Giant In The Earth: M S Swaminathan

Dr Shreekant Sambrani pays tribute to Dr M S Swaminathan, the renowned agricultural scientist and a lifelong crusader against hunger who passed away in Chennai last week.

I first met Mankombu Sambsivam Swaminathan (MSS hereafter) in 1976.

The visionary scientist was then the Director-General of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR).

He delivered the annual Convocation Address that year at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, where I taught then.

The convocations were held late in the evening on the last Saturday in March.

Since 1974, Louis Kahn Plaza has been the venue for the convocation.

It is an inverted U-shaped space, with open-face brickwork three-storeyed structures on three sides of an open space.

It was the last structure supervised by the great American architect Louis Kahn on his last visit to India and his beloved campus. (He passed away in New York City at the Grand Central Station on his way home to Philadelphia; I was instrumental in getting the plaza named for him after his demise).

The magnificence of the structure inspired awe in any and all visitors.

But not MSS. He began his address (I paraphrase freely), "You must be accustomed to receiving accolades about the grand vista of the location we are gathered at.

"But when I see this expanse of wonderful red bricks, I think of the hundreds and thousands of years Mother Nature took to create the topsoil that went to make these countless bricks.

"And I feel sad at the loss of crops which could have been produced in that topsoil."

There was stunned silence. But the great man had dramatically introduced his theme of urgency of feeding a hungry world with those most appropriate (and absolutely correct) opening observations.

Thereafter, I met him many times, when he became Secretary, Agriculture, and Member (later acting Deputy Chairman), Planning Commission, and I was setting up Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA).

(An anecdote: As is the case with all government offices, there is a wooden placard listing all incumbents at the door of the agriculture secretary's office in Krishi Bhavan in Delhi. When Dr V Kurien was visiting MSS in that office for the first time, he noticed that all the names had three small letters after them, except that of MSS.

Dr Kurien called the undersecretary in charge of administration to the secretary's office and proceeded to lecture him: "You members of the civil service may think you have attained nirvana when you sport IAS after your names, but the world values three other letters far more. They are PhD."

The next morning, necessary correction was effected.

The last time I met his was on 26 November 2013, when he delivered the inaugural Kurien Memorial Lecture at IRMA.

The then Director, IRMA, had asked me to introduce the guest to the audience.

In my remarks, I reminded MSS of what he had said at the IIMA convocation nearly 40 years earlier, which perhaps he had forgotten now.

He did acknowledge that he had forgotten that incident, but his concerns as I had recalled were very much valid even now.

He was right, of course, to voice his worries about agricultural production and its criticality in keeping the wolf away from the world, especially the poorer sections of the population.

"It is a matter of shame that in spite of our agricultural progress, malnutrition is widespread in all parts of the country.

'The number of people going to bed hungry is nearly 250 million, more than the number of hungry in sub-Saharan Africa,' he had written in 2010.

Even today, in the second year of the much-heralded Amrit Kaal of Independent India marching towards a developed nation status 24 years hence, some 800 million people, or close to 60 per cent of the population, is dependent on free rations of grains for its survival.

MSS helped usher in the Green Revolution nearly half a century ago, which gives us the wherewithal to underwrite this gigantic food security measure, but it also highlights how precarious the situation is.

A mere whisper of the possibility of El Nino affecting the current year's monsoon and its likely adverse impact on grain production sends a chill down the policy-makers' collective spine.

MSS had clearly identified two constraints: The first was official apathy and worse.

As agriculture secretary and member, Planning Commission, he brought his considerable intellectual and administrative acumen to bear upon issues such as water conservation and women's crucial role in agriculture.

As a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, he introduced a bill on women's entitlements in agriculture in 2011, which lapsed (it finds no mention in the current hype on nari shakti abhivaadan adhiniyam; that should come as no surprise).

The series of reports of the National Commission on Farmers (2004-2006) which he chaired bear ample witness of his overwhelming concern for faster and more inclusive growth and administrative measures needed to help achieve it.

His enunciation of what constitutes a remunerative price for farmers has been widely accepted as a sound concept, but its implementation has never been satisfactory even as we continue to chant the mantra of doubling farmers' incomes.

