M. S. Swaminathan

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Preface
• About the Author
• Contents
• Acknowledgements

I was pleased to accept the responsibility of writing the biography of Professor M.S. Swaminathan FRS, the first Laureate of the World Food Prize and internationally acclaimed crusader of a ‘Zero Hunger’ world, with humility in my heart and a feeling of inadequacy to do a befitting job. I am like a village rustic amazed at the great intellect of the village schoolmaster. The relevant part of the poem ‘The Village Schoolmaster’ by Oliver Goldsmith comes to my mind…

The following sections are included:

• Potato and Hunger of the Poor
• An Introduction to Polyploidy Since Potato is a Tetraploid
• Cytogenetic Research in Solanum, Section Tuberarium: From Wageningen to Wisconsin and Beyond
• Swaminathan and Polyploidy — Beyond Wisconsin Back in India

Under globalisation and patent regime, science is no longer entirely geared towards gaining knowledge for the sake of satisfying curiosity. While referring to the bygone decades, that is, 1950s and 1960s, there were water-tight compartmentalisation of botany, zoology, chemistry and physics. Even in the area of teaching ‘evolution’ in the botany department, no examples from animal kingdom would be appreciated. In even agricultural sciences, interaction between the departments of entomology, mycology and plant pathology was either non-existent or existent only feebly despite the fact that various insect pests are the vectors of viral diseases. Those were the times when Swaminathan broke the barriers across disciplines and provided an inter-disciplinary approach for solving several intricate problems in biological sciences. He did what none had ever done before. Agriculture as a science, to him, needed to integrate the life and physical sciences as well as the social sciences. He is a living encyclopaedia and it is gratifying that the prestigious ‘Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) Library’ has been dedicated as ‘Professor M.S. Swaminathan Library’ in April 2016…

The famous statement every child is a scientist implies that children are curious to know about everything around them. Often, they lose the sense of curiosity as they grow up and get engrossed with mundane things. There is no doubt that there are individuals who take to scientific research for the sake of livelihood, yet there are others who still maintain the curiosity of a child and therefore choose scientific research as a career. There is yet another category of scientists to whom science is the only thing that matters and they pursue science despite not getting a suitable job in the universities and research institutions. They even ignore the needs of their families. It was Carl Sagan the famous astrophysicist who once observed that curiosity is the driving force behind those who have made astonishingly great discoveries and inventions. Most children are intensely curious about everything — natural and human-centric innovations, around them. Galileo, Newton, Hooke and Raman are just a few to illustrate the fact that curiosity drove them to their discoveries. James Watt’s invention of steam engine was also because of his curiosity. As children grow up, most of them get distracted from innate curiosity to mundane issues. Mental efforts are diverted to finding easy means to become rich and influential. Hence, as children grow up, their curiosity dies a silent death. Yet another category exists of professional scientists in national institutes or the universities who remain reasonably curious until they are into their 50s, and then their focus shifts to post-retirement plans. There is, however, a small proportion of the scientists and technologists with persistent curiosity that also progressively intensifies as they age as senior citizens. I continue to closely interact with a few such erstwhile nuclear physicists who are even now vigorously pursuing research and development in areas like ‘cold nuclear fusion’, radiation health effects at low and low-dose-rates, etc., despite their old-age problems, both social and financial. Some believe that their accumulated knowledge continues to need updating and also useful dissemination until they breathe their last…

