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In 1966, India was besieged on another front, almost an year after the war with Pakistan: daunting food insecurity, worsened by the failure of monsoons. With food grain imports, mainly from the US, spiralling to 10 million tonne, India was forced into a ship-to-mouth existence.  India imported 18,000 tonne of wheat seed from Mexico, which turned self-sufficient in wheat production by the late ’50s by growing dwarf, high-yielding varieties of the grain. 2.5 lakh bags of 10 kg each were transported by road to Punjab and distributed before the Rabi season of 1967. Two Spanish varieties, Lermarojo and Sanavra-64, were sown across the state.

Market arrivals leapfrogged from three lakh tonne to 16 lakh tonne in April 1968 as farmers reaped a bumper crop of wheat. The schools were being shut down so that their buildings could be used to store the produce before distribution to food grain deficit states. The green revolution marked the deliverance from food imports and Punjab’s socio-economic transformation, from an impoverished state to the nation’s food basket.

With the import of IR-8, seeds imported from the Manila-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) that raised the paddy yield from one tonne per hectare to four tonne, by 1969, the revolution had extended to rice. Punjab became a state where the green revolution saw massive economic growth.

Agriculture still accounts for one-third of the state GDP and the state leads the world, producing about 10 tonne of wheat and paddy per hectare in a year. The tide turned in the mid-’80s with stagnant productivity, rising expenses and declining net incomes

 The water guzzling paddy, now grown on a whopping 66 lakh acres, has led to an ecological imbalance, with the ground water table falling by one metre annually in some of the most fertile zones of the state. Yet, the Punjab peasant is still imbued with a deep-rooted craving for reinventing farming. A new crop of enterprising farmers has scripted trailblazing success stories by making a break from traditional crops to low-volume and high-value crops.  By combining innovative farming practices with ingenious improvisation and hands-on marketing, farmers have been reaping rich profits and plaudits in the state’s backwaters where most farmers are in heavy debt due to the repeated failure of cotton crop

A small farmer, who owns five acres of land on which he grows maize and ribbed gourd. Now, it is in three holds in Babaguda village in the northern suburbs of Hyderabad but he wants to consolidate them into one plot which would be easier to cultivate. Under the Andhra Pradesh Government’s e-governance system, which involves using computers for registry of land, has made his task easier is the ease of verification of land records and registry

Referred to as, Computer-Aided Administration of Registration Department CARD, this initiative has radically changed the way the subregistrar’s offices (SROs) throughout the state deal with registry of land.  At any of the 387 SROs, a citizen can register a document for a nominal fee, provided it pertains to the geographical domain of that office. Now, one can present the papers, go shopping to the local market and return after four hours to collect the final document and go home.

During the days registry was done manually, one had to make at least two trips, with a break of three to four days, to get a sale deed registered. Any other buyer or seller can now verify the ownership of the land to be bought by applying for an encumbrance certificate that gives all the necessary information

With the introduction of CARD, the certificate can be obtained in a couple of hours. A week time was required under the manual system.  CARD has made access to records simpler, making life easier for villagers