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...

Acting with determination and firm action, it should be possible for India to step up its agricultural growth rate to 10 per cent. The 11th Five Year Plan seeks to achieve 4 per cent growth rate in agriculture by the end of the Plan period. The Planning Commission is working towards an overall 9 per cent to 10 per cent growth rate. But the target of 4 per cent growth rate is...

After discovery of high levels of uranium in hair samples of a large number of mentally retarded children in Punjab’s Malwa region last year, another study suggests Punjab has become a hotspot of environmental toxicity of multiple types. While a top German laboratory revealed that hair samples of 80% of 149 neurologically-disabled children, mainly from Malwa region, had high levels of uranium, a study by Greenpeace suggested that all the...

One of the key demands of the Right to Food Campaign for the National Food Security Act is to re-introduce nutritious millets to government food programmes like the public distribution system. Millets like bajra, jowar, kodo, kutki and ragi among hundreds of other varieties have sustained communities for close to 10,000 years in India. Yet, they have been marginalized as food crops since the days of the Green Revolution in...