The green revolution and the evolution of agricultural education and research in India

561 Singh The British ruled India for more than 200 years, first in the name of the East India Company and then in the name of the British Crown. In the early period, the East India Company’s main interest was to obtain necessary raw materials, such as cotton and jute, for manufacturing finished goods in the United Kingdom, and other commodities, such as tobacco, sugar, indigo, and opium, for trade. In the second half of the 18th century, the British East India Company introduced Gossypium hirsutum to obtain fine-quality longstapled cotton. Like most excolonies, India had only a limited research infrastructure and capacity to handle research on food crops (Yudelman 1996). There was hardly any emphasis on increased food production, although famine occurred frequently in one part of the country or another. In Bengal, there were more than 100 000 deaths in the famine of 1869. This kind of tragedy must have made the government think of doing something about the general development of agriculture, on which the livelihood of more than 90% of the population depended. It was at the beginning of 20th century that the government started to create an infrastructure for research, education, and agriculture extension in the country, at both state and national levels.