The role Norman Borlaug, who died on Saturday, played in the import of the dwarf “miracle wheat” seeds in the mid-’60s has almost a Puranic Katha status: with Sivaraman Saheb — the agriculture secretary — playing the Arjuna, C. Subramaniam — the minister — the Krishna, and Borlaug the role of the Pitamah.

I landed in Delhi in 1974 after having modelled Gujarat’s perspectives, and given my econometrics degree was pulled in to head the then-powerful Perspective Planning Division of the Planning Commission, which has always been a friend of agricultural scientists. Borlaug would visit India. Great scientists at a particular level, like economists, live in the world of the laws of biology, botany and geology. Borlaug could easily slide into that world; but at another level, unlike economists, they don’t believe only in solving problems in theory. Borlaug was one such icon, like Verghese Kurien. He would come to the Planning Commission; and one could take one look at the way the director-general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and his men would tiptoe in with him and know he was the works. They would come to Sivaraman’s office and I would be asked to hang around because he had a disconcerting habit of asking questions about canals, pump-sets, fertilisers and wheat prices — precisely the questions the ICAR abhorred. These were the things they could blame the economists for, and so I had to chip in. Jeff Sachs, who has spent a lot of his time rubbishing Indian efforts, now prescribes for Sahelian — sub-Saharan — Africa the Indian ‘70s model of giving money for tubewells and a good price. For Borlaug the world was more complicated. Owning the Indian wheat revolution, he was not going to let that rot in the fields.

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