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M S Swaminathan
On August 15, 1947, 22-year-old Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan famously headed for Auroville even as almost everyone else in Madras seemed to be bound for Marina Beach to celebrate the birth of a free India. Later, he would choose to study agriculture rather than medicine, rightly judging that plentiful food production had an important role to play in keeping a country independent. He went on to play a leading role in India's Green Revolution of the 1960s. In 1999, he was one of only three Indians to be on TIME magazine's list of the 20th century's 20 most influential Asians. The other two were Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. Swaminathan, 85, was in the capital recently and spoke to Saira Kurup about India's many revolutions — those past and still to come.
It's 63 years since India became independent. But we are still fighting for freedom from hunger and poverty. Is this a battle we might never win?
Our freedom was born with hunger. It was born in the backdrop of the Bengal famine. If you read the newspapers dated August 15, 1947, one part was about freedom, the other was food shortage. This is why Jawaharlal Nehru said after Independence that everything else can wait but not agriculture.
The battle against hunger is a battle we have to win. It requires a fusion of political will, professional skill and people's participation. Our country is fortunate to have fairly good water resources, reasonably good rainfall, a hardworking farming population. We must bring about a marriage between brain and brawn in rural professions. We need a large number of educated young people to go into farming using science and new eco-technologies. We have all the necessary ingredients for progress. But the gap between scientific knowhow and field level do-how is large.
The green revolution was the product of four things: the first was technology. The genetic technology of the 1960s was transformational and changed people's understanding of wheat and rice yields. The second was services that took the technology to the field like extension services, credit and insurance; third was public policies of input-output pricing like the prices commission, and lastly, the farmers' enthusiasm. Today, unfortunately, the most important thing is missing — farmers' enthusiasm. A revolution cannot come from a government programme. A National Sample Survey study says 40% of the farmers want to leave farming. It's important to revive that enthusiasm.
It's 63 years since India became independent. But we are still fighting for freedom from hunger and poverty. Is this a battle we might never win?
Our freedom was born with hunger. It was born in the backdrop of the Bengal famine. If you read the newspapers dated August 15, 1947, one part was about freedom, the other was food shortage. This is why Jawaharlal Nehru said after Independence that everything else can wait but not agriculture.
The battle against hunger is a battle we have to win. It requires a fusion of political will, professional skill and people's participation. Our country is fortunate to have fairly good water resources, reasonably good rainfall, a hardworking farming population. We must bring about a marriage between brain and brawn in rural professions. We need a large number of educated young people to go into farming using science and new eco-technologies. We have all the necessary ingredients for progress. But the gap between scientific knowhow and field level do-how is large.
The green revolution was the product of four things: the first was technology. The genetic technology of the 1960s was transformational and changed people's understanding of wheat and rice yields. The second was services that took the technology to the field like extension services, credit and insurance; third was public policies of input-output pricing like the prices commission, and lastly, the farmers' enthusiasm. Today, unfortunately, the most important thing is missing — farmers' enthusiasm. A revolution cannot come from a government programme. A National Sample Survey study says 40% of the farmers want to leave farming. It's important to revive that enthusiasm.
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