Tribute to MS Swaminathan: Green Revolution to Evergreen Revolution
MS Swaminathan was a scientist, an administrator, and a visionary leader committed to the service of the motherland. — Alok Singh
The national security of any nation broadly comprises defense security, energy security, food security, and financial security. These four-dimensional security components depend on natural resources, human resources, technological capabilities, and the latest addition, the demographic dividend. Bharat has to struggle a lot to become self-reliant in food security. The attained food security is not satisfactory on many parameters of sustainability.
The food security of our nation highlights the remembrance of terms like Ship-to-Mouth and Green Revolution. Dr. Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan is the man who is credited for formulating the path to self-reliance in the food security of the nation. M S Swaminathan during his earlier days in the year 1954, had declined the offer of a teaching position at the University of Wisconsin and returned to Bharat to work at Indian Agriculture Research Institute. His aim was to produce enough food for the nation. Despite the green revolution forcing the adoption of chemical-based agriculture production he consistently looked for ways to promote sustainable development goals-based agriculture practices which he labeled as a transition from the ‘green revolution’ to the ‘evergreen revolution’. The green revolution was the idea of decades of the 1960s when the country was struggling to feed the nation. The dire situation can be imagined by the fact that the prime minister of the country had to appeal to its citizens to skip one meal per week. Whatever agriculture practices were promoted during those time was for survival.
Today the agriculture practices are in the grip of foreign-owned seed companies, foreign-owned fertilizer companies, foreign-owned pesticide companies, foreign-owned food processing companies, foreign-owned research grant-based policy recommendations, and the conspiracy to control food and health of the Bhartiya’s by the Non-Bhartiya’s.
Today the nation is not starving but is struggling for a healthy diet. The situations have changed but the challenges have remained. The challenge is of self-sufficiency in food production which provides nutrients as well as health and the practices are aligned as per the agriculture climatic zones. The challenge is to save our taste, our seeds, our soil, our water, our health, our food tradition, and our food habit-culture.
The battlefield of agriculture practices has changed. The enemies of our food security are forcing on us completely new food products. It’s not restricted to the quality of food but there are many new challenges and we are seriously worried, our policymakers and scientists are marching on this and it is a work in progress.
The conflicting interests do clash, sometimes in courts and sometimes on the table of regulatory bodies. The appeal of the current prime minister of the country to promote traditional agriculture practices reflects the careful migration to organic farming and the due diligence given to learnings from Sri Lanka’s sudden migration to organic farming. Whatever Sri Lanka did was not restricted to a healthy diet for its people rather it was an attempt to give befitting replies to its enemies who led Sri Lanka to debt tarp and policy paralysis. Later we did rescue our neighbor. The foreign multinational enemies tried their best to give us a warning that don’t play with our food business but the strong leadership of the nation maneuvered well our agriculture practices to match sustainable development goals, as well as humanity, and achieve healthy food security for the country.
We admit that the agriculture sector is the biggest employer worldwide. Still, deliberately the vested interests are promoting the propaganda that as a country transit to developed status from developing status, the people employed in the agriculture sector decline while those in the manufacturing and services sector rise. And so, the solution lies in machine-based, chemical-based, and laboratory-provided seeds. Such conspiracy has been demolished on many occasions by our own nationalist-oriented scientists as well as activists and think tank groups working to influence public policy.
Food security is linked with environmental concerns, climate change, sustainable development goals, organic farming, traditional agriculture practices, eliminating uses of carcinogenic chemical fertilizers, health impact on producers and consumers of chemical-based farm outputs, raising farmer’s income, agricultural products value addition, farm to plate supply chain models, agriculture-related credit and related financial facilities, and many more. The need of the nation in the year 1960 for urgent food security at any cost led the agriculture practices to move towards chemical fertilizer-based high-yield crop varieties.
In a special message dated 28 April 2023 to the ‘Global Forum on Agriculture Research and Innovation’ (GFAR), Dr. Swaminathan strengthened the need to revive ‘Forgotten Foods’, promotion of locally developed and locally cultivated foods. He expressed his displeasure with the inadequate research and development of local foods which resulted in reduced market acceptance and disadvantage in competition with those of commodity food products. He warned that presenting, producing, and encouraging homogeneous food to all by discouraging diversified food products leads to serious health issues. In this message, he expressed his concern about farmer’s income, logistics, and almost all the related aspects of agriculture and food. He appealed to the researchers to do work that is pro-poor. His message reflects that vested interests are consistently conspiring to snatch our food freedom. The idea of factory-processed homogeneous food for all is lethal and needs to be arrested through public policy and awareness campaigns.
Dr. MS Swaminathan was born on 7 August 1925 at Kumbakonam in the Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu and died on 28 September 2023 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He owns a lengthy list of publications as well as public recognitions. He received the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award in 1961, the fourth highest civilian award Padma Shri in 1967, the third highest civilian award Padma Bhushan in 1972, and the second highest civilian award Padma Vibhushan in 1989. His quiver includes 84 honorary doctorates, 33 national and 32 international awards. He was a scientist, an administrator, and a visionary leader committed to the service of the motherland.
(Alok Singh is a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management Indore and a freelancer academician).
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