease in the number and proportion of small, marginaland landless Muslim, Muslim–Rajput and (to a lesserextent) Scheduled Caste households in the study villageswith Scheduled Castes such as Chamars and Balmikisbecoming numerically dominant among the Hindu villag-ers. According to the study village Pradhans11 and severalof the elders in Sabdalpur and Chirchita, this increase isdue to the fact that many Muslim and Scheduled Castehouseholds do not practice birth control. In Chirchita,many Scheduled Caste (Khatik, Dhobi and Chamar) land-holdings became fragmented to such an extent that somebecame unviable and were sold.

The greatest concern regarding population increase,however, has tended to be directed against Muslim andMuslim–Rajput villagers whose populations have increasedsigniWcantly relative to those of ‘group 1’ households. InSabdalpur, the percentage of Rajput households declinedfrom 50% to 5% between 1972 and 2001 while ScheduledCaste populations increased from 20% to 45% and Muslimhouseholds increased from 30% to 50% of the village popu-lation. A similar situation was apparent in Chirchita whereBrahmins declined from 5% to 1% of the village populationbetween 1972 and 2003, Jats declined from 16% to around10% and Muslims/Muslim–Rajputs increased from 50% to75%.

Chirchita’s Pradhan (a Jat) suggested that the averagenumber of children in Muslim families was eight comparedto four in Hindu families and highlighted this as a cause of‘poverty, declining farm size and worsening land quality’amongst Muslim landholders. Similar sentiments were ech-oed on many occasions in Sabdalpur and Chirchita andreXect wider issues of concern to Hindu households whocan see their relative importance diminishing steadily. Kur-wal Banaras, by contrast, does not have any Muslim house-holds, but socio-economic changes there echo those in theother two villages. ‘Group 1’ Brahmin and Rajput house-holds have declined in proportion to ‘group 2 and 3’ Lodhaand Scheduled Caste households which have become moredominant both numerically and in terms of their share oflandholdings.

Thirdly, the economic opportunities generated by theGreen Revolution have enabled some of the wealthiest‘group 1’ farmers to diversify into non-agricultural spheres

11 A Pradhan is an elected leader of the lowest level of local government:the Panchayat.

and move to urban areas. Resonating with research on Jatfarmers in nearby Meerut District (JeVrey and Lerche,2000),12 many of the largest Rajput, Jat and Brahmin land-owners in the study villages used proWts from the GR toeducate their children and assist them in securing salariedjobs (or setting up businesses) outside the village. Examplesof jobs currently undertaken by successful ‘group 1’ outmi-grants from the study villages are shown in Table 3.

As paying agricultural labourers became increasinglyexpensive and yields started to fall due to poorer qualityland management (by hired labour), some ‘group 1’ outmi-grants either rented out or sold part of their land: often thepoorest quality or most remote Welds that were subject tocrop theft or grazing by Nilgai deer. This trend increased asyield stagnation together with cuts to agricultural inputsubsidies reduced economic returns to agriculture. Ourinterviews suggested that Brahmin and Rajput outmigrantshave sold a greater proportion of their land than Jat fami-lies who have tended to retain family members in the villageto farm their land.

Most of the land sold by Brahmin, Rajput and Jat out-migrants has been acquired by ‘group 2’ Lodhas and Guj-ars as well as by ‘group 3’ Muslims, Muslim–Rajputs,Chamars and other Scheduled Castes which formed themiddle and bottom of the socio-economic and landowninghierarchy in 1972 (see Table 4). As these ‘group 2 and 3’households tend to have larger families than ‘group 1’ vil-lagers, many have used the household labour at their dis-posal to diversify and improve their livelihoods. Those withsmall/marginal holdings often cultivate their land verycarefully to maximize yields (for example by weeding theircrops thoroughly, applying inputs on time and usingorganic manure on their Welds) whilst at the same time

12 JeVrey and Lerche (2000) found that the sons of larger (over 4.86 ha)Jat farmers had been more successful in obtaining prestigious white collarjobs than the sons of smaller Jat landowners. Although the latter grouphad been reasonably successful in getting low ranking government, army,police, teaching and factory employment, the sons of some smaller land-owners had been compelled to seek wage labour. Consequently, JeVeryand Lerche argued that class diVerences based on land were being repro-duced in the quest for jobs outside the village.

Table 3‘Group 1’ outmigration

Source: Jewitt and Baker Weldwork (2001–2005).

Village Caste Current employment

Sabdalpur Rajput Two brothers: one owns a pot-makingfactory and the other works as a Wnancialadviser in Bulandshahr

Chirchita Jat Three families migrated. One family nowrelies on government service and business(plastic production) as their main incomesource. Another owns a property salesbusiness and the third owns a majorconstruction business

KurwalBanaras

Brahmin One Brahmin man manages a popularhotel in Bulandshahr and another has ajob as a Wnancial adviser in Bulandshahr


seeking oV-farm work to maximize cash incomes. Severallandless households have also succeeded in poolingtogether enough money from oV-farm work to buy smallamounts of land and the poor quality land on oVer has notdeterred them as they have suYcient labour resources toimprove and manage it eVectively. Of the land sold by Sab-dalpur’s two wealthiest Rajput outmigrants, 11 ha werepurchased by Muslim households who had family membersworking in the Gulf, 2.2 ha were bought by two Chamarfamilies and the rest was acquired by a Rajput family froma neighbouring village. In Chirchita, 12 small and mediumMuslim–Rajput farmers who had household membersworking in the Gulf purchased 12 ha from Jat outmigrants.

