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10/02/24 06:25 AM IST

MS Swaminathan conferred Bharat Ratna

In News
  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the late Indian agricultural scientist MS Swaminathan, as well as former Prime Ministers PV Narasimha Rao and Chaudhary Charan Singh, would be conferred the Bharat Ratna.
Father of Green Revolution
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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’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
  • 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.
After Independence
  •  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.
Side effects of 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.
  • 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.
Other contributions
  • 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.
Source- Indian Express

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