India's green revolutionary is back in spotlight

By Mayank Bhardwaj and Jonathan Leff

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Forty years after he helped rescue the world from growing famine and a deepening gloom over the future of food supplies, Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan is once again agitating for revolution -- this time a perpetual one.

The 82-year-old scientist, dubbed here the father of the Green Revolution for helping development a hybrid wheat seed that allowed Indian farmers to dramatically increase yields, says the current food crisis offers the world a chance to put farmers on the right road to unending growth.

In the twenty-first century's "Evergreen Revolution", as he calls it, conservation farming and green technology will bring about sustainable change that could allow India to become an even bigger supplier of food to the world.

"I'm very happy now, because in every crisis is an opportunity," he told Reuters at his government apartment in the heart of New Delhi, a perk of his membership in India's upper house. "This time it will lead to an evergreen revolution."

That would be welcome news for the millions of impoverished people and food-importing nations who are struggling to cope with the surge in basic crop prices over the last year, caused in part by protectionist trade bans by some exporters, including India.

This year's near trebling in the price of rice -- the main staple for most of the world's poor -- has driven the issue home. It has triggered riots in Haiti and raised the risk of starvation for the hundreds of millions who depend on subsidized foods.

With anxiety over food supply running higher than anytime since the 1960s, the former Cambridge scholar is busier than ever, just as passionate and in high demand.

"My wife says I have a one-track mind," he said during an interview squeezed between a meeting with an analyst from Asian brokerage CLSA and a consultation with a pack of regional politicians.