Fourthly, government schemes aimed at redistributingland above an 18 acre ceiling coupled with the periodicidentiWcation and redistribution of village ‘wasteland’ tolandless households have played a minor (but socio-eco-nomically important) role in changing landownership pat-terns. In addition, the completion of a land consolidationprogramme within the past two years has seen a further re-distribution of small parcels of land. Decisions about whowill receive redistributed land are made by the village Prad-han in consultation with the landless community in light ofthe government’s recommendation that each landlesshousehold should ultimately receive two bighas (0.08 ha). InSabdalpur, around 25% of formerly landless SC (Balmikiand Chamar) and Muslim households now own redistrib-uted land and although the quality is rather poor, mostseem delighted to have it. One woman commented that ‘wereceived 2 bighas as part of the land redistributionprogrammes ƒ Our land is of poor quality ƒ not veryfertile ƒ but we are very pleased to have it. We have onlyhad it for 2 months and are in the process of improving it’(Chamar woman, marginal landowner, Sabdalpur). InChirchita, a number of landless Balmiki and Muslim house-holds were each allocated 1 bigha (0.04 ha) of land duringthe 1990s and 20% of the poorest landless households(mostly Balmikis and Muslims plus a few Dhobis, Khatiksand Chamars) will receive land during 2006.

5.2.2. Shifts in wealth distribution and the importance of non-agricultural work

With respect to studies that associate the Green Revolu-tion with increased socio-economic polarization (Chakrav-

arti, 1973; Pearse, 1980; Byres, 1981, 1983; Brass, 1994),there appears to be limited conWrmation amongst house-holds in our study villages. Although Baker’s (1975)research showed clear links between community and HYVadoption, yields and agricultural inputs, the economic ben-eWts generated by the Green Revolution seem to havepaved the way for a subsequent redistribution of land andwealth as well as a weakening of traditional community-based socio-economic hierarchies. Indeed, 85% of ourrespondents disagreed with the idea that the Green Revolu-tion had made poor villagers poorer.

Nevertheless, earlier participatory research (Baker andJewitt, forthcoming) had pointed to widening wealth gapsbetween farmers cultivating more and less than three acres(1.21 ha) due to inequalities in access to (and prices paidfor) seed, fertilizer and irrigation water. Yet in spite of thediYculties faced by small farmers, the desire to own agricul-tural land – even a very small amount – clearly remainedvery strong. To investigate this issue further, subsequentWeldwork focused more closely on the centrality of agricul-ture to the livelihoods of diVerent landholding groups. Thisdistinction produced some interesting Wndings in thatsmall/medium farmers whose livelihoods depended primar-ily on agriculture were increasing wealth much more slowlythan both large farmers (who had better, cheaper access toagricultural inputs) and small/marginal farmers who culti-vated mainly for subsistence purposes and relied on non-agricultural work as their main income source. Accordingto one medium landowner:

Small and medium farmers have suVered because oflarge families and land fragmentation ƒ Many haveswallowed their pride and now work on the Welds ofother farmers or even outside the village ƒ Thosethat refuse to do this ‘low work’ are struggling tomake ends meet as it is hard to make a good incomejust from farming these days (Jat man, medium land-holder, Chirchita).

In a similar vein, Sabdalpur’s Pradhan suggested that‘the Green Revolution closed the gap between rich andpoor and opened up work opportunities outsideagriculture ƒ Non farm work is now more important thanlandholdings, community or agricultural productivity as ameans of increasing wealth’. ReXecting this shift, non-agri-

Table 4Village landholdings by community

Source: Baker (1975) and Jewitt and Baker Weldwork (2001–2005).a This comprises village ‘waste land’ recently redistributed to the landless (rather than land purchased from other villagers) and so does not appear in the

1972 data.

Community Sabdalpur 1972 (%) Sabdalpur 2001 (%) Chirchita 1972 (%) Chirchita 2005 (%)

Brahmin 5 <1Rajput 50 44Jat 60 29Chamars (SC) <1 1 15 8Other SCs 0 <1a (redistributed ‘waste’ land) 0 2 (purchased) <1a (redistributed ‘waste’ land)Muslim 50 55 0 <1a (redistributed ‘waste’ land)Muslim–Rajput 20 60


cultural incomes are signiWcant to all communities (seeTable 5) and wealth ranking exercises in each village identi-Wed non-agricultural work or ‘number of wage-earnerswithin the household’ as the second most important wealthindicator (after landholdings). This is especially signiWcantfor lower caste Hindu and poorer Muslim householdswhose women do not observe purdah (Jewitt, 2000a, 2002)and can make a substantial contribution to householdincomes.

