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India Today Magazine India Today Group Online www.123india.com icons builders & breakers makers of equity thought & action art & culture sporting spirit The Green Revolution Vikram Sarabhai Homi Bhaba Amartya Sen Mother Teresa Sri Aurobindo The Chipko Movement Ramanath Goenka Ela Bhatt Verghese Kurien THOUGHT & ACTION Satish Dhawan Raja Ramanna Abdul Kalam Jadunath Sarkar Indian music lovers click here INDIA TODAY © Living Media India Ltd India Today | The Newspaper Today | Aaj Tak | Business Today | Computers Today | India Today Plus | Teens Today | Music Today Art Today | Jokes & Toons | India Today Book Club | TNT Astro | TNT Movies Care Today | E-Greetings| TNT Forums | Archives | Syndications Write to us | About Us | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer © Living Media India Ltd file:///C|/WINDOWS/Desktop/GREATS/India%20Today%20Magazine%20-%20Thought%20and%20action.htm [7/14/03 11:48:26 AM] India Today Magazine India Today Group Online www.123india.com THOUGHT & ACTION This is the real story behind the Green Revolution. The most spectacular event in Indian agriculture during the current Grain of Truth century -- perhaps this millennium -- has been the introduction of dwarf high-yielding varieties of wheat, Lerma Rojo and Sonora 64, on Indian soils during the mid-'60s. These two varieties of wheat were imported from CIMMYT, an international institute in Mexico devoted to research in icons maize and wheat. Nobel laureate Norman E. Borlaug builders & breakers fathered the high-yielding varieties and the world remains makers of equity indebted to him for making food available to millions on this planet. thought & action art & culture India was in the grip of a food crisis in the mid-'60s. It was sporting spirit The Green Revolution indeed a situation of a ship-to-mouth food economy. With domestic production of wheat hovering around 12 million tonnes, another 10 million tonnes were imported annually The Green Revolution By Ashok Gulati from the US under the infamous Public Law 480 during 1965- Vikram Sarabhai Crack team steered India out of its 66 and 1966-67. The US administration often used this Homi Bhaba food crisis. This is the real story leverage of a life-saving handout to squeeze India. Besides, Amartya Sen about how it was done. things looked so bleak that the Paddock brothers, William Mother Teresa and Paul, declared India as an incurable case of a nation Sri Aurobindo heading for a severe famine by 1975, which could claim as The Chipko Movement many as 10 million lives. Ramanath Goenka Ela Bhatt They had a point. Efforts were being made in India to raise Verghese Kurien foodgrain production since the early 1950s, but without any Satish Dhawan major success. In March 1963, Norman Borlaug visited India and sent in 100 kg of seed for each of the four high-yield Raja Ramanna varieties (HYV) of wheat for trials. Lerma Rojo and Sonora 64 Abdul Kalam performed best. But these were experiments, and like many Jadunath Sarkar such experiments, there were several ifs and buts with research and policy. With the demise of Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964, Lal Bahadur Shastri became the prime minister. C. Subramaniam, the minister for steel, mines and heavy engineering in Nehru's cabinet, was now given agriculture, a sector which was weak and under severe pressure because of low-yielding varieties of seeds and an exploding population. Subramaniam began to systematically set the stage for an overhaul of the way foodgrain was grown, sold Indian music lovers, and distributed. He started off with a remunerative price policy for farmers, which gave birth to the Agricultural Prices click here Commission and Food Corporation of India in 1965. An officer, Ralph Cummings from Rockefeller Foundation met Subramaniam and told him about dwarf HYVS of wheat, but also conveyed that Indian scientists and bureaucracy were going very slow on these. So Subramaniam decided to reorganise agricultural research -- in other words, free it from bureaucracy -- and appointed Dr B.P. Pal, a renowned scientist, as director-general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), got pay scales of scientists improved, and went in for targeted and time-bound research. file:///C|/WINDOWS/Desktop/INDIA%20GREATS/India%20Today%20Magazine-green%20revolution.htm (1 of 3) [7/14/03 11:48:37 AM] India Today Magazine In 1965, 250 tonnes of Sonora 64 and Lerma Rojo were imported for seed multiplication, a technique that is standard practice, which yielded about 5,000 tonnes of seed. Subramaniam was now ready for his Big Bang. But to play his final stroke, he wanted a greater quantity of these seeds than he had from domestic seed multiplication. He wanted to import a large quantity of these HYV seeds from Mexico to give the effort a single, massive boost. But there was severe opposition to his idea of importing these new varieties in Parliament as well as