How Indian agriculture has been transformed from food scarcity to food surplus level? Explain the various government policies implemented for diversification of Indian agriculture.

The turnaround

India produced about 51 million tonnes of foodgrain in 1950-51 for 36 crore people and imported under PL-480 to avoid famine. It now produces well over 330 million tonnes for 140 crore people, holds buffer stocks routinely above norms, distributes free or subsidised grain to around 80 crore beneficiaries under the NFSA, and exports rice. That is the transition the question names.

How it happened

• Institutional foundations, 1950s and 1960s. Zamindari abolition, ICAR reorganisation, the state agricultural university system, and the creation of the Food Corporation of India and the Agricultural Prices Commission in 1965 — the assured-price and assured-procurement machinery without which no yield technology would have been adopted.
• The Green Revolution, from 1966-67. Norman Borlaug's semi-dwarf wheat varieties, adapted by M. S. Swaminathan and colleagues, combined with assured irrigation, chemical fertiliser, and MSP-backed procurement in Punjab, Haryana and western UP. Wheat output roughly tripled within a decade.
• Extension beyond wheat. Rice varieties, the eastern India rice initiative, and later hybrid maize; alongside Operation Flood, which made India the largest milk producer, and the Blue Revolution in fisheries.
• Second-generation gains. Bt cotton from 2002, horticulture missions, higher seed replacement rates, micro-irrigation and mechanisation.

The cost of the model

Success was purchased with a specific distortion: MSP and assured procurement concentrated on rice and wheat, free or near-free power pumped groundwater, and subsidised urea skewed nutrient ratios. The result is the rice-wheat lock-in, falling water tables in the very states that fed the country, and stubble burning as a rotation artefact. Diversification policy exists to unwind exactly this.

Diversification policies

• Crop Diversification Programme under RKVY, launched in the original Green Revolution states to shift area from water-intensive paddy to pulses, oilseeds, maize and agroforestry.
• National Food Security Mission pulse and nutri-cereal components, and the National Mission on Edible Oils - Oil Palm to cut import dependence.
• Horticulture: MIDH, and the Cluster Development Programme linking production clusters to processing and export.
• Price and procurement: PM-AASHA with Price Support, Price Deficiency Payment and Private Procurement Stockist schemes, intended to extend price assurance beyond cereals — the necessary condition for any diversification to be rational for a farmer.
• Allied sectors: Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund, the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana for fisheries, National Beekeeping and Honey Mission, and bamboo under the National Bamboo Mission.
• Water: PMKSY and Per Drop More Crop, which changes the economics of non-paddy crops.
• Structural: the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund for post-harvest assets, 10,000 FPOs for aggregation, and Millets promotion following the International Year of Millets.
• Sustainability: the National Mission on Natural Farming and Soil Health Cards to correct nutrient imbalance.

Why diversification has been slow

• Assured procurement still effectively covers rice and wheat, so switching crops means switching from a guaranteed buyer to a volatile market.
• Free power and cheap urea keep the paddy economics attractive despite groundwater depletion.
• Pulses and oilseeds are riskier — more pest-prone, more price-volatile, and import competition caps the upside.
• Post-harvest infrastructure for perishables is thin, so horticulture diversification carries higher loss risk.
• Detail on the persistence of the lock-in is in our note on crop diversification.

Conclusion

India moved from scarcity to surplus through a package of technology, assured price and assured procurement, and the same package now blocks diversification. The lever is not exhortation but price assurance: diversification will follow when a farmer growing pulses or millets faces the same certainty of sale that a paddy grower does.