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THE VIOLENCE OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics. By Vandana Shiva. London (U.K.) Zed Books (distributed in N. America by Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey). 1991. 264 pp. (Maps, tables.) US$17.50/L10.95, paper. ISBN 0-86232-965-5.
THE AUTHOR argues that the violence in Punjab has been caused by the Green Revolution, also identified as "the American paradigm of agriculture," imposed on India as a condition of receiving aid (p. 32).
After two decades of the Green Revolution, Punjab is...riddled with discontent and violence. Instead of abundance, Punjab has been left with diseased soils, pest-infested crops, waterlogged deserts and indebted and discontented farmers (p. 19).
The ecological and ethnic crisis in Punjab can be viewed as arising from a basic and unresolved conflict between the demands of diversity, decentralization and democracy on the one hand, and the demands of uniformity, centralisation, and militarisation on the other. Control over nature and control over people were...