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KAUTILYA
High-Yielding
Politician
A
belated tribute to the political spearhead of India's Green Revolution
By
Jairam Ramesh
C
Subramaniam, who passed away on November 8, played a decisive role in
transforming Indian agriculture in the mid-1960s and dispelling our begging
bowl, basket-case image. Many contributed to launching the Green Revolution,
a term coined by Dr William Gaud of the US Department of Agriculture in
October 1968, in India: the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, many Indian
and foreign scientists, a few economists and administrators, two Indian
prime ministers and one American president and most of all the Punjab
farmer. The crisis atmosphere also helped. But CS, as he was called, was
the pivot.
 I
spent a morning with CS at his Chennai residence on April 23, 1983 when
he reminisced about those momentous days. Nobody wanted the food and agriculture
portfolio in June 1964 when Lal Bahadur Shastri was finalising his ministry.
Sanjeeva Reddy had almost accepted but declined at the last minute. Shastri
went personally to CS who held the steel and heavy industries portfolio
under Nehru. Incidentally, it was during CS' tenure in this ministry that
India's first move towards economic liberalism took place, inspired by
the Report of Steel Control prepared by a committee chaired by K.N. Raj
in 1963.
When CS
took over, the nation was already in the throes of an agricultural crisis.
We were importing 3-4 million tonnes of wheat annually from the US. One-fifth
of America's wheat crop was moving to India. In the 1950s, Indian planning
was obsessed with heavy industry and agriculture was seen through land
reforms, community development, cooperativisation and motivation.
CS gave
a new, threefold thrust to Indian agriculture-technological, economic
and organisational. He reorganised the Indian Council of Agricultural
Research and, for the first time, appointed a scientist, Dr B.P. Pal,
as its head. It was another 40-year-old geneticist at the Indian Agricultural
Research Institute, M.S. Swaminathan, who made CS aware that new, high-yielding
wheat varieties had been developed by Norman Borlaug's team in Mexico
and that India must straightaway launch large-scale field demonstrations.
There was
stout resistance to the use of these varieties and the new wheat strategy
from the Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission. But the situation
was getting desperate. CS got Shastri's approval to import 250 tonnes
of wheat seeds in 1965. A staggering 18,000 tonnes were imported in 1966.
It was the latter that triggered the Green Revolution in wheat. Indian
scientists improved upon these varieties.
Providing
the Big Picture: To provide incentives for the new technology, in
August 1964 CS got L.K. Jha, then Shastri's secretary, to chair what came
to be known as the Foodgrain Prices Committee. Based on its recommendations,
the Agricultural Prices Commission (APC) and the Food Corporation of India
(FCI) came into being in January 1965. Noted economist M.L. Dantwala,
who had served on Jha's committee, became APC's first chairman. For FCI,
CS selected T.A. Pai. The National Seeds Corporation and the Central Warehousing
Corporation also came into being at about this time, as did the National
Dairy Development Board for which CS backed Dr V. Kurien and allowed him
to operate out of Anand, much to the chagrin of his colleagues in Delhi.
Kurien was to usher in the White Revolution in India later. CS overruled
Biju Patnaik's objections and got B. Sivaraman who had vast field experience
in agriculture and irrigation in Orissa as his agriculture secretary in
May 1965. If CS provided the big picture, Sivaraman was the details man.
His Bitter Sweet is a fascinating blow-by-blow account of the Green
Revolution in wheat and rice.
The monsoon
failed miserably in 1965 (and in 1966 as well). In November 1965, CS met
with Orville Freeman, the US agriculture secretary, in Rome. The two signed
the so-called Treaty of Rome. This accord put down on paper what CS had
already launched with the support of Shastri. It committed India to end
imports of foodgrains by 1971 with more investments in agriculture, irrigation,
research, seeds, fertilisers and with appropriate economic and marketing
policies. In return, the Americans agreed to send more wheat to India-14
million tonnes in 1965 and 1966. Shastri despatched CS to Washington in
December 1965. B.K. Nehru wrote in his memoirs, Nice Guys Finish Second,
that President Lyndon Johnson told him, "That Subber Mainyam of yours,
he is a good feller." These warm sentiments are echoed in the Texan's
own memoirs, The Vantage Point.
CS' unwavering
belief in science and technology, his unstinted encouragement of education
and research, his remarkable ability to pick and back outstanding administrators
and professionals, his receptivity to new ideas and his impatience with
dogma, all have great contemporary relevance.
(The
author is with the Congress party. These are his personal views.)
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