Sir C.V. Raman too had insatiable curiosity to know everything on this planet as Swaminathan. Alike in their curiosity, they were also different in their outlook, particularly regarding the social purpose of science. To Raman, nothing else but his field of science mattered; his intense involvement in a specialised area of scientific pursuit had confined him to an ‘ivory tower’. Swaminathan, despite having had rather close association with Raman, chose to be a people’s scientist. He extended his hand in warmth to interact with social scientists. The expected natural obligation on the part of a people’s scientist is to establish a social contract of science. Considering the dismal food security scenario at the time of the independence of India in August 1947, and thereafter for the next couple of decades, the most appropriate social contract of science was to increase agricultural food production and availability of food mainly through the enhancement of the productivity of the crops as also the access to food by all people. With Indian agriculture having been a ‘gamble with monsoon’, droughts and famines have been a regular feature; the great Bengal famine of 1943–1944 loomed large as backdrop to India’s independence in 1947. To India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, it was a great concern that should a famine of the magnitude of the Bengal famine recur, the faith in self-determination of the people of young Independent India would be devastated. Pandit Nehru also understood that if agriculture in India would fail, nothing else in the domains of science, technology, education, industry, commerce, foreign policy and so on would ever succeed. Having been deeply conscious of this bottom line, he put agriculture and self-sufficiency in food at the top of the national agenda and proclaimed, everything else can wait, but not agriculture. Following this, several measures to stimulate food production, including land reform, irrigation, fertiliser production, strengthening of research and organisation of a national extension service were initiated in the 1950s. More land was brought under farming and augmentation of irrigation sources was also done. There was an increased production of wheat and rice, but productivity per unit area of land remained quite stagnant. The research goal was to enhance the per plant productivity with high levels of plant nutrition. Hence, late Dr. K. Ramiah in 1952 started a programme for incorporating genes for fertiliser response from japonica rice varieties to indica rice varieties at the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI), Cuttack under sponsorship of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). Swaminathan worked in 1954 in this project. The main aim was to select from segregating populations of indica X japonica crosses, lines which showed the ability to utilise nitrogen effectively about 100 kg/ha. This approach resulted in a yield of about 5 tonnes/ha. There were a few unexpected genetic problems rendering the speedy selection of high-yielding rice varieties from indica X japonica crosses difficult. Yet, a few varieties like ADT-27 and Mashuri cultivated in Tamil Nadu and Malaysia, respectively were developed…

The following sections are included:

• Preamble
• Role of ‘Professor M.S. Swaminathan Library’ in Providing Knowledge Power to Identify the Seeds and Its Sources for Green Revolution
• The Impact of Dwarfing Genes on Wheat and Rice Production
• Christening the High Level Fertiliser-Responsive Dwarf Wheat and Rice Varieties
• Swaminathan Said It in 1968 and Others Said Two Decades Later
• A Lesson for the Younger Generation of Scientists and Technologists
• India’s Hunger Problem — Availability of Food Alone Will Not Do
• Going Beyond Caloric Hunger-Combating Malnutrition (Hidden Hunger)
• Managing Widespread Drought Without Food Imports

The following sections are included:

• Eco-Agriculture
• Eco-Friendly Cultivation Methods
• Eco-Agriculture of Swaminathan: Pathway to Green Economy

