The food that you easily take for granted, today, was scarce some 50 years ago. India was grappling with a devastating famine, then. The problem of feeding the increasing population was a huge task in front of the government. Former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri even made a public announcement to citizens of India to forgo one meal a day if possible to tighten the belt. . During this time, the task of finding a solution to this food scarcity problem was entrusted to a young and brilliant minister C. Subramaniam.
Experiments in his garden
C.S, as he was popularly called, was a staunch congressman. C.S believed that if India could get hold of some high-yielding seeds then the food problem could be confronted to an extent. He managed to get some good growing wheat seeds from America from another eminent scientist called Norman Borlough. At first, there were many in the cabinet who did not accept C.S.’s approach. C.S. decided to plant those wheat seeds in his own garden. After some months, he invited the government officials to come and see the result for themselves. To their surprise, the new wheat seeds, indeed had produced double the quantity. Previously, the older seeds available in the country could hardly match the yield of this American variety.
Green signal The government gave its green signal to popularise this variety and nearly 1,000 trial farms across the country started sowing the American wheat seeds.
The government made use of radio and newspapers to create awareness among people and farmers about the new seed variety. Indira Gandhi, who succeeded Sastri as Prime Minster, encouraged C.S to continue with his mission.
Tremendous results
In 1967 India for the first time since Independence harvested nearly 15 million tonnes of wheat. Many schools in North India were closed and the classrooms were used to store the wheat grains. From here India started her trek towards what was called the famous Green Revolution in achieving more food production.
In recognition for his commitment towards the county agrarian, C.S. was conferred the nation’s highest civilian honour Bharat Ratna in 1998. C. Subramanian is rightly called Father of Green Revolution.
NAF, a Public Charitable Trust, was founded in 2000 by him when he turned 90 years to usher the Second Agricultural Revolution, as well as to energise rural India. Apart from several projects of the foundation, its farm school activities are quite popular.
To educate the urban school children appreciate the importance of agriculture in India and to encourage them to help the rural community in a meaningful way, the Foundation has been conducting educational trip for the students to the rural area. Students are also taken to the Research and development Centre at Taramani, Chennai to learn about soil testing, food safety and personal hygiene etc.
(M.J. Prabu is The Hindu’s Agriculture correspondent. He writes the popular Farmer’s Notebook. Write to him at prabu.mj@thehindu.co.in)
