Question

Who wrote the book “Violence of Green Revolution”?
(a) Vandana Shiva
(b) Sheila Dikshit
(c) Menaka Gandhi
(d) Arundhati Roy

Answer 1

Hint: ‘Green Revolution’ was an initiative responsible for our country to not merely meet the national requirements in food production but also helped us even to export it. This author received the Right Livelihood Award in 1993, which is regarded as an "Alternative Nobel Prize".

Complete answer:
The book “Violence of Green Revolution” was written by Vandana Shiva. To know what may be the violence of the Green revolution, we must first know what is the green revolution.
After India’s independence, one of the major challenges facing the country was that of producing enough food for the increasing population. As only limited land is fit to carry out cultivation, India has to strive to increase yields per unit area from existing agricultural land. The development of several high yielding and disease-resistant varieties of wheat, maize and rice in the mid-1960s, as a result of various plant breeding techniques led to a dramatic increase in food production in our country. This phase is often referred to as the ‘Green Revolution’.
‘Plant breeding’ is the purposeful alteration of plant species to create desired plant types that are better suited for cultivation, give better yields and are disease resistant.
This noble cause as a source of violence:
- In the wake of the green revolution, the usage of inorganic fertilisers and pesticides has increased manifold for increasing crop production. Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc., are being increasingly used. These incidentally, are also toxic to harmless organisms, that are important for the soil ecosystem.
- Increasing amounts of chemical fertilisers can increase artificial eutrophication affecting aquatic life.
- Waterlogging and soil salinity are some of the other problems that have come in the wake of the
Green Revolution.
- Vandana Shiva in her book “Violence of Green Revolution” examined these impacts of the Green Revolution on the breadbasket of India and suggested various organic and political solutions to it. So, the correct answer is, ‘Vandana Shiva’.

Note:
- Irrigation without proper drainage of water leads to waterlogging in the soil. Besides affecting the crops, waterlogging also draws salt to the surface of the ground. This increased salt content is very harmful to the growth of crops and is extremely damaging to agriculture.
- M.S. Swaminathan initiated a collaboration with Norman Borlaug, which resulted in the ‘Green Revolution’ by introducing Mexican varieties of wheat in India.