Ecological Economics and Dr. Swaminathan

Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan was born in Kumbakonam on 7 August 1925. Second son of surgeon Dr. M.K. Sambasivan and Parvati Thangammal Sambasivan. It was his father who taught him that the word “impossible” mainly exists in our mind and if one chooses to channelize his will and effort, great things can be achieved. Sadly his father passed away when Swaminathan was merely 11 years of age and was raised by his uncle a radiologist. He too followed in his family’s footsteps and joined medicine. However, the great famine of Bengal in the year 1943, which he witnessed, left a mark in his heart and he decided to quit medicine joined agriculture with a promise in his heart to devote his life working for getting rid of hunger in India.

After finishing his college in Madras he moved to Delhi an enrolled as a post graduate student at Indian Agricultural Research Institute to study genetics and plant breeding. He obtained his post graduate with distinctions in cytogenetic.hough he had the option of joining as a faculty in Wisconsin, he decided to return to India to work towards eradication of hunger. Dr. Swaminathan is a legend and his contributions to Agricultural Science has left a deep impression that is permanent on food production in India and as well as in other developing countries. He has been acclaimed as one of the 20 most influential Asians of the 20^th Century by the TIME magazine and has been described as “the father of Economic Ecology” by United Nations Environment Programme.

Madhuchanda Saxena

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