Abstract:
How can we tell the history of the green revolution which is not a narrative of a mere Cold War era outreach for agrarian modernization among postcolonial nations or an isolated history of colonial and postcolonial development on the Indian subcontinent? The history of this important palimpsest can be best narrated by marking the agrarian continuities between colonial and post-colonial India. This talk will tell this history in a singular slice of the green revolution zone – the sub-Himalayan Tarai that was an inscrutable land infested with grasslands, wild animals, marshes and malaria in the colonial era. The clearing of this land to settle refugees, the establishment of India’s first agricultural university at Pantnagar, and its reception of HYV seeds turned the area into flatbeds of extractive green revolution farming. My talk will tell a technological history of the green revolution to lay bare the social and ecological conflicts at the heart of the process of agrarian modernization. A focus on technology and its material form and on techno-politics, i.e., the politics that technology enabled, helps understand the historical process that led to the onset of high yield agriculture in the region and strengthened a popular movement for autonomy that culminated in the birth of the state of Uttarakhand.
About the Speaker:
Prakash Kumar is Associate Professor of South Asian history at Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in the history of science, agricultural history, development studies, and global history. His first book, Indigo Plantations and Science in Colonial India was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. His next book on the technological history of the green revolution will also be published by CUP in 2025. He is currently working on the history of public health and disease in colonial and post-colonial India.