This is a collection of 45 select articles written by M.S. Swaminathan over the past 20 years. Arranged in six sections, they cover ‘sustainable development in Indian agriculture', ‘technology and evergreen revolution', ‘sustainable food security', ‘agrarian crisis', ‘WTO and Indian farmers', and ‘shaping India's agricultural destiny'. As Jeffrey Sachs says in his foreword, Swaminathan had “recognised already in the early days of India's green revolution that the new breakthroughs could create...

India's finance minister announced on Monday a food security bill for 2011/12, a measure that would provide cheap grains for millions of India's poor but which has sparked worries of a huge fiscal cost. It was one of the first signs of populism in the annual budget as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confronted high prices and corruption scandals as well as elections in five states this year. In his ongoing budget speech,...

Several agri-experts, including noted scientist M S Swaminathan, today said the Budget 2011-12 did not address several important issues facing agriculture, although they welcomed some proposals as being pro-farm. Swaminathan, known as the father of the Green Revolution in India, said the Budget had several good proposals but it did not have a strategy to keep farmers on farm and attract youth in the agriculture sector. "It is unfortunate that in a...

Increase in offtake under various public distribution schemes. Supply of wheat and rice will have to be doubled if the proposed National Food Security Act for targeted beneficiaries is implemented with the current delivery mechanism, in which leakages are too high, the Economic Survey for 2010-11 has said. “Once we give a legal guarantee to people about the food that they are to receive, if we try to deliver on this promise...

The major problem that the media is addressing these days is the consumer price index. This is going to be discussed during the budget session. The focus has to turn to consumer pricing. People also face policy problems because of their wage negotiations and inflationary expectations. Consumer prices escalate by 5 percent every month and that is the first issue that needs to be addressed and attended as of now....