The architects of Green Revolution from T.N.

The partnership between C. Subramaniam, who suddenly became Union Minister for Food and Agriculture in 1964, and M.S. Swaminathan proved to be game changer in the farm sector

It was around 10 p.m. on June 9, 1964, that C. Subramaniam, a Congress veteran from Tamil Nadu, popularly known as CS, received a call from Lal Bahadur Shastri, who had just taken over as the Prime Minister following the death of Jawaharlal Nehru in late May. He wanted Subramaniam, who held the plum portfolios of Steel, Mines and Heavy Engineering in the Nehru Cabinet, to look after the “less glamorous” subjects of Agriculture and Food.

As recounted in the second volume of his memoirs, Hand of Destiny, Subramaniam was “a little taken aback” as he considered himself a successful Steel Minister.

But the problem Shastri faced was that he could find no one else in his Cabinet willing to accept Agriculture, which was even regarded as the “political graveyard”. Events that followed this development justified Shastri’s selection and proved how eminently qualified Subramaniam was in handling the two crucial subjects, especially at a time when the country went through a spell of acute food shortage.

The late 1950s and early 1960s marked the period when agriculture scientists, just as policy- makers, were seriously engaged in efforts to develop high-yielding crop varieties. The reason was not far to seek. India was meeting the bulk of its grain requirements through imports, especially from the U.S. under the Public Law(PL)-480 agreements since 1954.

The 29-year-old M.S. Swaminathan, also from Tamil Nadu, who had a postgraduate degree in cytogenetics and Ph.D. from Cambridge, joined the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, as assistant cytogeneticist in October 1954, according to M.S. Swaminathan: Scientist/Humanist/Conservationist. In 1959, he approached American agricultural scientist-plant pathologist Norman Borlaug to get some of his semi-dwarf wheat breeding material.

In March 1963, Borlaug visited different parts of north India, along with Dr Swaminathan, before supplying the suitable material. After successful trials with regard to semi-dwarf wheats of Mexican origin, Dr. Swaminathan and other scientists were convinced the country had the ability to achieve a breakthrough in wheat production. It was at this juncture that Subramaniam teamed up with Dr. Swaminathan and both went on to have an admirable policy maker-technocrat relationship. There was one more Tamilian who joined the duo — B. Sivaraman, who, as the Agriculture Secretary, provided critical support to all the new initiatives in agriculture.

While steps were on to replicate the trials on a wider scale, the proponents of the new approach had to face several hurdles, political and otherwise. Within the Cabinet, there were conflicts of view. Among the issues that disturbed many were the suitability of the new technology in agricultural production in Indian conditions, the desirability of fertilizer-intensive farming and the consequent dependence on imports of fertilizers and chemicals from the U.S., and the sustainability of the scheme of minimum support price.