Innovations and Revolutions in Indian Agriculture: A Review

With a population of 1.35 billion to feed in 2018, innovations in Indian agriculture all along the value chains are critical to develop sustainable, productive and profitable agriculture. In this brief paper, focus is laid on innovations in various production technologies, farming practices, policies and institutional engineering that had significant impact in raising production and have been termed as revolutionary. For instance, Green Revolution is identified with significant changes in production of wheat and rice; White Revolution in milk; Blue Revolution in fisheries; Red Revolution in poultry meat and eggs; Golden Revolution in fruits and vegetables; Gene Revolution in cotton. The paper not only looks at these innovations and their impact in the past, but also peeps into innovations that are currently unfolding in other inputs in production processes such as in water use (irrigation), fertilizers usage, maintaining soil health, using farm machinery optimally in a small holder dominated agriculture. The key message of this paper is what can be achieved with small holders when innovations that are science based and are backed by right policies, are adopted.