Dr. Richharia's story - Crushed, but not defeated

Dr. Richharia's story - Crushed, but not defeated

The late Dr. R H Richharia was one of the leading experts on rice in India. He documented and collected an amazing 19,000 rice varieties during his career. As per his estimation, India was home to 200,000 varieties of rice. Dr. Richharia's career was however cut short and he was treated very unfairly by the government in India because he stood up to the International Rice Research Institute's machinations in the country. While we do not agree with the hybridisation programme or in the use of chemicals that was part of Dr. Richharia's work, there are two aspects in his story which are noteworthy - the first was his work with indigenous rice varieties, and the second was the role "foreign powers" and large corporations play in agribusiness and the business of feeding the world. Dr. Richharia came in their way, the rest is history.

We are reproducing in full an interview of Dr. Richharia that appeared in ‘The Illustrated Weekly of India’ in 1986, titled 'Crushed but not defeated'. We repeat that we do not support the hybridisation programme or the use of chemicals in agriculture - this interview is reproduced to relate the role played by the Government and the International Rice Research Institute, Philippines, essentially controlled by USA to support their commercial interests in agriculture and food systems.

It is also relevant to point out here that Dr. Richharia's collection of 19,000 rice varieties is today in the hands of the Indira Gandhi Agricultural University (IGAU), Raipur, Chhatisgarh, which has since then added (only) another 5,000 varieties. The official number of samples existing with IGAU is therefore 24,000. In 2002, IGAU signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the multinational agribusiness corporation, Syngenta, for a collaborative "research" agreement that would have entailed the transfer of this rice germplasm collections from the university to the corporation's laboratories. Syngenta was to have marketed new rice varieties developed by it using this genestock and paid royalties to the university. A local newspaper "leaked" the story and the resultant outcry in the local media forced the University to cancel the agreement.

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Crushed, but not defeated

Few scientists in India have been treated as shabbily as Dr R H Richharia, one of the leading rice experts in the country. Director of the Central Rice Research Institute at Cuttack, a post from which he was ignominiously transferred, he developed, for the first time in India, certain rice varieties which gave the highest yield and were free from the usual pests.

Unfortunately, his breakthrough irked the foreign-funded International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Which, with its influence with the Government of India, tried to stifle his research efforts. A sordid saga of injustice to Dr Richharia followed.

On these pages, Claude Alvares talks to the eminent agricultural scientist who became a victim of an international conspiracy, about the achievements in his research and the various obstacles he had to overcome to continue it.

Could you begin by giving us some idea of your involvement in rice in the late fifties?

It has been my hobby throughout life to collect rice material from whatever source possible and maintain and study it for genetic variability. Rice being my special subject, whoever came and met me, I requested him to give me some samples of rice. In this way I collected enough rice variability while in Bihar upto 1959 and when I came to Cuttack (Orissa) in the same year, I continued the same policy.

Here I started work with 67 rice types from Taiwan and discovered that there were two or three lines which were showing dwarf plants. We were interested in these dwarf varieties because if the rice crop does not lodge and at the same time can stand heavy manuring, that would be an ideal condition to get more production.

So, we found in those 67 varieties, two or three cultures of dwarf types and one of them was identified as Taichung Native 1 (TN 1). I was the first person, with my assistants, to locate that and I felt we should multiply that material and make suitable selections. One of the selections made proved to be resistant to diseases and pests and was high yielding.

How is it that the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) was able to steal a lead on the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI)? After all, you were the real experts in rice, and Robert Chandler, director of IRRI, had not even seen a rice plant when he was appointed to that post?

Dr Chandler was known to the institute at Cuttack. The IRRI had started by 1962 and he then visited CRRI, and naturally as an innocent scientist, I showed him around. At one place we stopped and I pointed out some plants and said: "This variety will give you the highest production—a record yield in the world, of over 9000 lbs/acre and it is completely free from the usual pests: Taichung Native 1, (TN 1). That mistake I made—I should have told him my selection number and not its origin. He said, you will be a mystic man if you can achieve that. I said, we have already done it and we will confirm it. He just made a note of it.

Dr Chandler returned to Delhi and informed the authorities concerned at the Government of India and the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) that TN 1 and IR 8 have given the highest yield and therefore rice production can be revolutionised in India, if these two varieties are grown.

