World: THE HOPE OF CONQUERING HUNGER

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The evidence of the revolution is everywhere. A once brown and arid district of Haryana state is now dotted with oases of green where farmers have bought a diesel or electric pump and are no longer at the mercy of uncertain monsoon rains. Beside many a newly built brick pump shed sits the remains of the charsia. It is an ancient device, similar to a Persian waterwheel, by which teams of yoked bullocks are used to raise and lower the well's leather bucket. Indian farmers are gradually discovering that the charsia is a luxury they cannot afford. It costs a farmer $19.40 to run a charsia and takes him four days to irrigate a single acre with one. A diesel pump can irrigate two acres a day for $3.64, and an electric pump can do the same job in twelve hours for $2.37. The boom in pumps has produced a shortage in power; in some districts in the countryside, farmers must irrigate at night because there is not enough electricity to go around in the daytime. "I never get any sleep any more," one farmer grumbled. "At night I am busy irrigating." All across India, farmers who until three or four years ago had scarcely seen an electric light are chattering about horsepower and voltage ratings. "So far India has known only the problems of an underdeveloped economy," a Western diplomat remarked in New Delhi last week. "Very soon she may be experiencing the problems of affluence."

Black Market. Fatter granaries have indeed brought farmers a new affluence, and have led many village shopkeepers to stock toothbrushes, cigarettes and even bicycles and sewing machines for the first time. A black market in certain seeds is thriving. A land boom is under way, and in some areas land prices have risen 600 percent within five years. In many villages, the once-powerful moneylender, beset by competition from both cooperatives and government agencies, is turning to land speculation himself. Significantly, the green revolution seems to be reversing the migration of peasants to cities and towns. Already a few clerks and a great many unskilled workers have quit their jobs and returned to the land. If he does well, a farmer can earn over $1,300 a year, twice a clerk's wage.

Despite the obvious progress, government officials are guarded in their enthusiasm, lest it slow the momentum of the new agricultural programs as well as the government's massive educational and medical efforts to reduce the birth rate. "I would like to caution against too much talk of an agricultural revolution," the President of India, Dr. Zakir Husain, told his countrymen last weekend. "We are not yet free from the vagaries of monsoons. There are too many imponderables."