Chennai: One of the architects of India’s Green Revolution and a legendary agricultural scientist, Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, passed away at 11:20 am at his residence in Chennai on Thursday morning. He was 98 years old and is survived by three daughters – Soumya Swaminathan (chief scientist at WHO), Madhura Swaminathan, and Nitya Rao. His wife, Mina Swaminathan, had predeceased him last year.
Born on August 7, 1925, in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, M.S. Swaminathan also established the MSSRF, a research foundation for agriculture. In the 1960s, Swaminathan teamed up with the then Union Agriculture Minister, C. Subramanian, to usher in the great Green Revolution in the country.
MS Swaminathan's Career
As a postgraduate in cytogenetics and Ph.D. from Cambridge, at the age of 29, he joined the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, as an assistant cytogeneticist in October 1954. In 1966, he became the Director of the IARI. Around this time, India suffered from a food crisis due to a back-to-back drought situation. The country depended on imports of food grains from America. It was Swaminathan, along with C. Subramanian, who was instrumental in tiding over the crisis and making the country self-reliant in agriculture, although, in later years, the promotion of pesticides for crop growth came in for criticism.
A winner of the Ramon Magsaysay award (1971) and the Padma Shri (1967), Padma Bhushan (1972), and Padma Vibhushan (1989), Swaminathan served as Director-General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. He also served as Principal Secretary, Union Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation and as a Member (Agriculture, Rural Development, Science, and Education) of the Union Planning Commission in the 1980s.
“From 1982 to 1988, he headed the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. In 1987, he became the first to receive the World Food Prize,” an MSSRF official said.
He established the MSSRF as a not-for-profit trust in 1988 and later the research foundation to promote the use of modern science and technology for agricultural and rural development to improve the lives and livelihoods of communities.
MS Swaminathan's Leadership
During the UPA regime, he was appointed Chairman of the National Commission on Farmers. Under his leadership, the Commission recommended that the minimum support price should be at least 50% more than the weighted average cost of production. This is now widely quoted by farmer leaders.
Swaminathan also had a stint as a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha from 2007 to 2013. He was a recipient of the first World Agriculture Prize, instituted by the Indian Council of Food and Agriculture, in 2018.
