MS Swaminathan, hailed as the “Godfather of the Green Revolution,” played a pivotal role in transforming India from a nation on the brink of famine to a food-secure powerhouse through his scientific innovations in agriculture. His legacy, detailed in a new biography, underscores how his farmer-first approach and adaptation of high-yield crops saved millions from hunger and reshaped global food security.
In the mid-1960s, India faced a dire food crisis, with the average person surviving on just 417 grams of food per day and relying heavily on erratic US wheat imports. Years of colonial policies had left agriculture stagnant, yields low, and soils depleted, prompting then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to urge citizens to substitute wheat with sweet potatoes. This period of “ship-to-mouth” survival became a national trauma, highlighting the urgent need for change that Swaminathan would help drive.
Born in 1925 in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, Swaminathan was deeply affected by the 1943 Bengal Famine, which killed over three million people. He abandoned plans to study medicine, instead pursuing plant genetics with the conviction that “if medicine can save a few lives, agriculture can save millions.” After earning his PhD at Cambridge and working at institutions like the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, he met American agronomist Norman Borlaug, whose high-yielding dwarf wheat varieties would become the foundation of India’s agricultural transformation.
Swaminathan’s collaboration with Borlaug led to the import of 18,000 tonnes of Mexican wheat seeds to India in 1966, which he adapted to local conditions. He developed golden-hued varieties like Kalyan Sona and Sonalika—named for the Hindi word for gold—that yielded two to three times more than traditional wheat and resisted diseases and pests. This initiative faced significant hurdles, including bureaucratic resistance and farmer skepticism, but Swaminathan overcame them by personally engaging with communities, even enlisting prisoners to stitch seed packets for rapid distribution during sowing seasons.
The Green Revolution rapidly doubled wheat yields within a few years, turning states like Punjab and Haryana into breadbaskets and achieving food self-sufficiency by 1971. Swaminathan’s “farmer-first” philosophy was central to this success; he believed that “the field is also a laboratory” and that scientists must listen to farmers’ insights. He spent weekends in villages, addressing soil moisture, seed prices, and pests, and worked with tribal women in Odisha to improve rice varieties, emphasizing that “science must walk with compassion.”
Swaminathan’s influence extended globally as the first Indian Director-General of the International Rice Research Institute, where he spread high-yield rice across Southeast Asia, boosting production in countries like Indonesia and Vietnam. He advised governments from Malaysia to Tanzania, helped rebuild Cambodia’s rice gene bank, trained North Korean women farmers, and mentored agronomists during the Ethiopian drought. His work also shaped China’s hybrid-rice program and inspired Africa’s Green Revolution, earning him the inaugural World Food Prize in 1987 and recognition as a “living legend” by the UN.
Despite the Green Revolution’s successes, Swaminathan acknowledged its environmental costs, such as groundwater depletion, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss from intensive monocultures. In the 1990s, he advocated for an “Evergreen Revolution” that balanced high productivity with ecological sustainability, focusing on conserving water, soil, and seeds. Through his MS Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, he promoted biodiversity, coastal restoration, and digital literacy for farmers, long before “agri-tech” became mainstream.
Swaminathan remained committed to farmer welfare throughout his life, chairing India’s National Commission on Farmers from 2004 to 2006 and calling for policies to address distress and suicides. Even in his late 90s, he publicly supported protests against controversial agricultural reforms. Reflecting on his impact, former Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik noted that Swaminathan’s legacy reminds us that “freedom from hunger is the greatest freedom of all,” achieved through a rare blend of scientific rigor and human empathy until his death in 2023 at age 98.