Chapter 137: Avoiding Potential Pitfalls

The Cabinet Annexe, South Block

9 August 1950

The room was already warm at nine, and the dust from the lawns rose in a thin haze beyond the windows. The Green Revolution Council met in the old annexe because it was big enough. The long table was strewn with seed samples in glass vials, soil maps and yield tables, and a quantity of green notebooks.

Around it sat Dr. Swaminathan, Dr. Pal, Dr. Kurien, Shastri, Shroff and Mookerjee. Two Japanese scientists had been invited, Dr. Sakamoto, a plant geneticist from Hokkaido, and Dr. Yoshida, who had been one of the architects of the Japanese rice improvement programme. A silent German named Dr. Weiss, whom nobody had previously seen, sat at the end of the table with a small notebook. Patel was absent, and Ram had come alone.

"I will begin with seeds," Swaminathan said. He had grown a little heavier in two years and a good deal more certain. "Our field teams have now collected nineteen thousand native varieties of wheat, rice, millet, sorghum and pulses from every corner of the Union, including Burma and Ceylon. Dr. Sakamoto and Dr. Yoshida have brought us several dozen Japanese varieties, which have proven remarkable."

"Dr. Sakamoto," Ram said.

The Japanese geneticist rose, bowed, and spoke in careful English. "In Japan, there is a wheat called Norin 10. It was bred in the nineteen-thirties by a government station. It has a very short stem, only half the height of ordinary wheat, and a great weight of grain. A tall wheat falls down when heavily fertilised. This one stands. We believe the gene that makes it short will be of great value to India."

"How great?"

"Possibly it will double the yield, Prime Minister, in the right conditions. Not in every field. Not without water and fertiliser. But in the right place."

"We have crossed it with a dozen of our own varieties," Swaminathan said. "The first generation has been grown at Pusa and Ludhiana. The results are not final, but they are the best I have seen."

"Rice?"

"Dr. Yoshida’s work with a dwarf rice from Taiwan, and our own native short-strawed varieties from Cuttack, has produced something similar. We believe a semi-dwarf rice may follow the wheat by a year."

"And the Europeans?" Ram turned to Dr. Weiss.

The German looked up, startled. "Rye, Prime Minister. Barley. Oats. They are not for the plains, but for the hills. The hills of Kashmir, the Himalayan districts, Tibet, if the Tibetans wish. They grow where wheat will not. I have brought samples from Sval?f, in Sweden. Two have been planted in Kulu."

"Good. How soon can any of this reach farmers?"

"In large quantities? Four to five years," Swaminathan said. "We must breed it, test it, multiply it, and teach the cultivator to grow it. A new variety is not an invention. It is an education."

Shastri, who had been listening quietly with his hands folded, raised one finger.

"Prime Minister, if I may."

"Please, Shastri-ji."

"I have been in the districts for twenty-five years, and I have a request. I should like to propose a seed bank."

"A seed bank?"

"A place where every seed is kept. Every variety, ancient or new, native or foreign, in sealed vessels, in a cool, dry building, with a duplicate in a second place in case the first is lost. We are collecting nineteen thousand kinds of wheat and rice. If we plant only the new ones, in thirty years the old ones will be gone, and no one will know what they could have done." He spoke gently, as he always did. "A farmer in Bihar may grow a rice his grandmother grew. It may not be the best. But it may have a resistance to a disease that no scientist has yet met. If we lose it, we lose it forever."

"It is a good idea," Swaminathan said at once. "I should have thought of it."

"Approved," Ram said. "Where?"

"Pusa, with a copy at Dehradun, in the cold."

"Done."

Shastri hesitated. "There is a second matter, Prime Minister. I am less sure of the welcome."

"I should hear it."

"I have spent a month in the villages. I have talked to the old men. They are suspicious of the new seeds. They are more suspicious of the powders and sprays that come with them. They say the chemical fertiliser burns the soil, that the insecticides kill the bees and the frogs, that the old ways did no such harm." He looked at Swaminathan almost apologetically. "I do not say they are right. I say they are worth hearing. I should like the Council to consider a policy that reduces reliance on chemical fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides. Compost, green manure, crop rotation, the neem tree."

There was a short silence. Swaminathan put down his pen.

"Shastri-ji," he said, "with the greatest respect, I cannot agree."

"I did not expect you would."

"I was eighteen in 1943." His voice was low and quite steady. "I was in Madras when the Bengal famine came. I saw the people from Calcutta in the streets. Bones and skin. Children with swollen stomachs and the eyes of old men. I saw a woman give her baby to a stranger because she could not feed it. I do not forget that. It is why I am a scientist."

"I know," Shastri said.

"We have not had a famine in the last two years. I wish to say plainly why. We absorbed Burma, which has a natural surplus of rice. We have had two good monsoons. That is all. Not planning, not science, not reform. A fortunate accident. A bad monsoon would show us how thin the margin is. Our population is rising by four million a year. We cannot feed it with compost and neem leaves."

"I did not say that."

