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The modern-day prophet who saved India in 1960s

Shreekant Sambrani

If there is one person who India needs to acknowledge as being responsible for its being in a reasonably peaceable state today, it would undoubtedly be the good doctor Norman Borlaug, who passed away at 95 last week. But for his heroic and valiant efforts, for once adequately and wholeheartedly supported by the Government of India, we would have been the Malthusian basket case many had predicted in the early 1960s we would be.

Adequate food production has always been a problem for us (this drought year only highlights that 45 years after the Green Revolution, we are still in a precarious position). The year 1965 was a terrible drought year, the worst in proportionate terms in modern history (foodgrain output dropped nearly 20 per cent from the previous year). It was also one of the most widespread shortages — virtually no state was spared. The government of the day, desperate to feed the burgeoning population, turned to what was then (and still is, for the most part) the world’s breadbasket, the United States.

Indira Gandhi, who became Prime Minister in January 1966, went virtually hat in hand to President Lyndon Johnson (whom she couldn’t stand). Surplus US grain came to India under US PL-480 at a rate of one shipload a day, leading to the not so complimentary reference to our ship-to-mouth existence.

But that was a temporary reprieve, which lasted four years or so. The real key was to boost production in India. The government requested the help of the US establishment, but not directly from the US government. Specifically, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations were approached. The former had taken up a Mexico Hunger project from 1944 onwards. Norman Borlaug (Ph.D. in plant pathology) went there from DuPont and did three things: one, bred new varieties which resisted rust (a plant fungus prevalent there); two, realised that the depleted soils did not provide adequate nutrients to the plant and hence increased the application of chemical fertilisers; and three, introduced new genes in the plant, which made it shorter with stouter stalks able to bear the weight of the much heavier ear of wheat. Gradually, Mexican farmers accepted these innovations and the national wheat production increased sixfold in 20 years. These elements together constituted what later came to be called the Green Revolution (a term he did not like).

Dr Borlaug came to India in 1965 and persuaded India (and Pakistan) to accept Mexican varieties. Some 18,000 tons of seed were imported and planted with accelerated trials. 1966 was also a drought year, but not as bad as 1965. By 1967, there was a remarkable turnaround and 1968 showed a jump of 50 per cent in our wheat production to reach 16 million tons (today we produce nearly five times as much on twice the acreage), even though only a few districts in the North were covered under the new High-Yielding Varieties programme.

At the height of the Green Revolution, there was a remarkable confluence of minds and work in unison. C. Subramaniam proved to be a most enlightened agriculture minister, ably assisted by B. Sivaraman, an old-time ICS officer, the very model of an able and effective bureaucrat, M.S. Swaminathan, the chief scientist in India, and of course, Dr Borlaug. The two US foundations provided extensive physical and financial support. In fact, the India representatives of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations were given offices adjoining Mr Subramaniam’s at New Delhi’s Krishi Bhavan.

Dr Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. He was working in the field in Mexico, when his wife came to tell him of the call from Oslo (coincidentally, he was of Norwegian descent, growing up in Minnesota) and he, the modest and publicity-shy man that he was, did not believe it. He warned the world in his Nobel acceptance speech that the job had only just begun and there was a great deal to be done, especially by way of population control, if we were to pull our species back from the brink of extinction. He was a true modern-day prophet.

Subsequently, he applied a similar approach to paddy, the world’s premier foodgrain. His research in the Philippines led to HYVs of paddy, which is at the heart of the Chinese agriculture miracle.

He funded the World Food Prize out of the money he received (Dr V. Kurien, father of the White Revolution, was one of its early recipients). He continued to visit India regularly and advise the government. He was one of the few who were listened to reverentially, although the Left always believed that the Green Revolution favoured large farmers (this was largely a matter of economic policy, not within the realm of technology, which was, in fact, scale-neutral). In the 1990s, carping criticism began to be voiced about the supposed ill-effects of the Green Revolution on the environment (as in all good things, we forgot to exercise moderation, and went overboard with fertilisers and pesticides, which cannot be blamed on the technology or its pioneers), as well as its not-so salutary impact on income distribution (again he acknowledged that much still needed to be done, but feeding people was the first priority. He continued his India interest, but also began to work on Africa, where his efforts have not yet met with the same success.

Lately, he was much concerned about the need for further innovation, to evolve seed that had better moisture-stress resistance, provided greater yield in otherwise inhospitable climates, and kept us one jump ahead of the population increases. He championed genetic engineering, saying that it was a directed approach, and not the hit-or-miss type that was involved in traditional plant breeding. He advocated caution and adequate testing, but favoured increased and more concentrated research in this direction as the only viable strategy suited for time-bound challenges. He believed, rightly so, that "back-to-the-nature" is not a luxury the world can now afford.

Let us take a moment to pay tribute to this modern-day miracle worker, who without a doubt saved the greatest number of lives in history.

Shreekant Sambrani, who has taught at IIM Ahmedabad and helped set up the Institute of Rural Management, has been a consultant to the United Nations and the Commonwealth Secretariat and recently advised the Maharashtra government and the Prime Minister’s Council of Economic Advisers