ABSTRACT

This chapter shows that the form of technology transfer undertaken at Pantnagar had foreseeable undesirable consequences, some of which are associated with the general process of large-scale commercialization of agriculture, others of which arise out of specific north Indian conditions. Pantnagar was chosen as the site of the new university because the U.P. government had a big state farm there of some 16,000 acres on tarai land that had been reclaimed in 1948, which the government agreed to hand over to the new agricultural university as its land grant. Many of the landholders in the tarai region, the laborers too come from outside the district to seek employment on the farms of the private cultivators, on the large farms in the area, and especially on the large university farm at Pantnagar. The casual laborers tend to create trouble in the labor force at Pantnagar by demanding high wages, lower work norms, better working conditions, and permanent employment on the farm.