Immediately after India gained independence in 1947, the focus of agricultural policy was primarily on increasing food production through methods available at the time, such as expanding the cultivated area (by bringing fallow land and culturable wasteland under plough), promoting intensification of cropping on existing land, and encouraging a shift from cash crops to food crops to address immediate food shortages. The extensive use of High-Yielding Variety (HYV) seeds, along with chemical fertilizers and assured irrigation, was the cornerstone of the Green Revolution, which was initiated in the mid-1960s, particularly from 1965-66 onwards. Thus, HYV seeds were not a strategy employed "immediately after Independence."