Interestingly, participatory estimates of community-based wealth change in Sabdalpur since 1972 suggest thatlabour-rich marginal/landless households from Muslim andSC communities have increased their share of village wealthrelative to ‘group 1’ Rajput farmers as a result of their gainsin agricultural productivity and involvement in non-agri-cultural employment (see Table 6). A similar exercise inChirchita showed how Muslim–Rajput success in obtainingGulf-based employment enabled them to increase theirshare of village wealth at the expense of Jats and SCs andthereby substantially improve their social standing withinthe village. An additional problem for small SC farmerswas that during the 1970s and 1980s, many lost wealth as aresult of land fragmentation-induced poverty and smallproWt ratios compared to larger farmers. Over the sameperiod, the landless SC and Muslims households thatformed the bottom of Chirchita’s socio-economic hierarchymade limited economic gains.

Table 6Changes in proportion of wealth by community


Community Sabdalpur1972 (%)

Sabdalpur2001 (%)

Chirchita1972 (%)

Chirchita2005 (%)

Brahmin 12 1Rajput 50 40Jat 50 29Scheduled Caste 1 5 18 10Muslim 49 55 1 1Muslim–Rajput 19 59

Due to the increased availability of oV-farm work inrecent years, however, the latter trend had started to reverseas many labour-rich Muslim and SC households havedeveloped more varied (and successful) livelihood portfo-lios. Chirchita’s Pradhan attributed this shift to the willing-ness of such households to ‘work hard and accept any formof work that presents itself’ while a landless Balmiki mancommented that ‘increased wages and oV-farm workopportunities have allowed many of us to become wealthierand spend money on luxuries such as family celebrations,religious festivals and our children’s education’ (Male mar-ginal/landless Balmiki group, Chirchita).

Echoing Wndings from Meerut District (JeVrey and Ler-che, 2000), an additional illustration of how non-agricul-tural work has inXuenced community-based wealthdistribution can be found amongst smaller ‘group 1’ farm-ers who have been unsuccessful in obtaining remunerative‘outside work’. According to Sabdalpur’s Pradhan, thesefamilies only ‘sought work equal to their status’ andrefused to involve themselves in ‘low work’ such as non-agricultural labour. Few have maintained their formerlyhigh levels of agricultural productivity due to insuYcientlabour resources to manage their (still above average) land-holdings and an inability to pay the increasing daily ratescommanded by agricultural labourers. As a result, they arecurrently living beyond their means and have sold land (orare considering doing so) as a means of maintaining theircustomary living standards and consumption patterns.According to one villager:

Many Rajput farmers who used to own large farmshave migrated and got work in towns ƒ Some havecontinued to keep their farms going as well ƒ Othersput their proWts [from the GR] into alcohol and lux-ury consumption and didn’t bother about being goodfarmers ƒ Some became poorer and had to sell someof their land (Muslim landless woman, Sabdalpur).

In the Pradhan’s opinion, ‘only two Rajput householdshave increased their wealth over the past 30 years [as a

Table 5Income sources for diVerent communities in Chirchita

Source: Jewitt and Baker Weldwork (2001–2005).

Community % Farmincome

% Otherincome

Typical income sources for men Typical income sources for women

Brahmin 1 99 Government service, shopkeeping, business Assist with business, independent careersJat 70 30 Government service, armed forces, business Animal rearing, milk, independent careersChamar (SC) 70 30 Shopkeeping, tailoring, carpentry,

construction work, agricultural labourSeasonal agricultural labour, animal rearing,milk, fodder and dung cake sales

Balmiki (SC) <1 99+ ‘Sweeping’ (mainly outside the village),rickshaw pulling

‘Sweeping’, animal rearing, milk and dungcake sales

Dhobi,Khatik(SC)

<1 99+ Ironing, house cleaning, menial hotel work Ironing, cleaning, animal rearing, milk anddung cake sales

Muslim–Rajputs 70 30 Gulf employment, construction work,driving

Animal rearing, milk sales, stitching beadworkpurses

Muslims <1 99+ Mainly construction and othernon-agricultural labour

Animal rearing, milk and dung cake sales,beadwork


result of successful outside employment] and these will bethe only Rajputs left in the village in 10 years time ƒ Therest will have sold all their land to fund their luxury con-sumption and alcohol purchases’.

The Pradhan went on to contrast their situation with thetendency of many small/marginal Muslim and lower casteHindu households to cultivate their holdings extremelycarefully in order to maximize productivity. He estimatedthe average wheat yield for these ‘very hard working’ farm-ers to be 4500 kg/ha (compared to 3950 kg/ha for ‘lazy anduninterested’ Rajput farmers) and attributed their highyields to the fact that they have ‘labour at their disposal toremove weeds, apply water and fertilizer at the correct timeand undertake labour demanding yield enhancing measuressuch as the application of compost’.

