THE MAN WHO SCRIPTED INDIA'S WIN OVER HUNGER

Having left the pursuit of medical studies to be an agriculturist, M.S. Swaminathan is credited with the success of the Green Revolution in India that dealt with the country's food scarcity, turning it from a 'begging bowl' into a 'bread basket'

- Naina Gautam

The success of his works is not restricted to their academic excellence; it lies in the impact they have had outside the laboratories, in the farms and the fields. His work narrowed the gap between scientific knowledge and its practical application.

He consistently advocated for sustainable agriculture, emphasising the delicate balance between human advancement and ecological sustainability.”

—Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his tribute to M.S. Swaminathan

From being once seen as a country surviving “ship to mouth”—a reference to its dependence on imported foodgrain—to becoming the second largest producer of wheat and rice in the world, India has come a long way, thanks to the Green Revolution of the 1960s that introduced several reforms in the agriculture sector. Its rice and wheat exports in 2021–22 touched $9.65 billion and $2.19 billion.

Spearheading this revolution in the country was Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, a cytogeneticist with a doctorate degree in genetics from Cambridge University and a post-doctoral fellowship from the University of Wisconsin, who became popular as the father of the Green Revolution in India.

Born in Kumbakonam in 1925, to Dr M.K. Sambasivan and Parvati Thangammal, Swaminathan has been credited with rescuing India from the famine in the early 1960s. However, the change he brought about was the result of much more than just a response to a clarion call by the government to deal with the severe food shortage. After the Bengal famine in 1942–43, Swaminathan decided to study agriculture, walking away from familial expectations that he would follow the footsteps of his surgeon father.