The voice of farmers

Help came unexpectedly for [MS] Swaminathan and his team from a crucial player in the Shastri Council of Ministers. C Subramaniam or CS, as he was popularly referred to, was a Gandhian who took part in the Quit India movement and was even imprisoned for it.

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He was a member of the constituent assembly and participated in the drafting of the Constitution. He was a minister for education, law and finance in the C Rajagopalachari and K Kamaraj-led Cabinets in the erstwhile state of Madras. Subramaniam won a Lok Sabha seat in 1962 and was a Congress veteran from Tamil Nadu and a highly successful Minister of Steel, Mines and Heavy Engineering in Nehru's cabinet.

On 9 June 1964, CS received a call at 10 pm from Lal Bahadur Shastri who had just taken over as Prime Minister. Shastri wanted Subramaniam to take over the decidedly less-glamorous Agriculture and Food ministries! This move clearly flummoxed Subramaniam because he considered himself a highly successful Steel Minister! Shastri had found absolutely no takers for the Ministries of Agriculture and Food and was heavily banking on the eminently qualified Subramaniam to bail him out of a tight corner.

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy had almost accepted this ministry but changed his mind at the last minute.

Shastri's faith in Subramaniam as Minister of Agriculture and Food was not misplaced as history would prove. Both Shastri and Subramaniam were firm believers in the Nehruvian tradition of the future belonging to science.

Subramaniam especially was a very strong advocate for science being used in all areas not just agriculture, much like Shastri himself. Subramaniam crucially recruited B Sivaraman, a brilliant civil servant who had vast field experience in agriculture and irrigation in Orissa, as his agriculture secretary in May 1965 (much against Biju Patnaik's wishes who wasn't willing to let him go!) after taking over as Minister for Agriculture and Food. C Subramaniam lobbied politically for Swaminathan and his scientists in the Parliament while B Sivaraman was the details man.