Email
Print
ShareNorman Borlaug, who died at the age of 95 in his Texas home on Saturday, would have been quite impatient with the encomiums that are being showered on his death as they were during his lifetime. Not that he disrespected those who praised him and honoured him with awards. But he wasn't enamoured of being awarded personally.
Nor did he very much like the phrase, 'green revolution'. He thought it was a miserable description. The reason for his impatience was that he felt that not many people, especially political leaders, understood the critical importance of agricultural production. He was not the stereotypical scientist, who was satisfied to do his little bit. Borlaug was always aware of the big picture.
More than that, he was keenly conscious of the hungry people and the poor farmers in the developing world and the stark contrast with the affluent, developed part. He worked for the sake of the hungry and the poor and he remained dissatisfied because the much heralded 'greenrevolution' did not wipe out hunger or poverty.
Even as policymakers are speaking out aloud and ostentatiously about food security, Borlaug in his Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech in December, 1970 stated without political flourish: "Almost certainly, however, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world. Yet today 50 per cent of the world population goes hungry."
Nearly 40 years later, the situation is not too different. Hunger still stalks many parts of the world. We are particularly grateful in India that his successful methods of pest- and drought-resistant wheat seeds have changed the face of Punjab and of the country, and it is this green revolution that made famine a distant memory.
It is interesting to remember that Borlaug's methods were adopted with the same success and around the same time in Pakistan as well. He believed that hunger and poverty caused much strife among nations, and he reached out to many countries in Asia and Latin America.
Though the green revolution has been under attack from the environmentalists who argue that it has contributed to the looming ecological doomsday, Borlaug will be remembered as one man who contributed most in weeding out hunger. His death comes at a time when the spectre of drought haunts the country. It is a good time to remember his legacy of working for the prosperity of all humans, especially the weaker sections.
