ABSTRACT
Much of the existing stock of wisdom concerning the origins and consequences of agricultural modernization has been derived from the experience of the Green Revolution. The agricultural research system has been focused on neither the needs of the poor consumer nor the needs of the poor subsistence farmer. The Green Revolution was an excellent model but specific to the set of constraints and potential of a few key agricultural districts. The success in agriculture in India in the 1960s demonstrated that the problems of agricultural production in south Asia were tractable, given adequate investment in technology and infrastructure. The Green Revolution may have begun to shed some light on the process of institutional innovation, but neither political scientists nor sociologists possess an adequate analytical model for researching the institutional constraints. The Green Revolution revealed how much a responsive agricultural sector depended on public investment in transportation, marketing facilities, and water control.
