Not until recently, never did I realize the importance of looking at the things we import & export. Especially when it comes to food grains. The excerpt mentioned below, taken from the book, INDIA 2020 – A Vision for the New Millennium Book, briefly explains how India became food grain self sufficient and had mostly put an end to recurring droughts of India. And from this I felt happy to have learnt about Chidambaram Subramaniam, fondly known as CS, for the kind of rare statesman he had been. In times when India was looking for ways to become self sufficient, It was said that he converted his own lands to convince his colleagues that Mexican wheat, which made Mexico self sufficient of wheat, could be grown in Indian conditions.

”Our house in Delhi had five acres of land where I played cricket. He found it difficult to convince his colleagues that the Mexican wheat could be grown in Indian conditions. So our lawns were converted into wheat fields overnight.” ——S S Rajsekar, Son of C Subramaniam to NYT

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It was the time when America had started making stringent policies and made it more difficult for India :

“Between 1960-64 India had got some 17 million tons of wheat under the PL 480 programme. But in June 1965, Johnson put India on the short-tether policy by approving just one million tons, enough for 2 months, at a time. Indians had not been very happy about being forced to import food from abroad. After taking over, Shastri appointed C Subramaniam as the new agricultural minister to fix things. But the 1965 monsoon also failed and as a result India faced the worst drought of the century and foodgrain production plummeted from 89 to 72 million tons.” —- Manoj Joshi, ORF

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So when India was under immense pressure, it was Political reforms combined scientific research & administration that pulled India out of the crisis. Lal Bahadur Shastri appointed C Subramaniam, a believer in science and reforms. CS in turn let senior scientist head ICAR instead of the administrators and increased the pay of scientist and elevated their morale. MS Swaminathan have been following the developments in West, works of Norman Borlaug(Father of Green Revolution), with the wheat varieties and have adopted them to Indian conditions and suggested them to Indian government. And with all of their efforts India became self sufficient in the production of food grains by 1971. In MS Swaninathan’s own words, the scientist behind India’s green revolution, ‘We had a unusual combination what I call a Symphony Orchestra, like a symphony, no jarring sound, the scientists, the administrators, the political leaders all of them came together. THAT IS HOW A REVOLUTION COULD TAKE PLACE”

In an interesting political event C Subramaniam lost the election of 1967, but fortunately the successor had continued in the path he paved.

“I remember my father saying at that time that he lost the election because he was busy with the Green Revolution works and did not campaign in the constituency” —- S S Rajasekar, son of CS to Deccan Chronicle

May we pay more attention to the the politicians and their work at least in the coming days. Here is to great Statesmen and Scientists 🥂🥂

In 1968 Indian Govt Released special stamp in recognition of Wheat Revolution

Wheat Revolution Stamp 1968

Source : Indian Postal Deparment

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Below is the excerpt from INDIA 2020 – A Vision for the New Millennium Book.

“It is also important to recall the experience of C. Subramaniam, the then Union minister of agriculture during the critical years of 1965­-66 and 1966-­67. He has stated that ‘we had to import 10 million tones and 11 million tones during these two years ­that was a danger signal, you can’t be depending upon imported food ­grains at that level, particularly when it came from 12000 miles away. During the second year of that critical period of drought, President Johnson, because of certain policies he had adopted, we reached a stage where there were stocks for only two weeks and there was nothing in transit in the pipeline’.



This crisis gave the country’s leadership an opportunity to resolve to become self­ sufficient in food grains. This period also coincided with a breakthrough in technology at international centers for improvement of rice and wheat strains. India took advantage of these technologies, experimented with them, and launched large­ scale agricultural extension services, instead of viewing these technologies merely as research curiosities.



Within three years the production of wheat doubled. This led to food grain self­ sufficiency in the 1970s when we developed rice and wheat varieties acceptable to our people. Later when two of the worst droughts of the century occurred in 1979 and 1987, the world did not take note of them because no food aid was asked for. The country now has a buffer stock of about 35 million tones of food grains.” ‘Chapter 4 – Food, Agriculture and Processing and Processing’ of ‘INDIA 2020 – A Vision for the New Millennium’ Book

Just in case if you want to know more about C Subramaniam, Bharat Rata awardee

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Just in case if you want to know more about MS Swaminathan, World Food Prize receiver

It seems Green Revolution had it’s own side effects :

Stubble burning M S Swaminathan’s solution :

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