in public fora, especially from the Left parties, socio-logists, some economists and bureaucrats. And here lies the contribution of this man -- he steered through the political hurdles, the bureaucratic wrangles, and public debates, first with the support of Shastri and later with Indira Gandhi. Finally, 18,000 tonnes of HYV wheat seeds were imported in 1966 -- and about a thousand national demonstrations were held all over India over that year and the next. It all dissipated as quickly; the result was a miracle. The new varieties had more than doubled the existing yields. Farmers in Punjab lapped up the new seeds. There was such a scramble for seeds that in some places, farmers are said to have paid Rs 10 for a single seed. When they did not get the seeds, some even tried to steal them. India harvested 17 million tonnes of wheat in 1967-68, five million tonnes more than the previous best of 12 million tonnes. There was no place to store this sudden burst of grain. Schools in rural Punjab were closed down to store the new harvest in classrooms. A green revolution was ushered in. Indian scientists quickly got down to the job of indigenising these Mexican varieties, especially their colour and baking qualities. M.S. Swaminathan, G.S. Athwal, S.P. Kohli, V.S. Mathur, to name a few, took a lead in this daunting task. Athwal and his team in Punjab Agricultural University brought out a cross called Kalyan, named after Athwal's village. At the same time, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Delhi, under the leadership of Swaminathan and Kohli, brought out Sona. Incidentally, Kalyan and Sona were from the same breeding material and therefore it was decided to release them together as KalyanSona. Sonalika was another wonder variety developed by Indian scientists from Mexican seeds. The rest is history, the present and the future. Today India harvests more than 70 million tonnes of wheat every year. Whom do we acknowledge for this wonder on the food front? There is no doubt that Subramaniam's vision, dynamism and design to launch what is now called the new agricultural strategy was unique. Alas, his contribution was acknowledged only 30 years later when he was honoured with a Bharat Ratna. Swaminathan is perhaps the only scientist who has been honoured with a number of awards, including the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan. This nation is yet to salute other scientists like Athwal, Kohli, Mathur and the like, who contributed in no less measure to this revolution that made India self-sufficient in food. But the real unsung heroes of this green revolution, as Subramaniam himself puts it, were Punjabi farmers. He said, "They were the pioneers in this technology and, but for them, I am convinced we would not have made a success of it ... They had developed into a very hardy lot of enterprising people ... And therefore when this new technology was offered to them they took to it like fish to water. Everybody vied with one another to demonstrate that he was best able to utilise the new technology." These are the real people behind the Green Revolution. Ashok Gulati is professor (NABARD chair), Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. file:///C|/WINDOWS/Desktop/INDIA%20GREATS/India%20Today%20Magazine-green%20revolution.htm (2 of 3) [7/14/03 11:48:37 AM] India Today Magazine INDIA TODAY © Living Media India Ltd India Today | The Newspaper Today | Aaj Tak | Business Today | Computers Today | India Today Plus | Teens Today | Music Today Art Today | Jokes & Toons | India Today Book Club | TNT Astro | TNT Movies Care Today | E-Greetings| TNT Forums | Archives | Syndications Write to us | About Us | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer © Living Media India Ltd file:///C|/WINDOWS/Desktop/INDIA%20GREATS/India%20Today%20Magazine-green%20revolution.htm (3 of 3) [7/14/03 11:48:37 AM] India Today Magazine India Today Group Online www.123india.com THOUGHT & ACTION To the generation now in their 50s Vikram Sarabhai was the father of our space programme. He was the man who not Space Voyager only developed and launched rockets, but who was passionately committed to use all aspects of science and technology in general and space applications in particular as "levers of development". This was particularly the case with regard to satellite-based remote sensing of natural icons resources, telecommunication and direct-to-village builders & breakers community "development TV". makers of equity thought & action Sarabhai was much more than a highly talented scientist. He art & culture was a dreamer, creator and innovator, not only in science and technology, or in its organisation and management but sporting spirit Vikram Sarabhai also in a huge range of developmental institutions ranging from the Space Science & Technology Centre, Trivandrum, to the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and the The Green Revolution By Ashok Parthasarathi Nehru Foundation for Development.