An Essential Pre-Requisite for Second Green Revolution in India.

Abstract

The first green revolution in India ensured food security, whereas the second green revolution conceptualized by the Government of India is aimed at providing livelihood security to the poor farmers in addition to ensuring food security for all. In such an endeavour, taking stock ofour natural resources (notwithstanding the strategies for imminent climate change phenomena) is of utmost importance for the sake of natural resource-based planning. India has enormous wealth of natural resources which includes the soil and land on which depends our survival. However, their judicious use and on a sustained basis is lacking. Although the green revolution from 1967 to 1978 has helped us to overcome poverty on one hand, it has deteriorated the quality of our soil and land resources on the other as evidenced by lesser enhancement in the productivity of crops. Hence on our march towards the second green revolution, it is imperative that we sustain our resources under intensive land use and fast economic development under the backdrop of the degradation status and changing trends of various management and environment systems. Moreover, in view of the dwindling productivity, these assessments would help to develop strategies for management of land and soil, prevention of land degradation, soil information system for land use planning, climate change modeling and ecological disaster management essential for manuscripting another green revolution. Thus the present paper would attempt to focus on discussing the soil and land quality in the two important regions namely, the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) and the Black Soils Region (BSR). About 200 geo-referenced samples from each of the IGP and BSR were collected for the study. Standard methods were followed for the analysis of various soil physical and chemical parameters. Standard methods were also followed for calculation of soil quality index using principal component analysis. The land quality index (LQI) was calculated using matrix and with the help of analltical hierarchical process (AHP). The results were depicted in the form of maps which showed that most parts of Bihar and West Bengal had better soil and land quality as compared to the western states of the IGP. In the BSR, Chhattisgarh, eastern parts of sub-humid Madhya Pradesh and Maharashta had higher soil and land quality compared to its semi-arid and arid parts.