• By Mayukh Debnath
  • Fri, 09 Feb 2024 03:37 PM (IST)
  • Source:JND
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced that late agricultural scientist MS Swaminathan, who is known as the "Father of the Green Revolution in India", will be conferred with Bharat Ratna, the nation's highest civilian honour. Besides Swaminathan, former prime ministers Choudhary Charan Singh and PV Narasimha Rao will also be conferred with the award posthumously.

Swaminathan's role in developing high-yielding wheat varieties in collaboration with Dr Norman Borlaug was crucial in eliminating India's dependence on grain imports to feed its population. As a result of Swaminathan and Dr Borlaug's efforts, India saw its total crop yield of wheat nearly double from 12 million tons to 23 million tons in four crop seasons.

Who Was MS Swaminathan?

• MS Swaminathan was born in Kumbakonam of the erstwhile Madras Presidency (present-day Tamil Nadu) on August 7, 1925.

• His extended family was involved in the cultivation of rice, mangoes, coconut, and coffee. This gave him a chance to witness first-hand the impact price fluctuations, and other factors such as the devastation of crops by pests and weather, had on families dependent on farming for income.

• According to the Gita Gopalkrishnan-authored 'MS Swaminathan: One Man's Quest for a Hunger-free World', the Bengal famine of 1943 during World War II had a profound impact on Swaminathan, who then decided to devote his entire life to ensuring food security for India.

• He earned an undergraduate degree in zoology from the University of Kerala's Maharaja's College (now known as University College) in Thiruvananthapuram (formerly Trivandrum), Kerala.

• During 1940-44, Swaminathan studied at Madras Agricultural College (present-day Tamil Nadu Agricultural University) of University of Madras and earned a B.SC in Agricultural Science.

• He obtained a post-graduate degree from the New Delhi-based Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in 1949 with high distinction in cytogenetics.

• During his stint as an assistant cytogeneticist at IARI in the 1950s, Swaminathan learnt of Dr Borlaug’s newly developed Mexican dwarf wheat variety and invited him to India.

• The duo collaborated to develop high-yielding varieties of wheat as well as stalk structures strong enough to support the increased biomass.

• As part of the project, Swaminathan set up thousands of demonstration and test plots in 1965 in northern India, demonstrating to small-scale farmers that the new, genetically superior grain could thrive in their own fields.

• Swaminathan later worked with Indira Gandhi during her tenure as the prime minister to establish agricultural policies and programmes that would maintain long-term self-sufficiency across the country.