Good Question. It is important to understand that GR was n…

Good Question.
It is important to understand that GR was not specifically meant for Pb ONLY and was attempted in other parts of country. Important to know that three things played important role
1. British Canal system.
2. Land holdings size
3. Nature of cultivating population.

Always had the question \u201cwhy punjab was chosen for GR and not UP/MO\u201d. Thanks for touching base.
Regarding Pepsico, further reading suggests it was forced into food processing by GOI to allow pepsi to sell colas. Hence once markets opened after \u201891, they bailed out. You missed it.
— Rahul Duggal \U0001f426 (@rahulduggal18) December 28, 2020

Contrary to what most people think about GR and that it suddenly took place in 1960, the truth is that country had to build on to actually enable something of the scale of GR. The work had started from 1939 onwards.

So we could have had GR in 1950s itself, an intensive program was launched in 1952 with Ford funding that identified 5,50,000 villages in India over Pb, UP, Kr, MP, MH for GR. But the program never saw light because a team of agronomists visited india and found that-

-It is not possible to make headway into 5,50,000 villages at the same time. They also found that irrigation is not same in all the areas, the soil texture varies in all areas and people have different indigenous varieties as well. In addition to this the rainfall varies as well.

So the program was called off and instead in 1960, almost 8yrs later, IADP mission with 15 districts one in each state was identified for GR. Ludhiana was chosen in Pb for its better mix of urban and rural demographics. It also had small scale industrial units like cycles etc.

IADP- Intensive Agriculture Development Program decoded to give away complete package to farmer including Fertilisers, seeds, tools etc. The marketing efforts saw best results in Pb only and other states started discouraging the private companies.

Ford & World Bank concentrated on Punjab and also developed PAU (Punjab Agriculture University) which pushed the GR in Punjab. It is important to notice that CIRR (Cuttack Institute Of Rice Research) was oldest one in country and was critic of GR and HYV seeds.

Hence private companies leading GR steered clear of those big institutions like CIRR. CIRR at one point also referred to International Rice Research Institute as a copy of CIRR.

The benefits with wheat started showing effect and economic conditions of Pb farmers changed.

GR slowly traversed to other parts of country as well but Punjab had become the hub with major crop areas being wheat and paddy due to better output and price. Not to mention that it created better PDS and surplus for nation changing the image from begging bowl.

Regarding PepsiCo, it would be wrong to say that GOI forced PepsiCo for cola. PepsiCo had come with 100yrs of boom promise and they had 10yrs blueprint ready with them. The losses and inability to make money beyond large farmers pushed them to start Cola which was already in plan

So the first plant was put outside PB in Hr to test the sentiment and surprisingly the sentiment was welcoming with people getting employment as well. I honestly am not a fan of demonising corporations but there needs to be a regulatory authority on contracts and business.