Indian agriculture is at a crossroads. To make agriculture viable and profitable, the thrust should be to improve the situation of poor farmers and not just powerful farmers owning hundreds of hectares, in whose fields the so-called green revolution took place. The green revolution promised much. But today it's caught up in a cloud of environmental controversies, with fertile land turning barren due to chemical overuse, drying aquifers and vanishing biodiversity. The keyword today is "gene revolution'. But even here, poor farmers stand to suffer.

A memorandum of understanding (mou) on knowledge initiative (see