Called as the main architect of the Green Revolution in India, Mr Swaminathan was an Indian agronomist, agricultural scientist, plant geneticist and humanitarian. He was awarded the first World Food Prize (one of the highest honours in the field of agriculture) in 1987 for developing and spearheading the introduction of high-yielding rice varieties into India during the '60s.
Late Swaminathan, a plant geneticist, helped design and lead the Green Revolution, a huge development effort that in just a few years brought food self-sufficiency to India, which had suffered from deadly famines for decades under and after British colonization in India.
During the era of British rule in India (1765–1947), 12 major famines occurred which lead to the deaths of millions of people in Indian subcontinent.
Mr Swaminathan's collaborative scientific efforts with Nobel prize laureate, Norman Borlaug, spearheaded a mass movement with farmers and other scientists and backed by public policies, helped India and Pakistan yo recover from certain famine-like conditions in the 1960s.
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. And, interestingly Borlaug was awarded the first 'M. S. Swaminathan Award for Leadership in Agriculture' by the then President A.P.J Abdul Kalam in 2005.
It is said that in his younger days Swaminathan turned down plum positions in academia and the government to work in agricultural research. He helped to cross-breed wheat seeds that allowed India to more than treble its annual crop in just 15 years.
President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with lawmakers, scientists and people from across the world expressed their condolences.
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