In the other two villages, a similar trend was apparentwith a dedicated subgroup of small and marginal farmersbeing described as ‘very careful cultivators who are notafraid to take on new challenges’ (Jat male, large andmedium farmers group, Chirchita). According to another Jatfarmer ‘small and marginal farmers often get higher yields asthey work harder on their land ƒ Large farmers like me[laughs] have become lazy and don’t work so hard on theirland nowadays’ (Jat man, large landholder, Chirchita). Toillustrate this point, he drew our attention to a group of mar-ginal SC (mostly Chamar) farmers who have recently startedcultivating Xowers and vegetables and obtain suYcientincome from this to pay for most of their subsistence foodrequirements. Other villagers present spoke of these farmerswith admiration and described them as being ‘willing to takeother employment in addition to their farm work’ and ‘notshy about doing low status work such as agricultural labourfor others’ (Jat man, large and medium farmers group, Chir-chita). The group also stressed that hard-working small andmarginal farmers like these had ‘increased their share of vil-lage wealth in recent years’ and were likely to ‘increase theirshare of village landholdings further’ as ‘group 1’ villagerssold oV their poorest quality Welds.

This is not to suggest that every small/marginal farmer isthriving or that all ‘group 1’ landowners still resident in thestudy villages are poor cultivators who are rapidly deplet-ing their declining wealth stocks by trying to keep up socio-economic appearances. Indeed earlier landholding-basedparticipatory wealth distribution exercises (Baker andJewitt, forthcoming) indicated that income gaps are widen-ing between households owning above and below 1.21 hawho depend on agriculture as their main livelihood. Andalthough non-agricultural incomes have increased thewealth status of small/marginal landowners with morediverse livelihood portfolios, land is still viewed as the mostimportant wealth indicator in the study villages.

Villagers also emphasized (like Jat farmers in Meerut –JeVrey and Lerche, 2000) that the sons of many of the larg-est ‘group 1’ landowners had succeeded in obtaining ‘highXy’ non-agricultural jobs, thus consolidating the socio-eco-nomic positions of their households within the village. Inaddition, many wealthy ‘group 1’ households have opted

for relatively small, highly educated families since the early1970s and have retained larger than average landholdingsas their farms suVered less from land fragmentation. As aresult, they have retained a signiWcant share of the village’sland and wealth despite their small numbers.

This situation was particularly apparent in Sabdalpurwhere in 1972, Muslims and Rajputs owned roughly equalshares of the village’s land and wealth. At that time, threeMuslim families were particularly wealthy and owned themajority of non-Rajput village land. According to thePradhan, these families considered themselves to be ofequal socio-economic status to the largest Rajput landown-ers. Over time, however, land fragmentation caused bylarge family sizes reduced these Muslim households tomedium landowers while the two wealthiest Rajput house-holds with ‘small families and good ‘outside’ jobs’ (Muslimman, large landholder, Sabdalpur) retained their status aslarge landowners with a disproportionate share of villagewealth. In Chirchita, meanwhile, the proportion of largeBrahmin and Jat farmers has declined signiWcantly since1972, but those who remain own well over 2 ha and severalwealthy Jats with large landholdings see themselves as ‘pro-gressive farmers’ and take great pride in their agriculturalachievements. One wealthy Jat farmer, for example, regu-larly achieves wheat and rice yields of 5900 kg/ha. He man-ages this with the use of large compost applications at therate of around 8 ton/ha/year coupled with a system ofdiverse crop rotations that seek to replenish soil fertilitythrough the planting of pulses and green manure crops. HisWelds are all reliably irrigated as he owns four deep tubewells plus a pump attachment for his tractor so that he canirrigate when the electricity supplies fails. Being a largefarmer with a small family, he can also aVord the luxury ofintegrating fallow periods into his crop rotations whichenhance subsequent yields by 20%.

5.2.3. Variations in farming practices and constraints by landholding group

Unfortunately, few small and marginal farmers canundertake such non-intensive farming practices as theytend to ‘consume all that they grow ƒ Their only source ofincome is from agricultural or oV-farm labour ƒ Whetherthey do this depends on their social status ƒ whether theyfeel ashamed about doing ‘low work’ for others ƒ andwhether they have spare household labour’ (Muslim man,medium landholder, Sabdalpur). Consequently, there areimportant cropping pattern variations between large,medium and small/marginal landowners. Other than thesmall group of SC farmers who have diversiWed into Xowerand vegetable cash cropping, most small and marginallandowners grow Kharif rice followed by Rabi wheat asthey rely on these ‘assured’ crops as their main food supply.Wealthier farmers, by contrast, often have more diversecropping patterns including fodder crops (barseem, joharand oats) and soil-enhancing pulses (pigeon pea, lentils,black gram and pea) plus cash crops such as sugar cane,maize and mustard.


