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When the 'green revolution' began in Punjab in 1964, Punjab sprang to the front rank of Indian agricultural production. But since about 2000, it has been increasingly clear that the technology is leading to an encompassing ecological disaster. The reason for the change lies in the organizational framework. Born in a spirit of flexible egalitarian democracy, it is now dominated by rigid central authoritarianism that forces farmers to grow one crop rotation for one buyer: wheat and rice for the Food Corporation of India. The SGPC and Akali Dal have had an important role in this transformation. This describes it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India as a whole is not closing its development gap with the West. Economic growth in Punjab exceeded that of the rest of India during the period of the Green Revolution. Since then it has dropped to less than the national average. The most direct reason is that increasingly intensive applicat ion of the technologies of the Green Revolution has become ecologically and economically unsustainable. The deeper reason is that the governmental mechanisms at the national and state levels that were used in introducing these technologies in 1965 are still in place and prevent the development of alternatives. In the West, particularly the United States, the Constitution and laws support an enormous number of organizations that can engage in activities for the public good and support themselves by taxes or compulsory fees. The Constitution and laws of India restrict this power mainly to the central government and the states. This article describes the features of the Indian political system that do this, how the Punjab government used them effectively to create the Green Revolution, and how they have been perpetuated and have prevented the development of alternative productive strategies since. It concludes with a description of how the Punjab government might empower the people of Punjab to engage in a much wider range of productive activities even without change in the constitutional set-up at the national level, although it would be better to install such changes at the national level as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]