Kolkata, Jan 11 (.) Author Priyambada Jayakumar has said that her new book, The Man Who Fed India, is the first to focus on M S Swaminathan as a human being rather than solely on the Green Revolution, countering the belief that biographies of the eminent agricultural scientist already exist.
Speaking at the 17th edition of the APeejay Kolkata Literary Festival, Jayakumar disclosed that the idea for the book began during the COVID lockdown, when she decided to look beyond Swaminathan’s role in the Green Revolution and understand the person behind it.
What started as a personal project took two years to complete and grew into a detailed account of Swaminathan’s life, based on research, conservatives and historical records.
Jayakumar’s work positions Swaminathan not merely as an agricultural scientist, but as a quiet nation-builder whose interventions altered India’s political destiny as much as its agrarian landscape.
Among a host of fascinating insights, the book unveils how India’s food security crisis was intrinsically linked to national sovereignty. In the 1960s, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi came under relentless pressure from the United States, which used PL 480 – a conditional food aid programme – as diplomatic leverage to deter New Delhi from countering Pakistani aggression and from taking independent foreign policy positions on issues such as the Vietnam War.
In this situation, the Green Revolution became essential to India’s independence. “Food security was about self-respect and freedom,” Jayakumar said, adding that without it, India would not have been able to make strong political decisions.
The book also lays bare the intense domestic opposition Swaminathan faced. With India’s foreign exchange reserves at a dangerously low level, several officials opposed the import of 18,000 tonnes of Mexican wheat seeds, arguing that the money would be better spent on hospitals, schools and basic infrastructure.
“Mrs Indira Gandhi walked a very lonely and a very tiring road, backed out even against her own government, to support the farmers and the scientists. She took the bait. She would have lost the next election. It would have been the end of her legacy as well,” she said.
The risk did not fail. As Swaminathan himself observed, “The people who mattered read my pulse.”
The book moves beyond policy debates to capture deeply personal episodes from Swaminathan’s life, including his presence at Birla House on the day Gandhi was killed, the seven-week effort to persuade one farmer to try hybrid seeds, and his quiet work as a scientific ambassador in Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines.
The author also points to Swaminathan’s quiet regret that the work of the National Commission on Farmers (2004–2006), which he chaired, never found its way into legislation, leaving his long-held vision for farmers unrealised.
The Green Revolution, she argues, was India’s first true experiment in atmanirbharta—long before the term entered political vocabulary. Without this foundation, India might not have held firm during the trials of 1971, nor gone on to claim space for itself militarily and diplomatically in the years beyond.
Swaminathan’s story, told with deep empathy and attention to detail, serves as a timeless reminder of his belief that “food is life, food is hope, food is dignity.” . . .