A well -thought out Meghalaya Government decision of 2014 declaring that Meghalaya as a state would go organic and do away with chemical fertilisers and pesticides primarily because of the health concerns arising out of the unregulated use of such chemicals by uneducated farmers, is today reversed by the MDA Government. The Green Revolution promoted by Dr MS Swaminathan in the 1960s was meant primarily to overcome India’s food production deficit and its dependence on food grain imports.The father of the Green Revolution was Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, the American plant breeder and humanitarian. This was a concentrated effort in traditional plant breeding. New strains of corn, rice and wheat, developed over some 20 years of painstaking cross-pollination, were introduced in the third world, along with chemical fertilizers. In India the Green Revolution began in the 1960s during which agriculture was converted into a modern industrial system by the adoption of technology, such as the use of high yielding variety (HYV) of seeds, mechanised farm tools, irrigation facilities, pesticides and fertilizers. Dr Swaminathan, an agricultural scientist relied heavily on the methods initiated by Norman E Borlaug which leveraged agricultural research and technology to increase agricultural productivity in the developing world.
Under Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri the Green Revolution in India started in 1968, leading to an increase in food grain production, especially in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Some of the major milestones in this endeavour were the development of high-yielding varieties of wheat which were also pest-resistant. However, the heavy use of chemicals had a long terms effect both on human health and on the environment, primarily the soil quality. Environmentalists like Vandana Shiva have analysed the long-term impacts of the Green Revolution and have come up with evidence-based studies that showed greater environmental, financial and sociological problems like droughts, rural indebtedness and farmer suicides. Reports have also shown soil deterioration from the use of chemicals which has led to the collapse of agricultural systems in many regions of the country, and negatively affected the farmers, food and water supply.
The Congress-led Government under Dr Mukul Sangma rightly decided that it was time to reduce the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides when it was scientifically proven that much of water run-off from agricultural fields landed up in water catchments that were then supplied to homes across the state. A medical doctor by profession Dr Mukul Sangma spoke from a position of safe-guarding public health. He always maintained that soil health was integral to human health because, “we are what we eat.” Vegetables absorb chemicals from the soil humans ingest that into their systems leading to large scale affliction by cancer etc. If the policy to reduce chemical fertilisers is to be reversed by the State of Meghalaya it has to be done after meaningful discussion in the Assembly and cannot arbitrarily be reversed by the Government with an eye on appeasing a section of farmers only.
