019, Exhibition Hall, School of Engineering and Applied Science
“We need a change in mindset from ‘We do not have enough’ to ‘How do we make the most efficient use of what we have?’” said Harish Damodaran, National Rural Affairs and Agriculture Editor at the Indian Express and Senior Visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He was in conversation with Jeemol Unni, Professor in Economics at Amrut Mody School of Management at The Nalanda discussing the move from Green Revolution 1.0 to Green Revolution 2.0 in India.
Mr Damodaran spoke about the first Green Revolution of India, highlighting its genesis and impact as tracked by him. He said, “It helped make food more widely accessible in India and other parts of the world. However, the next green revolution will be very different. The renewed focus on Climate Change will give rise to alternative ways of gaining the same yield with lesser usage of fertilisers containing urea. Technology will be significant to the success of Green Revolution 2.0.”
Harish Damodaran is the National Rural Affairs and Agriculture Editor of The Indian Express and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. A journalist with over three decades of experience as a reporter and editorial analyst, Damodaran has previously also worked with the Press Trust of India and The Hindu Business Line (1994-2014). He is also the author of two books. The first book 'India's New Capitalists: Caste, Business and Industry in a Modern Nation' (Palgrave Macmillan/Hachette) looked at the social roots and ethnic evolution of India's business class. It won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence inJournalism Award under the Books (Non-Fiction) Category. The second book 'Broke to Breakthrough: The Rise of India's Largest Private Dairy Company' is a case study documentation of the Chennai-based Hatsun Agro Product Ltd and its founder R.G. Chandramogan. It won the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize for 2022. Damodaran has also been a Fellow of the New India Foundation, Bangalore (2004) and a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania (Spring 2008).
Jeemol Unni is a Professor of Economics at Amrut Mody School of Management, Ahmedabad University. In past, she was the Director of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) and RBI Chair Professor of Economics at IRMA. Currently Elected President, 63rd Labour Economics Conference, Indian Society of Labour Economics, 2023. She is a specialist in Labour economics. Her special research focus in the areas of rural and urban labour markets is on the informalisation of labour and production systems and the gender implications of this process. She is currently on the Board of Governors of several educational institutions in India. She is on the Editorial Board of the Indian Journal of Labour Economics and the Journal of Development Policy and Practice.
