M.S. Swaminathan: The Man Who Fed India

by Priyambada Jayakumar

English 324 pages 1 edition

‘Dr Saab, we will take up your seeds!’ said the intrepid farmers from Jaunti, a village near Delhi. This was the turning point a young undaunted scientist named Monkumbu Sambasivan Swaminathan (M.S. Swaminathan) was looking for. It was that giant leap of faith that would help him engineer the agricultural transformation popularly christened the ‘Green Revolution’ that would be the crucial hinge on which the fortunes of the country would eventually turn and leapfrog her destiny from the ‘begging bowl’ to the ‘breadbasket’. Swaminathan worked tirelessly against tremendous odds to disprove doomsday prophecies and Malthusian theories, with a simple but profound four-letter word philosophy-food; and the idea that food and nutrition security were paramount for human progress. This remarkable and moving biography captures the life and times of this extraordinary hero, tracing his life from his childhood in Kumbakonam and his early introduction to agriculture and his eventual association with Nobel laureate, Norman Borlaug, which ultimately led to the Green Revolution. The book also takes an attentive look at all the various roles he deftly juggled in his long and illustrious career-that of a conservationist, an ardent feminist, a technocrat, a lifelong Gandhian, a philosopher, a diplomat and a celebrated institution builder-both in India and abroad. Easily one of India’s most decorated scientists, he received countless honours and honorary doctorates throughout his mammoth career including the Ramon Magsaysay award, and the first World Food Prize. He was also one of only three Indians to make it to the list of the Most influential Asians of the 20th century by TIME magazine; the other two Indians featured on this list were Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore; and finally being conferred with India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna in 2024. This book is a fitting tribute to M.S. Swaminathan, one of Indias’s tallest scientists and one of her greatest sons in his centennial year who championed the greatest freedom of them all-the freedom from hunger. It is a biography that will leave you not just in awe of his work but will also fill you with gratitude for what he achieved; with grace, dignity and above all else, unparalleled humanity.