Managing Sustainable Transitions in Agriculture: Beyond Productivity and Populism in India

Abstract

This article reviews global sustainability transitions literature, highlighting the lack of attention to agriculture. This article points to the neglect of agriculture in global sustainability transition studies. India’s Green Revolution model—high external inputs, water-intensive crops and technocratic extension—now faces ecological, economic and epistemic limits. The dominant policy logic of ‘productivity and populism’ have either exacerbated the problem or been woefully inadequate to enable a transition towards sustainable models. Synthesising recent Indian scholarship and practitioner evidence, we show why transitions must be understood as socially negotiated, context-specific processes shaped by power, knowledge and institutions—not as purely technological shifts. The article contributes to newer framing on sustainability transitions in agriculture, even as it invites scholars interested in rural and agrarian studies and rural management to engage with transition frames more explicitly. The article presents a research agenda for the co-production of knowledge with farmers, civil society and the academia and for policies and market infrastructure that supports diversified smallholder systems. Newer research needs to explore landscape-level changes and an engagement with metrics beyond productivity that track soil health, biodiversity, water/ energy balances, nutrition and care work.