Echoing the situation in the early 1970s, another impor-tant diVerence between large and smaller farmers is the costand accessibility of agricultural inputs which remain animportant problem for many small and marginal landhold-ers (Baker and Jewitt, forthcoming). With regard to irriga-tion, for example, larger farmers who have their own pumpsets regularly achieve yields of over 5500 kg/ha compared to4750 kg/ha and below for farmers who have to hire pumps.An additional advantage for pump set owners is that theypay around Rs. 75013 for six irrigations compared to Rs.1200 per acre for a farmer who hires a pump set.14 A similarsituation is apparent with respect to fertilizers as largerfarmers can better aVord greater applications to combatyield stagnation. Small and medium farmers with no ani-mals to provide organic manure, meanwhile, feel trappedby their reliance on inorganic fertilizer saying ‘if we applyno fertilizer, we get no yield’ (Small and marginal malefarmer group, Sabdalpur).15 A number of labour-poorsmall/medium farmers whose main livelihood is agriculturealso claimed to be worse oV than landless and marginalhouseholds who ‘can take full advantage of outside incomeearning opportunities’ (Chamar man, small landowner,Chirchita).

5.2.4. Landless livelihoodsReXecting this perception, earlier participatory research

(Baker and Jewitt, forthcoming) plus further participatorywealth distribution exercises in 2005 indicated that themost remarkable shift in landholding-based wealth distri-bution since 1972 has been in favour of the landless. Likemany labour-rich small/marginal landholders with diverselivelihood portfolios, landless households have beneWtedfrom the increased availability of wage earning opportuni-ties and have expanded their share of wealth in all threestudy villages. Despite agricultural mechanization, thegreater yields and cropping intensities associated withHYVs, coupled with a substantial growth in oV-farmemployment have signiWcantly increased the demand for

13 One pound (sterling) is worth approximately 78 Rupees.14 Perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘interrupted electricity supply’ was perceived

to be the biggest problem facing most large farmers.15 Muslim households in particular have very few animals, the reason be-

ing that women play a major part in looking after animals and purdah limitsthe involvement of Muslim women in such activities (Jewitt, 2000b, 2002).

wage labour. Echoing Gupta’s (1998) Wndings elsewhere inUP, this has been particularly beneWcial for landless andnear-landless households who depend on wage labour tomeet their subsistence needs but are no longer at the mercyof large higher-caste farmers for employment provision.Typical wages for construction labour are now Rs. 80–100per day compared to Rs. 70 for agricultural labour and dis-cussions in all three villages suggested that landless incomesare now increasing more rapidly than those of many smalllandowning households. One man commented that:

The landless have been doing better than small andmedium farmers lately and their incomes are increas-ing rapidly ƒ As labourers’ wages increased in theurban areas, this forced wages up in rural areas too ƒA landless family with Wve members working as dailylabourers on construction sites in Bulandshahr canearn Rs. 400–500 per day (Chamar man, small land-holder, Chirchita).

In Sabdalpur, around 55% of landless men now takeadvantage of casual employment in the brick-making andconstruction industries and obtain only around 15% oftheir incomes from agricultural labour (see Table 7).16 Alarge number of landless families have also diversiWed intoanimal rearing as increased milk yields together with risingdemand have made it proWtable enough to justify the eVortof keeping stall-fed cattle.17 Amongst landless Muslimhouseholds, meanwhile, remittances from the Gulf havebeen very important since the 1980s with 20 landless andnear landless Muslim households from Sabdalpur havingdramatically increased their socio-economic status fromemployment in the Gulf as drivers, security guards and con-struction workers. In the words of one landless woman:

16 The main tasks for which agricultural labour hiring takes place areWeld preparation, threshing, harvesting, transplanting and sugarcanespraying. In the Kharif season, many landless labourers go outside the vil-lage in search of work. Women tend to stay behind to tend their own Weldsand animals.17 Milk yields have increased from 4 to 8 litres/day in the early 1980s to

between 6 and 12 litres now. In Sabdalpur and Chirchita, demand for milkwithin the villages has seen sales rise, but Kurwal Banaras, which is muchcloser to Bulandshahr, sells most of its milk within the town where a majormarket exits. ReXecting this, the number of milch animals in Kurwal Ban-aras has increased fourfold with the result that a household with threecows can earn Rs. 40,000–50,000 per year from milk sales.

Table 7Changes in income sources for landless households in Sabdalpur


Incomesources

1972 (men) 1972 (women) 2005 (men) 2005 (women)

1 Agricultural labour 90% Agricultural labour 60–65% Agricultural labour 15% Agricultural labour 50%2 Other labour 10% Husking and Xour making 30–35% Construction and brick

work 55%Animal rearing and milksales 20–45%

3 Animal rearing, milk andghee sales 0–10%

Salaried employment 5% Non-agricultural labour 0–30%

4 Milk sales 15% Fodder sales 0–0.5%5 Gulf work 10% Dung cake sales 0–0.5%


I work as a daily labourer in the village, but my hus-band works in Saudi as a driver ƒ He earns Rs.15,000 per month ƒ One of my sons also worked inSaudi for Wve years and earned Rs. 7–800,000 while hewas there ƒ We used some of this money to build our[two story brick-built] house ƒ At least 25 men fromSabdalpur have worked in Saudi ƒ We have neverowned land in the village and used to be very poor –especially with 12 children – but that changed whenmy husband went to Saudi ƒ He worked Wrst as adriver in Bulandshahr, then he shifted to Delhi wherehe met an agent who helped him to Wnd work in Saudi(Muslim landless woman, Sabdalpur).

