The green revolution and poverty: a theoretical and empirical examination of the relation between technology and society

The paper deals with the effects of the green revolution (GR) technology on poverty both conceptually and empirically. It provides a brief overview of the GR debate and then presents a `slice' of this debate in detail - in particular, Lipton's and others' views on the supposed positive and negative benefits of the GR for the poor. The paper then provides a provocative critique of this literature for its underlying neo-Malthusianism of a specific type, for ignoring class issues in the analysis of the GR-poverty relation, and for treating this relation as a necessary relation. It subsequently presents an alternative statement on the GR-poverty issue, arguing that it is class relations that set limit within which population and technology work and affect poverty and that the GR-poverty relation is a contingent one, rather than necessary. In the light of the paper's criticisms and the alternative view it provides, a statistical analysis of the relation between the GR and the population factor on the one hand and poverty level and poverty reduction on the other in India is performed. This analysis is generally consistent with the paper's critique of the Liptonian framework.