Published on January 25, 2025 , farmntrade

The 1952 Republic Day festivities included a component honoring the farmers and their contributions to the nation. Nehru proposed that a portion of the parade display could depict ‘the Grow-More-Food campaign’ with a tableau representing an abundance of food, and that farmers who won state competitions for agricultural production should be invited to Delhi to participate in the parade at the gov’t’s expense. “Imagining the Indian Nation: The Design of Gandhi’s Dandi March and Nehru’s Republic Day Parade,” by Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan.

The background of the campaign

When the Second World War broke out, India’s food economy was severely stressed; it was cut off from the worldwide food markets on which it had come to rely. Due to the flow of war materials, transportation networks were unable to provide food to areas where there was hoarding.

The Bengal Famine

The true calamity began in March 1942, when the Japanese conquered Burma. Since India and Burma split in 1937, India has imported several million tonnes of rice annually from its eastern neighbour. Upon the Japanese conquest of Burma, this resource was gone quickly. In Bengal, rice crops were destroyed in the same year by a cyclone and a disease. The nation experienced both natural and manmade disasters.

Although the British government attempted to control prices and transfer food from surplus to deficit areas, numerous provinces prohibited food exports, making it impossible to prevent grain hoarding or distribution.

1943’s Bengal Famine was one of the greatest man-made tragedies of the 20th century, caused by the British government’s incompetence. And millions died as a result of the calamity.

The first attempt

In the same year, the Grow More Food Program was created. It made an effort to encourage intensive and extensive agriculture. According to one account, the inaugural Grow More Food programme was ‘improvised in haste and under the pressure of pressing circumstances, it had to be constructed with the information that was readily accessible and with the skilled persons and materials that could be quickly assembled.’

Despite more than two years of “expanding cultivation, emergency irrigation works, manure schemes, seed distribution, and other programmes,” the administration was unable to produce an estimate of the increase in production brought about by the Grow More Food campaign at the end of the war.

The campaign after Indian Independence

The Government of India decided to stop the imports of additional food grains after 1951 in order to save its precious foreign reserves from depletion. The government also committed to stepping up efforts to increase domestic food production.

In an address to the nation, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said,’ If we do not produce enough food for our country, we become dependent upon other countries, and in a matter like food we cannot afford to be dependent.’

The second Campaign

The Campaign was designed according to the ways the Congress party knew best. ‘t was a nation-wide popular movement in which the people were to be marched into the battle for national self-sufficiency.’

Pandit Nehru said,’ It is a war in which every citizen can be a soldier and can serve his or her country.’