The previous chapter brings out how Swaminathan’s ‘Evergreen Revolution’ integrates ecology, economics and equities (both social and gender) to render it inherently sustainable. It also addresses the pathways to transform the Green Revolution into an Evergreen Revolution. The paradigm shift from commodity-centric thrust to productivity through a systems-based approach involves concurrent attention to locally adapted crop varieties, soil health, quality of irrigation water and rainwater harvesting, conservation of biodiversity, renewable energy as well as mitigation of greenhouse gases. Swaminathan’s conviction right from the very beginning was that agricultural productivity in perpetuity alone without concurrent attention to enhancing the resource base and skills of the rural women and men to create and sustain income-generating livelihoods would not reduce poverty and hunger. Swaminathan’s ingenuity in basic scientific research has been already vividly brought out in the earlier chapters; he has yet again emerged absolutely ingenious in creating on-farm and non-farm livelihoods to generate income for the resource-poor marginal farmers, fishing communities and landless rural families. To the best of my knowledge, it was just Swaminathan who had deep concern about the ‘access’ dimension to food security at the household levels and hence focused on rural livelihoods and developed strategies to provide skill and knowledge empowerment of the largely illiterate and unskilled resource-poor rural women and men. Skill and knowledge are prerequisites for the sustainable livelihoods. Swaminathan was emphatic that lack of literacy should not be an impediment to acquiring skills for undertaking rural livelihoods. He had also reasonably thought of agro-climatic zone-specific on-farm and non-farm livelihoods, besides augmentation of income to the landless rural women from producing biological softwares (i.e. biofertilisers, biopesticides, etc.) which also form the green inputs for the eco-agriculture of the Evergreen Revolution. Swaminathan won the highly deserved First World Food Prize in 1987. The prize money formed the initial seed money to set up the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai by 1988. He won several other awards too, which carried a financial component. All these monies were utilised to put up his ‘magnificent temple of sustainable agriculture and rural livelihoods to achieve Zero Hunger goal’. The monies earned from several awards (the World Food Prize, Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, Honda Prize for developing eco-technologies, UNEP–Sasakawa Environment Prize, Volvo Environment Prize, Blue Planet Prize, Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development and several scores of such Awards) form even today the backdrop of the eco-friendly MSSRF buildings on the Third Cross Street of Taramani, Chennai, which house the science of sustainability based programmes. I believe that both the Hindu Goddesses of Knowledge and Wisdom, ‘Saraswathi’ and the Goddess of Wealth, ‘Lakshmi’ have together blessed Swaminathan. Such a happening is indeed very rare, as it is said that their blessings are mutually exclusive…

In Chapter 8, reference had been made to the biovillage paradigm with eco-technologies for conservation of resources and creation of sustainable on-farm and non-farm livelihoods in the rural areas. Many of the ecotechnologies were already in practice in a few villages when Swaminathan convened a dialogue Eco-technology and Rural Development at MSSRF on April 11–15, 1993. Several participants presented papers on the technological and social dimensions and these have been compiled and edited by Swaminathan in the form of a book [167]. The concept of eco-technology was originally developed by late Commandant Jaques Cousteau (the famous under-sea explorer); its ardent promoter Professor Fredrico Mayor, then of UNESCO, greatly admiring the excellent contributions to eco-technology already made by Swaminathan at MSSRF, appointed him to the globally renowned and highly prestigious ‘UNESCO–Cousteau Ecotechnie Chair’ in 1994. Swaminathan is presently continuing in this position making globally noteworthy contributions to alleviate rural poverty and hunger of the most deprived communities living in the rural areas…

Even the most outstanding cytogeneticists, geneticists and plant breeders have not been visibly active in the conservation of plants, animals and microbes. Hence, it came as a pleasant surprise that Swaminathan, an outstanding cytogeneticist, in his Presidential Address at the XV International Congress of Genetics held at New Delhi in 1983, chose to speak on Genetic Conservation: Microbes to Man [123]. This address is one of the papers selected and published in the book Science and Sustainable Food Security — Selected Papers of M.S. Swaminathan [171]. Emphasising the need of the biodiversity for the present and for the future well-being of humans and the entire biosphere, Swaminathan in his Presidential Address pleaded for international efforts involving the ex situ preservation of germplasm by cryogenic gene banks and in situ onfarm conservation…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction to Climate Change
• Using Nature’s Gifts

Several biographies of Swaminathan especially those written by Iyer [4] and Dil [1] indicate that Swaminathan’s resolve to eliminate hunger from the face of Earth came to be imprinted on his mind when he was in his late teens coinciding with the Bengal famine of 1943–1944. Basically a Gandhian himself, hunger-related deaths were unbearable to him. Further, that famine-related hunger could strike anywhere in the world was evident from the Irish potato famine of 1845. Food is the most basic among a hierarchy of human needs. His firm resolve to study agriculture and solve the world’s hunger problem even made him overcome his sentiment to study medicine and take over his late father’s hospital in Kumbakonam. Hence, his quest for a hunger-free world started about seven decades ago…

The following sections are included:

• Epilogue: The author (PCK) in conversation with the ‘Legend and beyond in Science’ (MSS)
• Bibliography
• Index