"You said reduce chemical fertilisers. Without them, the new seeds do nothing. A dwarf wheat requires nitrogen. A native variety, with no fertiliser, yields eight hundred kilograms a hectare. With it, three thousand. The difference is the difference between a village that eats and a village that starves." Swaminathan stopped, breathing a little hard. "I will not stand in this room and let the benefits of the new methods be reduced because they are unfamiliar."

"I am not asking that," Shastri said. "I am asking that we know what we are doing."

"We do know."

"Dr. Swaminathan, you know what happens to a crop. You do not yet know what happens to a field after twenty years of nitrogen and DDT. No one does. We are doing something no one has done; on a scale no one has attempted." Shastri did not raise his voice. "If I am wrong, we lose a little yield. If you are wrong, we lose the soil."

"We shall not lose the soil!"

"We have not looked."

Ram had listened to all of it without moving. Now he spoke.

"Both of you are right," he said.

They turned.

"Dr. Swaminathan is right that we cannot afford hunger. We cannot rely on rain. Shastri-ji is right that we cannot afford to be careless with the one resource we cannot replace. The disagreement is not about values. It is about evidence. And evidence we can collect." He took a pencil. "Dr. Swaminathan, you are a man of Science; why not use the scientific method to prove or disprove Shastri-ji’s hypothesis?"

"A longitudinal scientific study?" Swaminathan said, with a trace of suspicion.

"A properly designed one. At diverse locations across the Union, in different soils and climates: the Gangetic alluvium, the black cotton soils of the Deccan, the laterite of Orissa, the sandy loams of Rajasthan, the delta soils of Burma. On each, three plots. The first uses chemical fertiliser and pesticide, as you recommend. The second uses compost only, as Shastri-ji recommends. The third uses a mixture, chemicals in moderation, compost in addition. Each plot is farmed for years under identical conditions and measured for yield, soil structure, water retention, insect life, and the health of the people who work it."

"That is already being done in part," Swaminathan said, slowly.

"I know. I am asking it to be done properly, and for long enough. One year, three years, and ten. A one-year study will tell us which method gives the highest yield now. A three-year study will tell us how the soil responds. A ten-year study will tell us what has been done to it." Ram looked up. "You said yourself, Doctor, that you have not studied the long term. Let us do it. If the chemicals are safe, we will have the proof, and no one will dare say otherwise. If they are not, we will know in time."

Swaminathan said nothing for a long moment. Then, slowly, he took off his spectacles.

"A longitudinal study," he said. "I proposed one in my first memorandum."

"You did. It was not funded."

"It was not." He rubbed his eyes. "I withdraw the objection, Prime Minister. In the short run, yield must come first. We will plant the fertiliser plots in the first season. In parallel, we will plant Shastri-ji’s compost plots, and I will help him design them." He turned to Shastri, with an effort. "I will say one thing. If the compost plots do as well, I shall be the first to say so."

"And if they do not," Shastri said gently, "I shall say it as quickly."

"Then we are agreed," Ram said. "Dr. Pal, the study is yours. Dr. Kurien, the cooperatives will host it. Shroff-ji, fund it from the agricultural reserve."

"It will cost four lakhs a year."

"It is the cheapest insurance the country will buy."

Kurien, who had been silent for most of the meeting, raised a hand.

"There is the other half of the matter, Prime Minister. Water."

"Say it."

"Even the best seed will not grow without water. We have been talking of fertiliser and genetics as if rain were constant. It is not. In 1948 the monsoon was good. In 1949 it was fair. If it fails for a year, the new seeds will fail with it. The old ones too, but more slowly."

"What is your proposal?"

"A national programme of small works." Kurien opened a notebook. "Not the great dams, Prime Minister. Mr. Savarkar has those in hand, and they will take a decade. I mean the little things. Canals from the existing rivers into the semi-arid districts. Tanks and ponds to catch the monsoon flood and hold it. Johads in Rajasthan, bunds in the Deccan, stepwells in Gujarat, the old baolis that fell into ruin. Every village should be able to hold a year’s water."

"Stepwells," Mookerjee said, with sudden interest. "My grandfather’s village had one. It had been dry since before my father was born."

"There are thousands. They were dug a thousand years ago, and they work. They only need clearing and repairing and, in some cases, a new channel to feed them." Kurien smiled. "We have the machinery now. The Soviet crawler tractors can dig a tank in a week. The Caterpillars can clear a canal in a month."

"And the surplus water?"

"In the Himalayan foothills, the monsoon brings more than the land can hold. It runs off to the sea. If we lead it by canal to the dry plains, the drought districts of Rajasthan and the Deccan would have the water they lack. If we dig deep ponds in every village and line them with clay, a single flood can feed a dry season. It is not new. It is only forgotten."

"What would it do for a weak monsoon?" Ram asked.

"If the works are built, Prime Minister, I believe we could survive one bad year without famine. Perhaps two."

"One bad year without famine." Ram thought. "That is the target. Dr. Kurien, you will have the programme. The Public Works Department will give you the tractors. The district collectors will give you the labour. Shroff-ji, I shall ask for a sum. Not large, by the standards of a dam. It will do more, in the first five years, than any dam."

