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Over half a century ago, François Durand-Dastès wrote his first article on irrigation in India. The Green Revolution had not yet begun. It was still “insurance irrigation” rather than “creative irrigation”, where there were no private boreholes. This article deals with self-subsistence agriculture, and although the issues of working time and investment are raised in the article, the problem of marketing, so important in explaining the success of the Green Revolution, is not discussed. However, premonitory hypotheses are evident: the possibility of a return to rain-fed farming, the lack of land titles… – all issues that are relevant to Indian agriculture today.