The 1971 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership

CITATION for Moncompu Sambasivan Swaminathan

Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
Manila, Philippines

Whether India, with nearly one-sixth of the human race, can provide sufficient food for her growing numbers in the years ahead depends ultimately upon her farmers. Their performance is closely linked to what science develops and makes operative in rural life. Without continuing refinement of relevant knowledge and its efficient transference, especially to the poorer villages, the "green revolution" may foster more discontent than it satisfies.

In an age when radioisotopes, a Gamma Garden and chemical mutagens are among the plant breeders' tools, Dr. SWAMINATHAN is an originative follower of Gregor Johann Mendel, the Austrian monk and botanist who founded genetics over a century ago. A cytogeneticist, in the past 16 years he had made major advances in breeding sturdier, more productive and better quality plant types at the Pusa Institute, as the Agricultural Research Institute outside of Delhi is popularly known. Included in the wide-ranging studies by him and his associates have been India's most essential food crops—wheat, rice, maize, sorghum, millet, pulses, potatoes and vegetables oils—plus cotton and jute. By purposeful manipulation of genes, he and his co-workers in 1967 developed a dwarf, non-lodging wheat variety—Sharbati Sonora, with amber grains—from Sonora-64 which has red grains and hence a low consumer preference in India.

An ability and enthusiasm for passing on his knowledge to others in the laboratory, classroom and field, and his prolific writing have earned him a reputation as a most lucid educator. In the past five years since he became Director of the Institute, SWAMINATHAN has proven himself an equally gifted administrator.

Encouraged by him, scientists at Pusa extended their work to practical application in farmers' fields. University students were enlisted in this attack upon the limitations to a better life on the land. The primary demonstration arena for these efforts are villages around Delhi where tests of improved seeds—by farmers with whom the Pusa Institute cooperates— have won confidence in their productive potential. As part of a High-Yielding Varieties Program designed by SWAMINATHAN one community was transformed into a "seed village" specializing in controlled multiplication of improved varieties to supply the needs of the entire state, and thousands of demonstrations were laid out by scientists in farmers' fields throughout India.

His particular combination of talents has made SWAMINATHAN an acknowledged leader of India's community of agriculturists. Now 46 years of age, he is carrying forward his Madrasi family tradition of energetic personal emphasis upon professional excellence. That he is doing so with such broadly beneficial results for rural India is the mark of a first-rate scientist who is also a humanist.

In electing MONCOMPU SAMBASIVAN SWAMINATHAN to receive the 1971 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes his contributions as scientist, educator of both students and farmers, and administrator toward generating a new confidence in India's agricultural capabilities.