No wonder he was to observe, "The term 'accountability' seems to have gone out of our administrative dictionary."

His second concern, and by far the major thrust of all his endeavours throughout his long life, was technology and productivity.

To him, the Green Revolution was just the beginning. It was an article of faith for him that humanity needed sustained increases in productivity through technology.

He believed that benefits of transgenic technology far outweighed any possible ill-effects.

He felt that strict regulation would ensure that the ill effects would not come into play.

He said in 2014, 'Many of the genetically modified organisms in the breeders' assembly line have excellent qualities for resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses as well as improved nutrition.

'Much of this work has been done in institutions committed to public good.'

He coined a term, 'Evergreen Revolution,' which denoted a seamless continuation of the work done under the Green Revolution.

He described it as productivity with perpetuity.

While he acknowledged the role chemical fertilisers had played in ushering in the original Green Revolution, he had at all times urged their balanced and sustainable use.

To him, fertilisers were just one among the resources an agriculture planner could use.

Biological research, organic inputs, adequate -- not surplus -- moisture and above all, a well-informed and trained yeoman peasantry were all to be contributors to the evergreen revolution.

An utterly petty and thoroughly false controversy seems to be in the air following the announcement of the passing of MSS: Who really was the father of the Green Revolution in India -- Dr Norman Borlaug, or Dr M S Swaminathan?

There is no doubt that Dr Borlaug brought to India his wonder dwarf wheat seeds from Mexico following the calamitous drought of 1965.

The enthusiastic acceptance of these first in Punjab and Haryana and later in all other wheat growing areas of the country is the marquee event of the Green Revolution.

But it is equally true that MSS expressed his concerned about our traditional wheat varieties growing tall (a metre or more) and using up the nutrients to support this vegetative growth when he returned to India in mid-1950s after getting his doctoral degree from Cambridge.

He was to be a potato geneticist at Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) in Delhi.

His interest in the height of wheat crop got him thinking about ways of controlling the vegetative growth and enhancing reproductive growth leading to formation of wheat ears).

His concerns finally led him to get in touch with Dr Borlaug in the late 1950s.

The Minnesotan was then at the International Centre for Improvement to Wheat and Maize in Mexico.

He, too, was concerned about the rather tall Mexican wheat plant.

His experiments led to dwarf varieties which yielded far more grain (more than 4 tons per hectare).

MSS wanted Dr Borlaug to come to India for similar experiments.

The Borlaug visit materialised after another seven years and a major drought. The two scientists struck an immediate rapport.

Dr Borlaug was supported by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the United States Agency for International Development.

The Government of India provided all facilitation, virtually placing the entire resources and staff of IARI at the disposal of Drs Borlaug and Swaminathan.

The Rockefeller and Ford representatives could walk into the office of then agriculture minister C Subramaniam or then food secretary B Sivaraman any time.

The rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

Dr Borlaug wrote to MSS in 1970 after receiving the news of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize:

'The Green Revolution has been a team effort and much of the credit for its spectacular development must go to the Indian officials, organizations, scientists, and farmers.

'However, to you, Dr Swaminathan, a great deal of the credit must go for first recognising the potential value of the Mexican dwarfs.

'Had this not occurred, it is quite possible that there would not have been a Green Revolution in Asia.'

In the years since, the Green Revolution is widely estimated to have saved over a billion lives worldwide, more than all the casualties in all the wars, large and small, ever fought anywhere in the world.

Its pioneers, Drs Borlaug and Swaminathan, are thus truly modern-day saints.

I am not much of a believer in State honours. But they are a fact, nevertheless, and a great many have received them, mostly notable individuals (and some not-so noteworthy).

In view of all this, I have often wondered about the omission of these two worthies from the list of those who have received the country's highest honour, the Bharat Ratna; two other equally notable omissions are Dr I G Patel and Dr V Kurien.

Since we now confer these awards posthumously as well, perhaps they would all get the Bharat Ratna, which will in fact enhance the prestige of the award.

Until that happens, MSS for me will be a giant in the earth, like the leading character in the Norwegian novelist Ole Edvart Rolvag's classic tale of Scandinavian immigrants taming the wild prairies of the Dakota Territory to become granaries of America.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com