IT was this trio of the Ss — MS Swaminathan the scientist; C Subramaniam the politician and Minister of Agriculture; and B Sivaraman the civil servant (incidentally, all from Tamil Nadu) — who put together a plan that would turn India’s fate from that of a begging bowl to a bread basket and from abject scarcity to one of absolute abundance.

The first thing Subramaniam did after he took over as the Minister of Agriculture and Food was to call about twenty agricultural scientists to Krishi Bhawan (offices of the Ministry of Agriculture) in New Delhi in August 1964 and ask them each how they proposed to solve the country’s food shortage. He wanted to take India’s most pressing problems to her scientists and get them to come up with solutions. He was the first minister to actively seek out th

See Full Page