Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan (7 August 1925 – 28 September 2023) was an Indian geneticist and plant breeder, administrator and humanitarian. He has been called the main architect of the green revolution in India for his leadership and role in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice.

Swaminathan's collaborative scientific efforts with Norman Borlaug, spearheading a mass movement with farmers and other scientists and backed by public policies, saved India and Pakistan from certain famine-like conditions in the 1960s. His leadership as director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines was instrumental in his being awarded the first World Food Prize in 1987, recognized as one of the highest honours in the field of agriculture. The United Nations Environment Programme has called him "the Father of Economic Ecology". Swaminathan chaired the National Commission on Farmers in 2004, which recommended far-reaching ways to improve India's farming system. He was the founder of an eponymous research foundation. During his tenure he put forward a bill for the recognition of women farmers in India.

Life

Early life and education

Swaminathan was born in a Tamil Brahmin family in Kumbakonam, Madras Presidency, on 7 August 1925. He was the second son of general surgeon M. K. Sambasivan and Parvati Thangammal Sambasivan. At age 11, after his father's death, Swaminathan was looked after by his father's brother. Swaminathan’s parents were second-generation descendants of migrants from Thanjavur, and were natives of Mankombu, Alappuzha, Kerala. This was the reason he was carrying Mankombu in his name.

Swaminathan was educated at a local high school and later at the Catholic Little Flower High School in Kumbakonam, from which he matriculated at age 15. From childhood, he interacted with farming and farmers; his extended family grew rice, mangoes, and coconut, and later expanded into other areas such as coffee. He saw the impact that fluctuations in the price of crops had on his family, including the devastation that weather and pests could cause to crops as well as incomes.

His parents wanted him to study medicine. With that in mind, he started off his higher education with zoology. But when he witnessed the impacts of the Bengal famine of 1943 during the Second World War and shortages of rice throughout the sub-continent, he decided to devote his life to ensuring India had enough food. Despite his family background, and belonging to an era where medicine and engineering were considered much more prestigious, he chose agriculture.

He went on to finish his undergraduate degree in zoology at Maharaja's College in Trivandrum, Kerala (now known as University College, Thiruvananthapuram at the University of Kerala). He then studied at University of Madras (Madras Agricultural College, now the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University) from 1940 to 1944 and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Science. During this time he was also taught by Cotah Ramaswami, a professor of agronomy.

In 1947 he moved to the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi to study genetics and plant breeding. He obtained a post-graduate degree with high distinction in cytogenetics in 1949. His research focused on the genus Solanum, with specific attention to the potato. Social pressures resulted in him competing in the examinations for civil services, through which he was selected to the Indian Police Service. At the same time, an opportunity for him arose in the agriculture field in the form of a UNESCO fellowship in genetics in the Netherlands. He chose genetics.

Netherlands and Europe

Swaminathan was a UNESCO fellow at the Wageningen Agricultural University's Institute of Genetics in the Netherlands for eight months. The demand for potatoes during the Second World War resulted in deviations in age-old crop rotations. This caused golden nematode infestations in certain areas such as reclaimed agricultural lands. Swaminathan worked on adapting genes to provide resilience against such parasites, as well as cold weather. To this effect, the research succeeded. Ideologically the university influenced his later scientific pursuits in India with respect to food production. During this time he also made a visit to the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in war-torn Germany; this would later influence him deeply as during his next visit, a decade later, he saw that the Germans had transformed Germany, both infrastructurally and energetically.

United Kingdom

In 1950, he moved to study at the Plant Breeding Institute of the University of Cambridge School of Agriculture. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1952 for his thesis "Species Differentiation, and the Nature of Polyploidy in certain species of the genus Solanum – section Tuberarium". The following December he stayed for a week with F.L. Brayne, a former Indian Civil Service officer, whose experiences with rural India influenced Swaminathan in his later years.

United States of America

Swaminathan then spent 15 months in the United States. He accepted a post-doctoral research associateship at the University of Wisconsin's Laboratory of Genetics to help set up a USDA potato research station. The laboratory at the time had Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg on its faculty. His associateship ended in December 1953. Swaminathan turned down a faculty position in order to continue to make a difference back home in India.

India

Swaminathan returned to India in early 1954. There were no jobs in his specialisation and it was only three months later that he received an opportunity through a former professor to work temporarily as an assistant botanist at Central Rice Research Institute in Cuttack. At Cuttack, he was under an indica-japonica rice hybridisation program started by Krishnaswami Ramiah. This stint would go on to influence his future work with wheat. Half a year later he joined Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi in October 1954 as an assistant cytogeneticist. Swaminathan was critical of India importing food grains when seventy percent of India was dependent on agriculture. Further drought and famine-like situations were developing in the country.

Swaminathan and Norman Borlaug collaborated, with Borlaug touring India and sending supplies for a range of Mexican dwarf varieties of wheat, which were to be bred with Japanese varieties. Initial testing in an experimental plot showed good results. The crop was high-yield, good quality, and disease free. There was hesitation by farmers to adopt the new variety whose high yields were unnerving. In 1964, following repeated requests by Swaminathan to demonstrate the new variety, he was given funding to plant small demonstration plots. A total of 150 demonstration plots on 1 hectare were planted. The results were promising and the anxieties of the farmers were reduced. More modifications were made to the grain in the laboratory to better suit Indian conditions. The new wheat varieties were sown and in 1968 production went to 17 million tonnes, 5 million tonnes more than the last harvest.

