In the state of Uttar Pradesh, the political elites tried out land reform as a viable, competing strategy of agrarian modernization. This was an alternate vision of modernization rooted in the freedom movement that put trust in creating a land of healthy peasant proprietorship where efficient, productive cultivators would produce for the market. This reform-based approach came to be personified by a regional peasant leader, Chaudhary Charan Singh. Meanwhile, as part of the Indo-US treaty of 1954, the American land grants helped set up India’s very first agricultural university in the state, the Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University (or UPAU). The new agriculture university showcased a technological approach to enhancement of yield. The central state introduced a new program of productive agriculture around Mexican HYVs in 1964-66 and partnered with the technocrats at UPAU to help facilitate its spread in the state. Charan Singh broke ranks with the Congress party in 1967 whose government at the center was the sponsor of the HYV-program.