What are the major factors responsible for making rice-wheat system a success? In spite of this success how has this system become bane in India?

The rice-wheat cropping system, cultivated on over 10 million hectares across the Indo-Gangetic plains, was the engine of India's food self-sufficiency. Yet the very intensity that made it a success has turned it into an ecological and economic liability.

Factors behind its success

• Green Revolution package: High-yielding dwarf varieties of wheat and rice with responsive fertiliser use.
• Assured irrigation from canals and tube-wells in Punjab, Haryana and western UP.
• Policy support: Minimum Support Price, assured procurement, subsidised power, fertiliser and credit.
• Suitable alluvial soils and institutional research and extension.

How it became a bane

• Groundwater depletion: Water-guzzling paddy in a semi-arid belt has sunk water tables alarmingly in Punjab-Haryana.
• Soil degradation: Nutrient mining, declining micronutrients, salinity and falling productivity.
• Stubble burning: Paddy-residue burning causes severe air pollution in the Delhi-NCR winter.
• Monoculture and MSP distortion: Skewed incentives crowd out pulses, oilseeds and millets, hurting nutrition and dietary diversity.
• Rising input costs, methane emissions and stagnating farmer incomes.

Sustaining the plains now requires crop diversification (pulses, oilseeds, maize, millets), micro-irrigation, direct-seeded rice, and rationalised MSP and power incentives — as recommended for shifting the region towards a more sustainable cropping pattern.