Dear Editor,
It’s surprising that both the iconic personalities Viz. Dr. MS Swaminathan and Dr. Verghese Kurien have not been honoured with the Bharat Ratna, India’s Highest Civilian Award, during their lifetimes despite their monumental contribution. The former was instrumental in ushering in Green Revolution in the country, making India self reliant in food security while as the latter was behind the While Revolution, making country self reliant in milk production. All citizens hold them in high esteem because for their immense contribution in the field of agriculture and in milk farming respectively.
Prof. MS Swaminathan has brought the country out of the hunger trap and also enabled it to come out of the PL-480 agreement with the US. He has done a lot of research work on finding high yielding variety of seeds for wheat and rice to increase their production manifold and make India self-reliant. He has done a lot to address the woes of farmers in the country. He wanted to see them prosperous by increasing their income by ensuring that they must get fare price for their farm products. Both have contributed immensely in the overall growth and progress of the country.
As such both deserve Bharat Ratna for their stupendous contribution to the country. It’s, therefore, our moral responsibly to honour such great personalities with this prestigious award in recognition of their stellar contributions to the nation. Any further delay in honouring both of them, of course, now posthumously would be construed as great disservice to them. Awarding them would be a great moral booster to our incumbent scientists as well as those young ones aspiring to be agriculture scientists in future.
Ravi Sharma,
Dhariwal
