Breaking down the question
The command word is discuss, which asks for a rounded treatment of both the transformative and the disruptive effects of technology on Indian agriculture. The examiner wants you to move beyond a narrow account of higher yields and treat technology as a social force that reshapes class relations, gender roles and rural stratification.
Agrarian change here means shifts in the structure of agrarian society — in land relations, labour, class formation and the mode of cultivation. Technology covers the whole package of the Green Revolution and beyond: high-yielding variety seeds, chemical fertilisers, tractors, tube wells and, more recently, information and biotechnology. Read the question as an invitation to link a technical input to social consequences.
How to approach it
Anchor the answer in the Green Revolution as the classic instance of technology-driven agrarian change, then trace both its productive achievements and its social costs. Organise the body around themes — productivity, class differentiation, labour, region and ecology — rather than a chronological narrative.
Bring in sociological voices such as Utsa Patnaik on differentiation and the wider debate on the depeasantisation of the countryside. Close by noting newer technologies and the continuing unevenness of technological benefit.
Model answer
Technology has been the single most powerful driver of agrarian change in post-independence India, and the Green Revolution of the late 1960s is its defining episode. The adoption of high-yielding variety seeds, chemical fertilisers, assured irrigation and mechanisation transformed India from a food-deficit to a food-surplus nation and commercialised large parts of agriculture.
The social consequences, however, were uneven. Because the new technology was capital-intensive, it favoured farmers who already owned land, water and credit. Utsa Patnaik and others argued that this deepened the differentiation of the peasantry, enriching a class of capitalist farmers while marginal cultivators fell behind. Daniel Thorner had earlier mapped the agrarian class structure that this technology would reshape, sharpening the divide between owner-cultivators, tenants and landless labour.
Technology also altered labour relations. Mechanisation displaced some agricultural labourers even as new operations created seasonal demand, and the bargaining power of labour shifted. Gender relations were affected too, as certain mechanised tasks were reassigned to men while women were pushed into lower-paid work. Regionally, the benefits concentrated in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, widening inter-regional inequality with the rain-fed and eastern zones.
Ecologically, intensive input use brought falling water tables, soil degradation and dependence on markets for seeds and chemicals, contributing to agrarian distress in later decades. Newer technologies — biotechnology, tube-well irrigation and digital advisory services — continue this double-edged pattern, raising productivity while reproducing inequalities of access.
Technology has therefore been transformative but not neutral. It raised output and commercialised agriculture, yet it also restructured agrarian classes, displaced labour and deepened regional and ecological imbalances.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward candidates who treat technology sociologically — as a force that restructures class, labour and gender — rather than as a purely agronomic input. Naming the differentiation debate and citing scholars such as Patnaik and Thorner lifts an answer above description. The best scripts balance the achievements of the Green Revolution against its social and ecological costs and extend the discussion to newer technologies and continuing unevenness.