Indeed, 32 of the 35 landless households that we inter-viewed claimed to be better oV nowadays as they have morework and get a Wxed daily rate compared to 30 years agowhen wages were not Wxed and non-agricultural labour waslimited mainly to husking and Xour making. Landless vil-lagers’ estimates suggested that wages have doubled overthe last 10 years and agricultural labour rates have beenforced to rise more or less in line with non-agriculturallabour rates. All of our respondents admitted to havingmore disposable income nowadays and one woman jokedthat ‘it makes sense for the landless to have big families asthis brings in more money to the household’ (Chamarwoman, small landowner, Chirchita).

With regard to wealth variations amongst the landless,the general consensus was that type and availability ofemployment has become a far more important indicator ofwealth than community amongst all but the Balmikis. Dueto this caste’s traditional role as ‘sweepers’ (which involvesthe cleaning of latrines and the removal of human excre-ment) they face much discrimination from other villagers aswell as potential employers and have thus struggled to ben-eWt from alternative work opportunities. At the same time,recent food price increases have made it more diYcult tomeet subsistence needs and despite the education subsidiesavailable to them,18 many Balmiki children do not attendschool as they are needed at home to perform householdtasks while their parents undertake their work.

Few Balmiki women work outside their villages as mostrear poultry and goats within the household and many havelongstanding employment working for higher class/castehouseholds who do not have proper latrines and whosewomen do not undertake their own ‘sweeping’ on accountof purdah. Balmiki women are paid very poorly for thiswork and receive only 40 kg of grain per year from eachhousehold. Many continue to transport excrement fromhousehold lavatories to the Welds in baskets carried on theirheads (rather than in barrows) despite attempts by theIndian government to ban this practice. On average, eachBalmiki woman ‘sweeps’ for around 10 households and the

18 Government subsidies of Rs. 300 per year for class 1–4 and Rs. 480 peryear for class 5–8 are available to Scheduled Castes, Muslims and ‘OtherBackward Castes’.

monetary value of this work is around Rs. 250 per yearfrom each household. Apparently, this represents a greatimprovement on the situation a few years ago when theywere only paid 20 kg of wheat (Rs. 125) per household. Fur-ther discussions revealed that they loathe this work andwould love to earn money by other means but are pre-vented from doing so by a lack of opportunity com-pounded by wider social prejudice against them. OneBalmiki woman stated that:

We hate this [latrine cleaning] work, but what else canwe do? ƒ We’d love to do other work such as agricul-tural labour ƒ But we don’t have any experience ofthis type of work ƒ And who would want to employus? ƒ Perhaps we could learn to do sewing or knittingwork ƒ Anything to help us pay for our children tobe educated. (Landless/marginal Balmiki women’sgroup, Sabdalpur).

Fortunately, work opportunities for Balmiki men haveopened up in recent years and men from Wve of the 15Balmiki households involved in participatory appraisal hadmanaged to take advantage of employment opportunitiesoutside the village. Amongst the Chirchita Balmiki commu-nity, for example, one man works as a sweeper in a bank,another works as a sweeper in a school and a third is asweeper in a hospital. Two Balmiki men from Chirchitahave also been successful in obtaining non-sweeping workand are currently employed as cycle rickshaw drivers inBulandshahr. One has earned enough to buy a television.According to one of these men ‘these jobs are not alwaysregular ƒ so if there is no work, there is no pay ƒ But evenso, the situation is much better than in the past’ (Landless/marginal Balmiki men’s group, Chirchita).

For many of the other Balmiki families, meeting house-hold subsistence needs is a constant battle although moststill maintain that hunger is less of a problem now thanprior to the Green Revolution and living conditions in thevillage have improved. A frequently mentioned example ofthis is the government’s installation of ‘India Mark II’ handpumps in the ‘SC area’ of each study village. Ironically,these pumps provide Balmiki households with much betterquality water than that drawn from the shallower home-stead-based hand pumps owned by wealthier households.And in contrast to critiques of major government schemessuch as the Integrated Rural Development Programme(IDRP), Panchayati Raj and the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana(Dreze and Gazdar, 1996), UP’s Ambedkar Villages schemeand the 1996 land ceiling legislation (both strongly sup-ported by the Bahujan Samaj Party) have had signiWcantbeneWts for Balmikis in the study villages. Under theAmbedkar scheme, brick houses are being built, mud pathsare being paved with brick and Rs. 20,000 per village hasbeen provided for the construction of proper latrines andseptic tanks for SCs who are expected, in return, to providelabour for a signiWcant part of these improvements.