Shroff made a careful note. "Fifty crores over five years."

"Then fifty it is."

He looked round the table at the faces, tired, expectant, and not wholly in agreement, and he thought of the old Karen elder in a longhouse, and the woman in Hirakud Nagar with the key in her hand. The reports on his desk, he thought, were made of exactly this, an enormous number of small decisions that nobody would remember.

South Block

That Evening

The decisions went into the Cabinet minutes without debate. The presses were approved: a ten-thousand-ton Mannesmann press, to be installed at Bangalore by the spring of 1951, and a twenty-thousand-ton press from an American firm at Visakhapatnam within eighteen months. Shroff allowed himself a single, sorrowful remark about the dollar reserves.

Mookerjee, whose ministry would carry the survey, asked for a thousand geologists. Patel, who had been told to expect the request, said he would give him three thousand, with the new Survey Institutes’ first graduates arriving in two years. A National Mineral Survey was established, with a mandate to examine every district of the Union, including Burma, Ceylon, and the Himalayan states. Savarkar offered to share the Power Ministry’s seismic and hydrographic parties, and was thanked.

The scrap programme fell to Matthai. "A ship-breaking yard at Alang," he said, reading the note, "and another in Burma. I have seen Alang. It is a beach, Prime Minister. A very long, flat beach with a high tide."

"It is a very fine place to break a ship," Ram said. "The tide carries the hulls up the sand. At low water, men can cut them with torches and winches, and the steel goes to the Bhilai furnaces. I want a plan within three months. And a licensing arrangement for scrap from abroad. There is a mountain of it in Europe and America. We shall buy it, melt it, and sell the surplus."

"The Americans will think we are mad."

"The Americans will sell it to us at a discount."

"And the refineries?" Matthai asked. "For the catalysts."

"Mr. Mookerjee and Dr. Bhabha will advise. The Burmah and Visakhapatnam plants will have a standing order: spent platinum catalyst is to be returned to the Government’s recovery works. Everything the Ministry of Industry can find. I shall write to the Americans myself. They will be glad to sell what they throw away."

Aurangzeb Road

That evening

Patel was sitting up when Ram came in, with a plate of dal and boiled vegetables on the tray beside him. He had eaten all of it. The physician, in the doorway, looked as if he had run out of things to worry about.

"I have been reading your Council’s minutes," Patel said, without preamble.

"They are not out yet."

"Shaktidas brought them. I told him I wished to see them first." He tapped the folder. "You have settled a quarrel between a Tamil geneticist and a Bihari politician with a ten-year study. I had thought you would simply tell Swaminathan to be quiet."

"He is right. Shastri-ji is also right. When two honest men disagree, the evidence is usually missing."

"And in Bangalore?"

"The evidence is in the ground." Ram sat. "We need metals, Vallabhbhai. Cobalt and tungsten and titanium. We need presses. We need to know where our own minerals are. If we do not have them in ten years, we shall have a very fine drawing-board and no engines."

"Bhabha told you the schedule for a power plant. And the bomb. Eight to ten years."

"Yes."

Patel was silent for a time. The lamp threw a long yellow shadow on the wall behind him. When he spoke, his voice was low and even, and it carried something Ram had not heard in it for a year.

"I intend to see it."

Ram looked up.

"Dr. Roy put me under the fluoroscope again on Tuesday. He called in a second man from the Army hospital to look. The shadow has faded. Not gone, but faded, and he says it is the right sort of fading. My blood is better. I have gained eight pounds, and he says I may have another four." He moved his hand toward the empty plate. "It is the dal, Ram. I will not say so again, but it is the dal. I have been eating boiled gourd for three months, and I think it has saved my life."

"I am very glad."

"You may say it. I am a stubborn old man, and you were right." Patel’s mouth twitched. "He says I may take ghee on Sundays, in a spoon. A spoon, I am to be treated like a child at a wedding."

"A spoon is a beginning."

"It is a bribe." Patel leaned back with a sigh. "We will have to fight for every inch of canals."

"Yes, and not just with the communists, or well-meaning people whose land will have to be acquired. There will be provincial governments who will curse us for taking away their waters and then curse us for not taking it away after every flood. The judiciary has an axe to grind, and they will entertain every single plea." Ram said with a faraway look in his eyes.

"Go home," Patel said. "You have twenty-two things to do tomorrow. I have a diet to finish. When the bomb goes off in the desert, Ram, I shall be there to watch, with a spoon of ghee in my pocket. And before that, I will get those canals dug, come what may."

Ram rose. Outside, the night was close and warm. A lorry went by on Aurangzeb Road with a load of steel pipe for the Hirakud site. Far to the south, in the green hills of the Deccan, the testing cell at Bangalore was lit up like a ship at sea. Far to the north, in a country he could not see into, a government was running out of grain and ammunition and time, and nobody in Delhi knew which day it would choose to ask the world to stop the war.

He stood for a moment in the dark with his hands behind his back. Then he went to his car.

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