Article contents
The Impact of Agricultural Research in British India
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2009
Abstract
This paper attempts to answer three questions. How much did agricultural research contribute to agricultural growth in British India? Was its limited impact due to too little investment or inefficient allocation of research resources? Could more research have led to a “Green Revolution” in foodgrain production? Available data indicate that the impact of research was small and that more should have been invested in research. The evidence suggests, however, that larger investments in foodgrain research would not have resulted in a Green Revolution in British India.
- Type
- Papers Presented at the Forty-Third Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Economic History Association 1984
References
1 Heston, Alan, “A Further Critique of Historical Yields per Acre in India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review, 15 (1978);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Dewey, Clive. “Patwari and Zamindar: Subordinate Officials and the Reliability of India's Agricultural Statistics,” in The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India, ed. Dewey, C. and Hopkins, A. G. (London, 1978), pp. 280–314.Google Scholar
2 Blyn, George, Agricultural Trends in India, 1891–1947: Output, Availability, and Productivity (Philadelphia, 1966), p. 151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Punjab, Department of Agriculture, “Annual Report” (Lahore, 1944);Google ScholarBurns, Williams, Technological Possibilities of Agricultural Development in India (Lahore, 1944), p. 82;Google ScholarRamiah, K., Rice Breeding and Genetics (New Delhi, 1953), p. 291;Google ScholarSukhatme, P. V., Report on the Random Sample Survey for Estimating the Outturn of Wheat in the Punjab (New Delhi, 1945, 1946, and 1947).Google Scholar
4 Bagchi, A. K., Private Investment in India (London, 1972), p. 100.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., pp. 42, 47.
6 Ruttan, Vernon W., Agricultural Research Policy (Minneapolis, 1982), p. 242.Google Scholar
7 Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 42.Google Scholar
8 Pray, Carl, “The Economics of Agricultural Research in British Punjab and Pakistani Punjab, 1905–75” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1978), p. 347.Google Scholar
9 Burma was a province of British India until 1937 when it became a separate colony.Google Scholar
10 Butler, E. J., “The Second Annual Meeting of the Board of Agriculture,” The Agricultural Journal of India, 1, part 2 (1906), 141.Google Scholar
11 Howard, Albert, Crop Production in India (London, 1924), p. 112.Google Scholar
12 Ramiah, Rice Breeding, p. 291.Google Scholar
13 Dalrymple, Dana, Development and Spread of High-Yielding Varieties of Wheat and Rice in the Less Development Nations (Washington, D.C., 1978), pp. 38, 74.Google Scholar
14 Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 101.Google Scholar
15 Roberts, William and Faulkner, O. T., A Textbook of Punjab Agriculture (Lahore, 1921), p. 27.Google Scholar
16 Howard, Crop Production, p. 38.Google Scholar
17 Great Britain, Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, Report (London, 1927), p. 91.Google Scholar
18 Burns, Technological Possibilities.Google Scholar
19 Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 101.Google Scholar
20 Hayami, Yujiro and Ruttan, Vernon, Agricultural Development: An International Perspective (Baltimore, 1971), chap. 9, pp. 191–214.Google Scholar
21 Ramiah, Rice Breeding, p. 2.Google Scholar
22 Burns, Technological Possibilities, p. 62.Google Scholar
23 Alim, A., Review of Half a Century of Rice Research in East Pakistan (Dacca,1962);Google ScholarRamiah, Rice Breeding.Google Scholar
- 3
- Cited by