M S Swaminathan

M S Swaminathan, a renowned agricultural scientist widely seen as the architect of India’s “Green Revolution,” passed away at the age of 98 years on 28 September 2023. Most unusually for a scientist working on the frontiers of research in agricultural sciences, Swaminathan was mourned widely, especially across rural India, by thousands of people, a large proportion of them being farmers and women. For a scientist who had been inspired by India’s freedom struggle in general and M K Gandhi in particular, this was especially appropriate and poignant. The more immediate reason for the resonance evoked in the minds of his rural mourners was, of course, the key role played by the powerful recommendation of the National Commission on Farmers (NCF) chaired by Swaminathan that the minimum support price (MSP), at which the state must procure agricultural produce from farmers, should be 150% of total cultivation cost, including the imputed value of family labour, imputed rent for the land used in cultivation, and interest chargeable to investments made in capital assets used in crop production.

The countrywide movement of farmers belonging to more than 500 farmers’ organisations and united under the leadership of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) made the MSP recommendation of NCF one of their key demands in their historic and successful struggle for the repeal of the three farm laws passed in the Indian Parliament that were seen by the movement as anti-farmer. In the process, the “Swaminathan formula for MSP” entered the consciousness of a large section of the Indian peasantry.