Land redistribution has also had a profound impact onthe livelihoods of its beneWciaries. From a variety of group


discussions with landless Balmiki and Muslim families inSabdalpur, it became apparent that even a tiny amount ofland can make a crucial diVerence to a household’s self-per-ception and livelihood opportunities. One Balmiki mantold us in great detail how thrilled he was to have become alandowner:

We were given 2 bighas [0.08 ha] of redistributed landin the 1990s ƒ Although we don’t have much land,what we have has made a huge diVerence to ourlives ƒ The land was not very fertile when we got it ƒand it needed to be treated for salt damage ƒ Thatwas not too diYcult, but I was surprised at how muchit cost to put water on to Xush out the salt ƒ We growwheat in the Rabi and rice in the Kharif ƒ It feelsreally good to grow our own food after a lifetime ofbeing landless (Landless/marginal Balmiki men’sgroup, Chirchita).

6. Conclusions

Although there are unavoidable diYculties in trying toidentify how diVerent groups have beneWted or lost outfrom the rapid agrarian changes of the past 35 years, thetask is an important one if the claims and criticisms madeof the Green Revolution are to be properly assessed in lightof local experiences. It is also useful to investigate how localpeople diVerentiate problems and beneWts created bychanges in farming technology from those created by otherfactors including population increase, land fragmentationand prevailing economic trends aVecting agriculture.

As these latter changes have occurred largely indepen-dently of the Green Revolution, it is important to reXect onwhether their impact would have been worse in the absenceof increased food production brought by HYVs, irrigationand agro-chemicals. In the case of population increase andland fragmentation, this is almost certainly so. All of thediVerent landholding groups that we spoke to were ada-mant that the Green Revolution had increased their foodsecurity in spite of declining people:land ratios. It alsoseems clear that despite the environmental drawbacks ofinorganic fertilizers, villagers would have struggled tomaintain yields without them (in the absence of a totallydiVerent agricultural research emphasis in India) as by theearly 1970s, almost all available cattle manure was beingused as cooking fuel. Interestingly, most farmers associatediminishing economic returns to agriculture with fallingagricultural input subsidies rather than with yield stagna-tion caused by declining soil quality; mainly because theylink the latter problem to dung and household energyshortages rather than to intensive irrigated cereal cultiva-tion per se. And while several ‘group 1’ farmers complainedthat agricultural proWts had been negatively aVected byhigher yields creating lower market prices, this must be con-sidered against the beneWts of increased purchasing powerand food security for the landless (Gupta, 1998; Corbridgeand Harriss, 2000).

When asked to compare the Green Revolution’s beneWtswith those brought by wider changes such as state-spon-sored development programmes, rapid economic growthand liberalisation, over two thirds of our respondents feltthat the Green Revolution had been more eVective in gener-ating wealth at the local level amongst all socio-economicgroups. With regard to the main constraints aVecting locallivelihoods, on the other hand, most of those mentionedrelated to the government’s economic policies (especiallycuts to agricultural subsidies) and failure to improve ruralinfrastructure (such as roads and electricity supply) ratherthan to the impacts of the Green Revolution. Althoughrecent Bahujan Samaj Party initiatives such as land redistri-bution and the Ambedkar Villages scheme were highlypraised amongst the landless, village elders criticised olderschemes such as the Integrated Rural Development Pro-gramme (IRDP) and Community Development Coopera-tives for being largely ineVective. Discussions about theimpacts of India’s economic liberalisation, meanwhile,revealed that such issues were seen as rather remote fromthe livelihoods of most villagers except in terms of theirimpact on agricultural subsidies.

Even though non-agricultural work is clearly moreimportant than the Green Revolution as a means ofincreasing wealth in the research area nowadays, themajority of our respondents linked the increased availabil-ity of such work to the re-investment of proWts generatedby the GR rather than to India’s wider economic develop-ment or to globalization more generally. The main excep-tion to this is the growth of Gulf-based employmentopportunities since the mid-1980s which has brought muchgreater improvements to the socio-economic status of par-ticipating Muslim households than the Green Revolutiondid. Another, more tenuous link to globalisation that onevillager mentioned was its role in the growth of Delhi’stourism industry, which several Jat families in the Districthad taken advantage of by setting up a coach travel busi-ness. The fastest growing non-agricultural businessamongst the Jat community – land sales and development –by contrast, was strongly associated with the Green Revo-lution in terms of its role in increasing the liquidity of localland markets and facilitating the outmigration of ‘group 1’households.

One reason for this strong positive association betweenagrarian change and economic development amongst thestudy villagers may be that the Green Revolution had sucha major impact locally that other, more remote factorsresponsible for economic growth are given less importancethan they deserve. As our study set out to investigate localperceptions of the Green Revolution’s impacts, however,perhaps the most important lesson to draw is that the over-whelming majority of study villagers associate the GreenRevolution with signiWcant socio-economic beneWts,decreasing wealth disparities and a weakening of tradi-tional caste/class hierarchies. Participants from KurwalBanaras and Chirchita elaborated on this point by describ-ing a gradual ‘dilution’ of earlier community-based power


structures as successful ‘group 1’ farmers started to investtheir wealth and power outside the village and marginal/landless households from Muslim and lower caste Hinducommunities increased their share of village wealth by seek-ing outside employment and buying land. Another impor-tant factor has been the role of land fragmentation inreducing the wealth and status gap between ‘group 1’households and other villagers.

