SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 23 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 5 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which of the following statements correctly defines the green revolution?

(a)It is a new strategy to use green colour for all purposes.
(b)It is a new strategy to increase the share of the forest.
(c)It is a new strategy in agriculture to produce food grains, especially wheat and rice.
(d)It is a new strategy to use only herbal products.

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The Green Revolution was an agricultural strategy — not a colour, and not a forestry programme.

From the mid-1960s India adopted high-yielding dwarf varieties of wheat, and later of rice.

They came as a package: chemical fertiliser, pesticides, assured irrigation, and support such as minimum support prices and farm credit.

Foodgrain output, wheat above all, rose sharply, and the country moved out of dependence on imported grain. Option (c) states exactly that.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
It is a new strategy to use green colour for all purposes. — 'Green' here is a metaphor for agriculture. No programme was ever about the use of the colour itself.
(b)
It is a new strategy to increase the share of the forest. — Raising forest cover is afforestation, handled by programmes such as social forestry. The Green Revolution did the opposite of sparing land — it pushed existing cultivated land harder.
(d)
It is a new strategy to use only herbal products. — The strategy depended on chemical fertiliser and pesticides. A switch to herbal products is close to its opposite.

Concept

India's foodgrain shortage in the mid-1960s, worsened by successive droughts, forced a shift from extending the cultivated area to raising the yield.

The package combined seed, fertiliser, water and price support. It worked fastest where irrigation already existed — Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh — and in wheat more than in rice.

Norman Borlaug's dwarf wheat underpinned the seed side and M.S. Swaminathan led the Indian programme. The phrase 'Green Revolution' was coined by the American administrator William Gaud in 1968.

The gains were real but uneven. Pulses, coarse cereals and the rain-fed east saw little of them, and regional inequality, groundwater depletion and soil health are the standing criticisms.

Key facts

The Green Revolution began in India in the mid-1960s with high-yielding dwarf varieties of wheat, later extended to rice.
Its early gains concentrated in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, and in wheat more than rice.
M.S. Swaminathan is identified with the Indian programme and Norman Borlaug with the dwarf wheat behind it.
White Revolution refers to milk, Blue Revolution to fisheries and Yellow Revolution to oilseeds.

Study next

Operation Flood and the White Revolution under Verghese KurienMinimum support price, procurement and the public distribution systemThe colour revolutions in Indian agriculture and what each covers

Common traps

Taking 'green' literally and choosing the forest option.
Assuming the Green Revolution covered all crops and all regions equally. Pulses, coarse cereals and eastern India were largely left out.

Either as a definition to identify, as here, or as a colour-to-sector match. Learn the colours as a set, and the Green Revolution's inputs as a package.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.