Green Revolution: Agriculture, Technology, and Political Order in the Global South

How do major changes in political order come about? This book examines the role of technological change in the context of agriculture in the Global South, where rural populations have gone from relative quiescence in the early post-colonial period to high levels of collective action and political representation. I argue that this political transformation, taking place across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, was driven by a technological revolution in agriculture known as the "green revolution." 

The book focuses on India, where the green revolution transformed the lives of approximately one-sixth of humanity. I argue that the spread of high-yielding variety crops in India played a key role in the emergence of rural political mobilization, the rise of new agrarian and regional opposition parties, and the decline of India's once dominant Congress party.  This was due to the collapse of traditional patron-client networks associated with subsistence agriculture and the growing exposure of agricultural producers to markets and government policies affecting subsidies and prices, which mobilized farmers into politics. 

Leveraging natural experiments, historical datasets linking election outcomes to measures of local agricultural technology adoption, a new database of rural collective action events extracted newspaper articles (see collective action events database in top right panel), and comparative historical case studies based on original archival research, the book demonstrates how the spread of high-yielding variety (HYV) crops across Indian districts between the 1960s and 1980s played a key role in the transformation and democratization of modern Indian politics. 

The book concludes with comparative case studies and a cross-national analysis of the political effects of the green revolution. Overall, it aims to highlight technological change in agriculture in as a pivotal step in the economic and political evolution of developing societies. To learn more, please check out an article published in the APSR here and a brief summary at Ideas for India here as well as a talk here on part of the book project at the Center for the Advanced Study of India.