Mahendra Singh Tikait’s political career took off long after productivity growth in Green Revolution had begun to taper off. The career of this rich farmers’ leader—who died on Sunday—was emblematic of what went wrong with policymaking on agriculture in India. Urban India always associated Tikait with negative images: the chaos on the roads of Delhi whenever he and his followers descended on the Capital to press some demand and the mess these sons of the soil left behind. But he was much more than that.