Seeds of change: Remembering MS Swaminathan, the architect of India’s Green Revolution

IT was this trio of the Ss — MS Swaminathan the scientist; C Subramaniam the politician and Minister of Agriculture; and B Sivaraman the civil servant (incidentally, all from Tamil Nadu) — who put together a plan that would turn India’s fate from that of a begging bowl to a bread basket and from abject scarcity to one of absolute abundance.

The first thing Subramaniam did after he took over as the Minister of Agriculture and Food was to call about twenty agricultural scientists to Krishi Bhawan (offices of the Ministry of Agriculture) in New Delhi in August 1964 and ask them each how they proposed to solve the country’s food shortage. He wanted to take India’s most pressing problems to her scientists and get them to come up with solutions. He was the first minister to actively seek out the agricultural scientific community to provide him with answers.

When it was his turn, Swaminathan spoke powerfully about the new technology and hybrid seeds that they had at their disposal which Norman Borlaug had sent. He was convinced that based on their trials in IARI controlled plots, if these seeds could be sown in the fields of actual farmers, the yield stagnation in India could be overcome on a scale not witnessed before.

‘What is stopping you then, Swaminathan?’ Subramaniam looked intrigued.

‘Money, sir. We don’t have any!’ came the prompt reply.

‘I had submitted a proposal earlier which the Ministry refused to pass citing a lack of funds and more importantly, little belief in the new technology itself. The dwarf Mexican seeds provided by Dr Borlaug have proven they work but the Ministry had their doubts and that led to inaction on their part. Every year we are routinely humiliated by the import of PL 480 wheat from the United States. We need to break this debilitating cycle of our ship-to-mouth existence. Importing food is like importing unemployment. Seventy per cent of our people are employed in agriculture so when we import food, we are actually supporting farmers in other countries,’ Swaminathan responded passionately.

‘Developing a hybrid seed variety on our own is exceedingly time-consuming as well and not entirely feasible within our current timeframe. We have tried, I can assure you. It usually takes about a decade at least, if not more, to develop a new seed variety, which is essentially considered a scientific breakthrough, and which will yield more grain and will simultaneously also be disease-free. That is a tall order. We then need to have innumerable trials to disseminate this new information to the farmers and all relevant stakeholders concerned through various partner and extension agencies. We simply don’t have that kind of time. Since Borlaug had the technology readily available, we asked to use it in our fields and he was magnanimous enough to let us use it. It took him a good part of a decade to perfect this technology. I wanted to use this opportunity to then “purchase time” to leapfrog in terms of spreading new varieties. But some in the government see it as an American ploy to control our fields and farmers. That is simply not true. They forget that we approached Dr Borlaug to share his miracle seeds with us and not the other way round. He finally visited India after several requests were made. There is also a fear that the new Mexican variants will bring with them new diseases. This is completely unfounded as we have sowed them in IARI plots nationwide and there hasn’t been a hint of disease. We have every reason to believe that we are on the precipice of a massive breakthrough, but we require vital and immediate funding to take it to the farmers.’ Subramaniam allowed Swaminathan to continue speaking without interrupting him.

‘In my last attempt, we were just not able to convince the Ministry to get 1,000 National Seed Demonstrations approved at a cost of Rs 500 per hectare to prove to them the efficacy of this new scientific breakthrough in actual farmers’ fields. If agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right. We forget that farmers are often the best judges of the value of scientific work and scientific progress, especially if they are able to use it in their own fields. They can then see the magic unfold for themselves. They are not merely hapless beneficiaries of the state. I am therefore particularly keen to hold the demonstrations in the fields of resource poor farmers only as opposed to the rich landholders because anything demonstrated in the fields of rich farmers will then immediately be attributed to their affluence and not to new cutting-edge technology deployed in the fields.’

After a moment of silence following his speech, Swaminathan finally heard the words he had been hoping for from Subramaniam. ‘Thank you for your thoughtful presentation, Swaminathan. I would request you to immediately hand over the file to young Venkatraman who is sitting here with us on this table and I shall see what I can do to help you.’

Two days later, to Swaminathan’s immense surprise, the file was cleared unconditionally and the stage was finally set for the crucial National Seed Demonstrations in the fields of actual farmers — a turnaround in government attitudes Swaminathan hadn’t expected quite so quickly. But then again, C Subramaniam was a negotiator like no other!

— Excerpted from ‘The Man Who Fed India’, with permission from HarperCollins