Over sixty years ago, at Krishi Bhavan in New Delhi, the then minister of food and agriculture, C. Subramaniam, called an emergency meeting. India was facing a severe
food crisis: only two weeks of food grain reserves remained. It was decided to find out whether there were American ships carrying food grain nearby in international waters. The idea was to request the US president to reroute those ships to India.

India had been importing grain since then. By 1966, food grain imports had reached 10 million tonnes. Around this time, in Punjab, Chaudhary Ram Dhan Singh and Pandit Dhani Ram Vasudeva, were experimenting with wheat varieties that were pest-resistant. However, the yields were low. At the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, under the leadership of B.P. Pal, scientists were searching for high-yield wheat varieties. In that team was a young scientist, M.S. Swaminathan.

Swaminathan — he died in September — discovered that Orville Vogel at Washington State University had developed a dwarf wheat variety originally discovered in Japan. Vogel’s modified variety, called Gaines, was already breaking records in wheat productivity. Swaminathan wrote to Vogel requesting those seeds. Vogel replied that Gaines was a winter wheat variety that required 13-14 hours of daylight, which Indian winters couldn’t provide. He suggested Swaminathan contact Norman Borlaug at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico. Swaminathan wrote to Borlaug requesting wheat seeds. Borlaug replied that he would prefer to visit India and understand its agro-climatic conditions before selecting seed varieties. However, getting official approval to invite Borlaug took nearly two years. Eventually, Borlaug sent a small quantity of dwarf wheat seeds. When the seeds reached IARI in Delhi, only one field was available where the first experimental planting of what would become the Green Revolution took place.

The results were stunning: high-yield, disease-resistant, and uniformly short wheat plants grew. Encouraged, Swaminathan proposed scaling up the trials to farmers’ fields. But the agriculture ministry showed little interest.

After Jawaharlal Nehru’s death, Lal Bahadur Shastri became prime minister and appointed Subramaniam as agriculture minister. At the meeting mentioned before, Swaminathan proposed a five-year programme for dwarf wheat trials. He
asked for approval to expand to 500–1000 farmers’ fields with a budget of ₹500 per farmer. Subramaniam approved it.

Convincing farmers to participate was difficult. Eventually, three farmers near Delhi agreed. At a time when every dollar was precious, the government released foreign exchange to import 18,000 tonnes of wheat seeds. Maharashtra’s then agriculture secretary, A.Y. Sheikh, devised a novel method of transferring seeds directly from ships offshore using trawlers. India imported up to 200,000 tonnes of wheat seed. This led to a 250% increase in wheat production. India stopped food grain imports in 1968.

This agricultural self-reliance impacted India’s economy, politics, and global standing. Without it, India might not have dared conduct the 1971 war or the 1974 Pokhran nuclear test.

But in 1968, Swaminathan warned: “Exploitative agriculture... is dangerous. Without soil conservation and drainage, lands will become saline or deserts. Pesticide overuse may harm biodiversity and increase cancer risks.” Sadly, these warnings were ignored.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Norman Borlaug named Swaminathan as a key collaborator. Borlaug wanted a Nobel Prize in agriculture but couldn’t convince the Nobel Committee. So he created the World Food Prize, considered the ‘Nobel of agriculture’. The first recipient was Swaminathan.

Dinesh Lakhanpal is a journalist-turned-filmmaker