Opinion Express view: Lend a hand

The Mexico-headquartered International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) — synonymous with Norman Borlaug, the “father of the Green Revolution” — is seeking financial support from India. This comes as the Donald Trump administration has shut down the US Agency for International Development, which provided $83 million out of CIMMYT’s total $211 million revenue grants to fund its global breeding research and development programme in the two cereal crops. CIMMYT basically wants countries such as India to fill the void left by the US that, under President Trump, has adopted a transactional approach to foreign policy; it no longer sees value in cultivating soft power or projecting a positive image of the US on the world stage. There are at least three reasons why India should consider stepping up its funding of CIMMYT, or even the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

The first is that the money these organisations require isn’t all that big. A country with $700 billion in official foreign exchange reserves can afford more than the $0.8 million and $18.3 million that it gave to CIMMYT and IRRI respectively in 2024. The second is the international goodwill this creates, consistent with the leadership role that India is increasingly taking within the Global South and given that it is also acting as a bridge with the developed North: There can be no peace and stability without food security. Third, India has stakes in both organisations that played a stellar role in turning it from ship-to-mouth to self-sufficient, if not surplus, in wheat and rice. But the challenge is to grow these crops using less water and fertiliser, besides making them tolerant to rising temperatures, salinity and other abiotic stresses. Breeding today for tomorrow’s climate is a strategic imperative for a country that cannot, beyond a point, depend on others to feed 1.7 billion mouths by 2060. This extends to maize too. As Indians consume more animal products with rising incomes, the demand for it as feed — and now also as a fuel grain — will only go up.

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But it’s not only CIMMYT and IRRI. India must simultaneously strengthen its national agricultural research system that has suffered from a lack of resources (too little money spread across too many institutes), leadership and sense of purpose. The Green Revolution owed its success as much to Borlaug as to MS Swaminathan, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute and a minister like C Subramaniam, who could make tough calls based on scientific opinion and what the situation demanded. Contrast this with the present procrastination, whether on commercialisation of genetically modified crops or allowing under-pricing of fertilisers, water and electricity. The Indian farmer today faces practical problems that only science and applied research, not subsidies, can address.