Just before receiving his Nobel Prize in 1970, Norman Borlaug wrote to Swaminathan:

Notable contributions were made by Indian agronomists and geneticists such as Gurdev Khush and Dilbagh Singh Athwal. He was with IARI between 1954 and 1972.

Administrator and educator

In 1972, Swaminathan was appointed as the director-general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and a secretary to the Government of India. In 1979, in a rare move for a scientist, he was made a principal secretary, a senior position in the Government of India. The next year he was shifted to the Planning Commission. As director-general of ICAR, he pushed for technical literacy, setting up centres all over India for this. Droughts during this period led him to form groups to watch weather and crop patterns, with the ultimate aim of protecting the poor from malnutrition. His shift to the Planning Commission for two years resulted in the introduction of women and environment with respect to development in India's five year plans for the first time.

In 1982, he was made the first Asian director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. He was there until 1988. In 2005 Bruce Alberts, President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences said of Swaminathan: "At 80, M.S. retains all the energy and idealism of his youth, and he continues to inspire good behaviour and more idealism from millions of his fellow human beings on this Earth. For that, we can all be thankful". Swaminathan had the aim of a hunger-free India by 2007.

thumb|Swaminathan (right) with [[Arun Kumar Sharma|A. K. Sharma (left), considered as the father of Indian cytology, in 2013 at the 100th Indian Science Congress.]]

Swaminathan was the chair of the National Commission on Farmers constituted in 2004. In 2007, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam nominated Swaminathan to the Rajya Sabha. Swaminathan introduced one bill during his tenure, The Women Farmers' Entitlements Bill 2011, which lapsed. One of the aims it proposed was recognising women farmers. and bringing research to decision-makers in the field of hunger and nutrition.

Personal life and death

He was married to Mina Swaminathan, whom he met in 1951 while they were both studying at Cambridge. They lived in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Their three daughters are Soumya Swaminathan (a paediatrician), Madhura Swaminathan (an economist), and Nitya Swaminathan (gender and rural development).

Gandhi and Ramana Maharshi influenced his life. Of the 2000 acres owned by their family, they donated one-third to Vinoba Bhave's cause. In an interview in 2011, he said that when he was young, he followed Swami Vivekananda.

Swaminathan died at home in Chennai on 28 September 2023, at age 98.

Scientific career

Potato

In the 1950s, Swaminathan's explanation and analysis of the origin and evolutionary processes of potato was a major contribution. He elucidated its origin as an autotetraploid and its cell division behaviour. His findings related to polyploids were also significant. As of 2016, he had received 33 national and 32 international awards. In 2004, an agricultural think-tank in India named an annual award after Swaminathan, the eponymously named 'Dr. M.S. Swaminathan Award for Leadership in Agriculture'.

On 9 February 2024, he was conferred the Bharat Ratna posthumously, the highest civilian award of the Republic of India. On that occasion, then PM of India, Narendra Modi wrote:

Honorary doctorates and fellowships

thumb|[[Norman Borlaug|Norman E. Borlaug being awarded the first M. S. Swaminathan Award for Leadership in Agriculture by President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam in New Delhi in 2005.]]

Swaminathan was the recipient of 84 honorary doctorates and was a guide for numerous Ph.D. scholars.

Swaminathan had been elected a fellow of a number of science academies in India. Internationally he had been recognised as a fellow by 30 academies of science and societies across the world including the United States, the United Kingdom (Fellow of the Royal Society), Russia, Sweden, Italy, China, Bangladesh, as well as the European Academy of Arts, Science and Humanities. Selected publications include:

In addition he has written a few books on the general theme of his life's work, biodiversity and sustainable agriculture for alleviation of hunger. Swaminathan's books, papers, dialogues and speeches include:

Controversies

In the 1970s, a scientific paper in which Swaminathan and his team claimed to have produced a mutant breed of wheat by gamma irradiation of a Mexican variety (Sonora 64) resulting in Sharbati Sonora, claimed to have a very high lysine content, led to a major controversy. The case was claimed to be an error made by the laboratory assistant. The episode was also compounded by the suicide of an agricultural scientist. It has been studied as part of a systemic problem in Indian agriculture research.

A paper published in the 25 November 2018 edition of Current Science titled 'Modern Technologies for Sustainable Food and Nutrition Security' listed Swaminathan as a co-author. The article was criticised by a number of scientific experts, including K. VijayRaghavan, the principal scientific adviser to the Government of India, who commented that it was "deeply flawed and full of errors". Swaminathan claimed that his role in the paper was "extremely limited" and that he shouldn't have been named as the co-author.

Explanatory footnotes

Citations

Cited and general references and further reading

Biographies

; Books

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; Short biographies

  • Search Results for author Swaminathan, M. S. on AGRICOLA, US National Agricultural Library
  • Official Rajya Sabha, Parliament of India, profile, p. 515
  • Catalogue of the Swaminathan papers at the Archives at NCBS