There was also a general sense that a weakening of com-munity-based wealth inequalities over time had brought adecline in intra-village tension which is now only an issueduring Panchayat elections (when Wghts sometimes breakout and insults are traded between the supporters of candi-dates from diVerent communities). Although severalrespondents mentioned an increase in crime, this was attrib-uted to frustration regarding the inability of educatedvillagers to gain ‘acceptable’ (i.e. government service)employment rather than to community-based tension. InSabdalpur, the (Muslim) Pradhan identiWed Muslim youthsas the main group responsible for intra-village crime butwas quick to point out that opportunities for work in theGulf had reduced this problem in recent years. He alsoemphasized that the victims of such crime were random andnot directed against any particular community, althoughother respondents emphasized the role of visible statussymbols such as satellite dishes and cars in provoking theft.Echoing Menski’s (1998) study of South Asia’s ‘dowryproblem’ a related concern amongst women was thatincreases in visible wealth had brought demands for muchhigher dowries (especially for educated boys) which obvi-ously causes concern for poorer families as well as thosewith more daughters than sons.19 Overall, however, wefound little evidence of the type of Green Revolution-induced violence described by Shiva (1991).

Nor was there any real sense that the study villagersidentiWed with post-development critiques linking the typesof ‘top down’ development typiWed by the Green Revolu-tion to ‘massive underdevelopment and impoverishment,untold exploitation and oppression’ (Escobar, 1995, p. 4).Instead, most landholders made strong positive associa-tions between development and the Green Revolution andwere emphatic about the socio-economic beneWts of the lat-ter. Although there were clear disparities in the costs ofagricultural production to small and large farmers, all land-holding groups obtained signiWcantly higher yields thanbefore the Green Revolution. In addition, many small/mar-ginal households have reduced their dependence on agricul-ture as their main livelihood by diversifying into morelucrative non-agricultural employment. Even the poorestlandless Balmiki and Muslim villagers oVered little supportfor radical post-development critiques. Instead, most asso-ciated the Green Revolution with ‘cheaper food and morework’ (Marginal/landless Balmiki men’s group, Chirchita)

19 Hiring a popular venue in Bulandshahr for a wedding party of 250people costs Rs. 100,000 (£1280).

while initiatives such as Ambedkar Villages and land redis-tribution schemes oVered signiWcant opportunities for live-lihood improvement.

And in contrast to the vitriolic critiques that the GreenRevolution has received over the years for its environmen-tal impacts, most of our respondents demonstrated fairlylow levels of concern for environmental problems; the mainexceptions being water pollution (from agro-chemicals) andyield stagnation (mainly on account of its economicimpacts). Solutions to these problems were seen primarilyin the form of more ‘development’; largely through furtherplant breeding initiatives, possibly using GM, to allowcrops to yield well on poor quality soils with reduced agro-chemical inputs. In addition, older soil improvement tech-niques such as composting and pulse intercropping werepracticed by a few farmers. Indeed, echoing Blaut’s (1973)and Buchanan’s (1977) emphasis on ‘planning research withpeople rather than for them’ (Power, 2003, p. 67) villagerswere very keen for the authors to seek funding for partici-patory crop trials to investigate the economic and soil qual-ity beneWts of integrating these methods into existingcropping patterns. But as one farmer pointed out:

Everyone is aware of declining soil fertility ƒ and ofthe need to grow more pulses ƒ and increase the useof organic matter ƒ The problem is that pulses arelow yielding and risk prone ƒ and there is not enoughspare dung [after making fuel cakes] to compost ƒComposting is also labour intensive, so not everyonecan aVord the time to do it (Male small and mediumlandholder group, Chirchita).

It is our intention in future research to explore, in con-junction with local villagers, possible solutions to theseinterlinked problems of soil quality decline and shortagesof dung, labour and household energy. In particular, wehope to use participatory crop trials to investigate whetherthe use of dung as an organic manure rather than as acooking fuel can generate suYcient funds (throughincreased yields and reduced chemical fertilizer inputs) topay for alternative stoves and cooking fuels.

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the villagers of Sabdalpur, Chir-chita and Kurwal Banaras for sharing their time, percep-tions and insights with us. We are also deeply indebted toDr. Raghvendra Yadav for his expertise and hard work,without which this work would not have been possible.

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Glossary and acronyms

Barseem: CloverGR: Green RevolutionHYV: High yielding varieties of seedJohar: SorghumJawahar Rozgar Yojana: Employment Assurance SchemeKharif: The monsoon cropping season which lasts from June to OctoberPradhan: Elected leader of the lowest level of local government: the Panc-

hayatPurdah: Literally means curtain or veil but has the broader meaning of

female seclusionRabi: The winter cropping season which lasts from October to AprilRs. RupeesRupee: Indian currency. One pound (sterling) is worth approximately 78

RupeesScheduled Castes: Castes that are generally considered to belong outside

the mainstream Hindu Caste system and which have been recognisedby the Indian government as socio-economically backward

SC: Scheduled CastesZaid: A short pre-monsoon cropping season between late March and June

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