Overview
Nitrogen Balance and Nitrogen Outflow in Indian Agriculture
Among the factors associated with this increase are the expansion of irrigation and the increased application of bio-chemical inputs, particularly chemical fertilizers. It is noteworthy that 16 percent of world nitrogen fertilizer use takes place in India, the largest consumption in the world after China.
Although chemical fertilizer was essential for India’s Green Revolution, it has the potential to cause pollution in groundwater and river water in agricultural areas. According to our estimation of nitrogen balance in farmland in India, potential nitrogen load to the environment from farmland has increased rapidly after the 1980s, especially in the States in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Scientific papers published to evaluate groundwater quality for domestic uses show nitrogen concentrations exceeding drinking water standards in many sites.
Further development of Indian agriculture cannot neglect the issue of the optimum use of nitrogen as part of a more general concern for environmental sustainability. The term “optimum use” is particularly important, given the importance of agriculture for food security in general and for the income and livelihoods of farmers, especially poor and marginal farmers.
Agricultural productivity and production in India grew steadily in the post-green revolution period. Public institutions of agricultural research and education, and the community of agricultural scientists, were at the forefront of the transformation of Indian agriculture. This facet of agricultural development is somewhat recognised in scholarship. However, there has been limited work on the evolution of agricultural science and its adoption in actual production in independent India from the perspective of the history of knowledge. The history of the science and the practice of agricultural production has not been adequately studied in the context of the global flow of knowledge and the contemporary economic and political history. It is this gap in scholarship that the oral histories project aims to fill.
As part of the project, the Foundation, in collaboration with the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), organised an event titled “Voices from the Lab and the Field: Oral Histories of Agrarian Change” on September 24, 2025, at BIC, Bengaluru. The event explored the agricultural transformations of the 1960s, drawing on oral histories from agricultural science and agrarian movements in India. This discussion is part of the 69th edition of the Archives Public Lecture Series, which features explorations in and around the NCBS archives. The speakers for the event were Parvathi Menon, Former Resident Editor of The Hindu, Bengaluru, and Sandipan Baksi, Director at the Foundation for Agrarian Studies.
Know more about the event here.
