Nobel Laureate, Padma Vibhushan Norman Borlaug, father of the original green revolution, who turns 95 on March 25, is calling for a second green revolution. India, with its granaries now full to the brim, should rise in unison to salute Borlaug who has been credited with saving more lives than anyone else in history. His work has led to breakthrough high-yield, disease-resistant wheat harvests in Mexico, India, Pakistan and countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa. As a result, hundreds of millions of people have been able to access a food supply that would otherwise have been too short to meet their needs.

He visited India in 1961 on the invitation of M S Swaminathan, then advisor to the agriculture minister and initiated India?s green revolution. Today, Borlaug continues his efforts to help the world?s needy through the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture at Texas A&M University. As Edwin Price, director of the Borlaug Institute, has said, ?The world owes a debt of gratitude to Borlaug, and we at the institute that carries his name are glad to be involved in his efforts to help initiate a second Green Revolution to bring greater worldwide food security.? The institute, supported by US funding, currently leads or plays a significant role in international agriculture projects in Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Guatemala, El Salvador and other countries. And Borlaug himself still remains an active advocate of world food security, continuing to lecture at Texas A&M and serving as a mentor for participants in the Borlaug Fellows Programme, established in his honour in 2004 by the USDA.

Borlaug?s agricultural achievements in combating hunger may have saved countless lives and inspired others to follow in his footsteps, but he is the first to admit that plenty more still remains to be done. In a recent lecture he said that the green revolution hasn?t been won yet, and invited the new generation to begin a second, more extensive, rebellion against world hunger. And on whose behalf must this rebellion be launched? A forgotten world that ?is made up primarily of the developing nations, where most of the people, comprising more than 50% of the total world population, live in poverty, with hunger as a constant companion?.

?joseph.vackayil@expressindia.com