MS Swaminathan conferred Bharat Ratna: How the agricultural scientist helped India achieve food security

Monkomb Sambasivan Swaminathan, 98, passed away last year on September 28. Called the ‘Father of the Green Revolution’, he played a major role in the set of changes introduced in farming in the 1960s and ‘70s that helped India achieve food security.

Early on in his career, he cleared the examination for the civil services but Swaminathan was interested in agriculture foremost and soon ended up pursuing research in the field.

He would go on to serve at a number of institutions related to the sector in both India and abroad – as an Independent Chairman of the Food and Agricultural Organisation Council (1981-85), President of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (1984-90), President of the World Wide Fund for Nature (India) from 1989-96 and the Director General of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), among others.

Who was MS Swaminathan?

In an interview published by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Swaminathan spoke about how he first became inclined towards agriculture at a time when he was expected to follow his father into the medical profession.

“It was at that time, in 1942, that Gandhiji gave a call for the Quit India Movement. And, in 1942-43, there was the Bengal famine. Many of us, who were students at that time and were very idealistic, asked ourselves, what can we do for independent India?”

“So I decided, because of the Bengal famine, to study agriculture. I changed my field and went to the Agriculture College at Coimbatore, instead of going to a Medical College,” he said.

The Bengal famine saw the deaths of between 2 million and 3 million people. The famine was man-made, the consequence of British policies at the time that were guided by World War II and the need to provide grains to its soldiers from its colonies.

Swaminathan added, “And, I also decided, to go into agricultural research, and that too in genetics and breeding, for the simple reason that a good variety has the largest impact. A large number of farmers, whether small or large, can benefit from a good strain of a crop. I also got fascinated with the science of genetics as a whole.”

The Green Revolution was a scientific achievement as well as a survival strategy.

Swaminathan’s research took him to educational institutions in Europe and the US, and in 1954, he started working at the Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack, on transferring genes for fertiliser response from Japonica varieties to Indica varieties.

He described this as “The first attempt to develop high yielding varieties which can respond to good soil fertility and good water management.”

This was needed because post-independence, Indian agriculture was not very productive. Years of colonial rule impacted its development and the nation lacked the resources to modernise the sector. As a result, crops necessary for staple foods also had to be imported from countries like the US.

Nobel laureate Norman Ernest Borlaug (right) and MS Swaminathan. (Photo credit: MSSRF)

Swaminathan recalled how the Green Revolution, which involved the provision of high-yielding variety seeds, adequate irrigation facilities and fertilisers to Indian farmers in regions of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh primarily, changed this dramatically.

He recalled, “In 1947, when India became independent, we were producing about 6 million tonnes of wheat a year. By 1962, wheat production went to about 10 million tonnes a year. But between 1964 and 1968, annual production of wheat increased from about 10 million tonnes to about 17 million tonnes… It was a quantum jump in production, and that is why, it was called a revolutionary step. This infused a great deal of confidence because those were days when Indian farmers had been written off by very leading authorities. External experts said that India was leading a “ship-to-mouth existence”. We had to depend on PL480 wheat from the US. In 1966, a year that also saw severe drought, 10 million tonnes of PL480 wheat were imported.”

How Swaminathan contributed to the Green Revolution

After Swaminathan’s work on rice, he and other scientists would work on doing the same to enhance productivity for the wheat crop.

“Wheat was a different story because we had to get Norin dwarfing genes from Norman Borlaug in Mexico,” Swaminathan said. Borlaug was an American scientist who was working on developing more productive crop varieties. He would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, “for having given a well-founded hope — the green revolution”.

As The Indian Express earlier reported, many researchers and scientists were involved in this work. “But there isn’t any doubt that the basic strategic vision underpinning the Green Revolution in India — introducing a new genetic strain or ‘plant type’ responsive to increased fertiliser and water application — came from Swaminathan.”

The problem with the traditional wheat and rice varieties was that they were tall and slender. These ‘lodged’ – fell flat on the ground — when they grew and their earheads were heavy with well-filled grains produced in response to high fertiliser doses. Through Swaminathan’s research on rice, a reduction in plant height was sought to make them less lodging-prone. But this was not easy to do.

“His strategy of developing semi-dwarf wheat varieties using mutagenesis — exposing plants to chemicals or radiation to introduce desirable modifications in their DNA — did not, however, work: The lowering of plant heights led to a simultaneous reduction in the size of the grain-bearing panicles or earheads,” The Indian Express had reported.

The search for an ideal variety led him to contact American scientist Orville Vogel. He played a role in developing a ‘dwarf wheat’ called Gaines, which had a high yield. It contained dwarfing genes from a dwarf wheat called the Norin-10. Vogel agreed but was unsure of the wheat’s potential in the Indian climate.

He thus advised Swaminathan to approach Norman Borlaug, who had incorporated the same dwarfing genes through Vogel’s lines into his spring wheat varieties in Mexico that were better suited for India. Borlaug would also later visit India, after Swaminathan proposed so to the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, allowing for the wheat breeding programme to commence.

“We started working seriously on dwarf wheat breeding programme in 1963, and within five years, there was what was called the “Wheat Revolution”. Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, released a special stamp to mark the achievement,” Swaminathan said.

The side effects of the Green Revolution

Despite its landmark role in achieving food sufficient in India, the Green Revolution has been criticised on multiple counts, such as benefiting the already prosperous farmers as it was introduced in states with higher productivity.

Swaminathan recognised such issues as early as January 1968, addressing the Indian Science Congress at Varanasi. He spoke of the dangers of “the rapid replacement of numerous locally adapted varieties with one or two high yielding strains in large contiguous areas”, “intensive cultivation of land without conservation of soil fertility (that could) … lead ultimately to the springing up of deserts”, “indiscriminate use of pesticides, fungicides and herbicides”, and “unscientific tapping of underground water”. These predictions have indeed become a reality today.

He also lent his support to farmers. As the head of the National Commission on Farmers from 2004-06, he recommended that the Minimum Support Price at which farmers sell their crops to the government should be at least 50 per cent more than the weighted average cost of production.

For his contributions, Swaminathan was awarded the first World Food Prize Laureate in 1987, for “developing and spearheading the introduction of high-yielding wheat and rice varieties into India during the 1960s when that country faced the prospect of widespread famine. Wheat production doubled in just a few years, making the country self-sufficient and saving millions from extreme food deprivation,” its citation said.

This is an updated version of an explainer first published in 2023.