• Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated M.S. Swaminathan Centenary International Conference in New Delhi on August 7.

• Swaminathan, “the architect of India’s Green Revolution”, played a pivotal role in transforming India from being food-deficient to self-sufficient by leading the introduction and further development of high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice in the 1960s and 1970s.

• On the occasion, PM Modi released a commemorative coin and stamp in honour of the legendary scientist.

• Swaminathan was born on August 7, 1925 in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu.

• He passed away on September 28, 2023.

• Swaminathan was conferred the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian honour, posthumously in 2024. 

How India transformed from a begging bowl to a breadbasket?

• A plant geneticist by training, Swaminathan has made a stellar contribution to the agricultural renaissance of India. 

• Agriculture has traditionally been India’s most important economic sector. Over time, it has provided approximately one-third of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). 

• When India attained independence, the agriculture sector was in a poor state. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the more productive and largely irrigated areas fell in the newly-created Pakistan.

• Farmers in India had long suffered from a lack of food security. In the 1960s, it was widely predicted by demographers and economists that population would outstrip food production in developing nations, leading to famine in India and throughout the rest of Asia. At the time, massive shipments of imported grain were the only means by which the continent was averting famine.

• As a young scientist at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in the 1950s, Swaminathan learned of Dr. Norman Borlaug’s newly developed Mexican dwarf wheat variety and invited him to India.

• These two world‐renowned agricultural scientists met for the first time in 1953 at a conference organised by the American Society of Biological Sciences hosted by the University of Wisconsin‐Madison. Dr. Swaminathan was most intrigued with Borlaug’s presentation about a new method of controlling rust disease in wheat. 

• Swaminathan worked closely with Borlaug to bring about the great agricultural transformation. Together they spread high-yielding wheat and rice varieties and improved agricultural practices among the poorest farmers of India.

• Indian consumers did not care for the red colour of the Mexican wheat varieties like ‘Lerma rojo’ for making chapati bread, and so Borlaug provided seeds from his work in Pakistan that were more amber in colour. Swaminathan conducted additional research on these varieties to develop ‘Sonalika’ and ‘Kalyan Sona’, which had the desired chapati‐making quality.

• Swaminathan also created new methods to teach Indian farmers how to effectively increase production by employing a combination of the high-yielding wheat varieties, fertilisers, and more efficient farming techniques.

• Swaminathan set up thousands of demonstration and test plots. The first year’s harvest tripled previous production levels. 

• His direct work with farmers overcame the obstacles of illiteracy and lack of formal education and provided a generation of Indians with knowledge about the effectiveness of modern agriculture.

• Through the application of science, education of farmers, famine was averted, and, by the late 1960s, Indian agriculture was on course to self‐sufficiency in cereal grains.

• Swaminathan’s vision transformed India from a “begging bowl” to a “breadbasket”.

• The Green Revolution in India was a period of astounding food production and hunger abatement brought about by scientific discovery and application combined with policy intervention.

• Swaminathan has called the Green Revolution a ‘symphony of ingredients’. One is science, which is the prime mover of change. Another, the gamut of  public policies. Third, services such as seed production, electricity, and fertiliser. And finally, farmers’ enthusiasm and toil.

• Norman E. Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for a lifetime of work to feed a hungry world.

• Swaminathan was honoured across the globe for his scientific brilliance, his life’s mission of bringing improved technology to citizens at all levels of society, his pioneering advocacy and humanitarianism, and his inspiration to thousands.

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