Complexity and unsolved problems are at the very heart of the sustainability challenge, and at the very heart of M.S. Swaminathan's thinking and essays. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus offered the piercing insight that geometric population growth would inevitably outstrip food production, leaving society destitute and hungry. Since that time, our optimism of beating the “Malthusian curse” has waxed and waned. Few people in modern history have done more to help...

The legacy of Industrial Agriculture With the world population passing the 6 billion mark last October, the debate over our ability to sustain a fast growing population is heating up. Biotechnology advocates in particular are becoming very vocal in their claim that there is no alternative to using genetically modified crops in agriculture if "we want to feed the world". Actually, that quote might be true. It depends what they mean...

In the summer of 2006, I travelled with a group of scholars and writers through the district of Dantewada, then (as now) the epicentre of the conflict between the Indian State and Maoist rebels. Writing about my experiences in a four-part series published in The Telegraph, I predicted that the conflict would intensify, because the Maoists would not give up their commitment to armed struggle, while the government would not...

The goal of food for all can be achieved only through greater and integrated attention to production, procurement, preservation and public distribution. The President, in her address to Parliament on June 4, 2009, announced: “My Government proposes to enact a new law — the National Food Security Act — that will provide a statutory basis for a framework which assures food security for all. Every family below the poverty line in...

“When I told a government official that Pesa allows us to determine our policy on liquor trade in the village, he shot back, ‘Are you trying to teach me the law? If you are so knowledgeable about the law, why are you living here in your village in the forest? Why don’t you go and speak in the Orissa assembly?’” Fulsingh Naik, resident of Mandibisi (Rayagada, West Orissa), December 2009, recounting...