This book provides a comprehensive historical account of agricultural development in independent India. It studies concerns regarding food shortages in the years immediately after independence, covers the debates over the introduction of Green Revolution technology, and examines the knowledge network that facilitated the introduction of new seeds.

The book presents a critical examination of agricultural modernisation-its technoscientific practices, manpower, and institutions-and provides deeper insights into how it shaped the rural economy, the relationships it maintained with agricultural sciences, and the extensive control it sought to exert over the environment. It examines multiple facets of food crop research, from sites of knowledge production, transnational knowledge networks, and the evolution of the research community, to the challenges faced by Indian agricultural scientists.

An important contribution, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of South Asian Studies, agriculture, food security, historians of science and technology, environmental studies, developmental studies, agrarian studies, modern Indian history, and the Cold War.

Madhumita Saha is Associate Professor of History at Amity University, India. Her research focuses on the history of science and technology, agriculture, and environmental history in modern India. She has been a Fulbright Doctoral Fellow and PACHS Dissertation Writing Fellow. She is currently working on the history of agricultural science in India at the juncture of colonialism and rising nationalism.