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Green Revolution in India and Its Significance in Economic Development:
Implications for Sub-Saharan Africa
Koichi FUJITA
(Professor, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan)
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract
In recent years India is experiencing a rapid economic growth, especially after the 1990s when India
started to liberalize its economy in a full scale. However, the author emphasizes the critical importance of
the preceded 1980s when Indian agricultural sector registered a high growth rate. The Green Revolution
in India started in the late 1960s and with its success India attained food self-sufficiency within a decade.
However, this first „wave‟ of the Green Revolution was largely confined in wheat crop and in northern
India such as Punjab, resulting in a limited contribution to overall economic development of the country.
On the contrary, the agricultural growth in the 1980s (the second „wave‟ of the Green Revolution)
involved almost all the crops including rice and covered the whole country, it enabled to raise rural
income and alleviate rural poverty substantially. Such a rise of rural India as a „market‟ for
non-agricultural products and services was an important pre-requisite for the rapid economic growth
based on non-agricultural sectors‟ development in India after the 1990s. The 1980s was a critical decade
for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa to make a great divergence in the economic development
thereafter. The implication for Sub-Saharan Africa is that raising income in rural areas through
productivity growth of the agricultural sector, especially the staple food sector, is essential for the success
of modern economic growth through industrialization.
Introduction
As one of the so-called BRICs, India is experiencing a rapid economic development and growth in
recent years, especially after the 1990s when India started to liberalize its economy in a full scale.
With no doubt, a series of economic liberalization policies implemented after 1991 in India largely
contributed to the accelerated growth in the country until the present day. However, this paper will
focus more on the role of the Indian agricultural sector in its history of overall economic
development process. To mention at first the major conclusion of the paper, we consider that
agricultural growth should be preceded the modern economic growth which is based on
industrialization. As described later in detail, we emphasize the existence of domestic market for