Which one of the following was not a part of the strategies followed by the Government of India to increase food grain production in India immediately after Independence?

Immediately after Independence, the Indian government faced severe food shortages exacerbated by the partition, which saw one-third of irrigated land go to Pakistan. To address this, the immediate strategy focused on three pillars: switching from cash crops to food crops, intensification of cropping on existing land, and expanding the cultivated area by bringing fallow and cultivable waste under the plough . These measures were primarily extensification and land-use shifts. In contrast, the use of High-Yielding Varieties (HYV) seeds was not part of the 'immediate' post-independence strategy. HYV seeds and the associated 'package technology' of the Green Revolution were only introduced in the mid-1960s [3]. Prior to this period, farmers relied on traditional seeds with lower yields that required fewer chemical inputs [2]. Therefore, HYV seeds represent a later phase of agricultural development rather than the immediate post-1947 response.

Sources

1. [2] INDIA PEOPLE AND ECONOMY, TEXTBOOK IN GEOGRAPHY FOR CLASS XII (NCERT 2025 ed.) > Chapter 3: Land Resources and Agriculture > Agricultural Development in India > p. 36
2. [3] INDIA PEOPLE AND ECONOMY, TEXTBOOK IN GEOGRAPHY FOR CLASS XII (NCERT 2025 ed.) > Chapter 3: Land Resources and Agriculture > Agricultural Development in India > p. 34