Climate Change and the ‘New Green Revolution’ in India | SOAS University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 20/03/2019

Climate Change and the ‘New Green Revolution’ in India was a seminar given by Marcus Taylor (Queen’s University, Canada) at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London on 26 February 2019. Find out more at http://bit.ly/2TmZZWN

Rural India is repeatedly argued to be in the midst of a social crisis as manifested in indicators of household indebtedness, farmer suicides, poor nutrition and food insecurity. Such issues are amplified in the context of stark environmental challenges, including groundwater depletion, land degradation and climate change-induced droughts and floods. While mass protests have led the national government to promise a doubling of farmer incomes by 2023, the primary means to address this goal has been to reaffirm technology-based solutions. These are aimed to promote a ‘New Green Revolution’ that can raise yields and increase incomes while building 'climate resilience'. Based on fieldwork conducted on three new agricultural technologies across three distinct regions of south India, this talk discusses both the possibilities and limits to such a strategy. It highlights why technology-centred responses to rural distress, while undoubtedly benefiting some social classes, frequently reinforce the very social polarisation that they are meant to resolve.

Marcus Taylor is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global Development Studies and School of Environmental Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. He researches and teaches on the political ecology of development, with a focus on agriculture, labour and livelihoods. His recent books include The Political Ecology of Climate Change Adaptation (Routledge, 2015) and Global Labour Studies (with Sébastien Rioux, Polity Press, 2018). He is currently completing a manuscript entitled Climate-smart Agriculture: A Critical Introduction (Routledge).