During that period I was chairing the rice committee at Krishi Bhavan, New Delhi—and Dr B P Pal sent a message that he wanted to meet me during the lunch hour. Dr Cummings (Rockefeller Foundation) was also attending that meeting although he was not a member. I was asked by Dr Pal to allow him (Dr Cummings) to attend that special meeting. I went to meet Dr Pal and he said that, TN 1 had been given to them by Dr Chandler of the IRRI and they had to accept it and introduce it; I said, Dr Pal, you are committing a great mistake, it is all full of diseases and pests, susceptible to disease and pests and some viruses also. The selection I made is different, whereas if you grow the general one (bulk seeds), it is all full of viruses, a plot of which can be seen even today. He said, ‘but how can you stop it—they are sending it by air in tonnes as a gift’. I said, ‘I am not a party to that and I would not recommended its import from there.’

How often did Chandler attempt to interfere with your work?

On another occasion he brought samples of 311 varieties to CRRI, all susceptible to diseases and pests, and handed them over to one of my staff members without my knowledge. This was when we were holding a seminar on rice at the CRRI. A number of scientists from Philippines came for the seminar and were my guests. After handing over the rice material (311 varieties), he instructed my staff member to divide them into two, one lot to be maintained at CRRI and the other lot to go to the Coordinated Rice Research Centre at Hyderabad.

Chandler was leaving that day and I was to drop him at the aerodrome. As I was getting into the car, a staff member came to me saying that he had been given a parcel with the material and he had divided the material into two, as desired by Dr Chandler, and he had brought one half because Dr Freeman (who was in charge of the Hyderabad station) was also gong by the same plane, so he could carry it. This is how I learnt of the virus-susceptible rice material received without my knowledge from the IRRI.

I rebuked my staff member: how had he accepted, divided, allocated material on the instructions of an outsider? Anyway I then asked him whether he had got the quarantine certificate for the material, because we cannot import any plant material without a quarantine certificate. He said, no, sir.

I then asked Dr Chandler directly, "I understand you have passed on a number of rice cultures to a staff member of my institute, half of which are to be given to Dr Freeman for Hyderabad. The material has been brought. But first I want the quarantine certificate from you." He replied, "You mean to say I am gong to introduce virus into your country?" I said, "I have never raised the question of virus. It is you who are saying so. I am only asking for the quarantine certificate, because according to the rules, no foreign seeds and plant material can be allowed into the country without the quarantine certificate." He did not have the certificate and left.

So, my staff were already being bribed or won over and through some of them, (one or two) the IRRI was getting all the information from the CRRI. This is how they stole my institute's work, just to get a lead in the rice world.

I learnt later that Chandler went straight to the minister for agriculture, at New Delhi and told him that if I continue as director of the institute, they would not co-operate. The minister, C Subramaniam, ordered that Dr Richharia should be asked to retire. But Sivaraman, the then cabinet secretary—he was earlier the agriculture secretary—who was a great friend of mine, advised the minister not to do this. "After all, Dr Richharia has done so much work and built up the entire institute (CRRI) in its present form. We can't ask him to retire. The best way is to transfer him as director of the Rice Development Council which we are just commencing".

Sivaraman advised me to go and meet Subramaniam. I phoned his PA and was told to come to his residence between 6.30—7.00 am the next day. I went there early next morning. Everything was silent. Only one man was dusting and cleaning the place. I told him I had an appointment with the minister. He went and told the minister.

I was called in Subramaniam said, "First you say that Taichung is a good variety. Now you are opposing it." I said "I was telling you about the selection that we have made. If you introduce the bulk material directly imported, it will create havoc in the country and all our existing varieties will also be affected by virus and other diseases and pests. The material which I have selected is different." He said: "I don't know all this. Now that the Rockefellers have sent the material, you have to accept it. I said, "I refuse. I don't want to be blamed later on, if someone wants to know who was the director who recommended its introduction."

What is the problem when you import seeds in bulk?

They cannot be free from diseases and pests. You can import in quantities, but they must be treated with certain chemicals, and fungicides, so that if there are any eggs of insects or any mycelia and spores of any disease, they are all killed. They say they did it. But even if they did it, it is very susceptible to new diseases and pests, alternate hosts of which may exist in our surrounding wild flora here. So then the rice crop will get affected, spreading diseases in our innocent indigenous varieties. That is the concept. Introduction of Tungro virus and the like are more dangerous.

What is the susceptibility due to?

Due to the special characteristics of the variety which is related to its gene.

So it is possible to bring in a certain variety which is known to be susceptible to a certain virus?

And this is what they have done in the case of IR-8 and TN-1. They knew about it because they were also experts.

And what was the difference between the Taichung variety that you had and the one that came later?

What I had was a selection resistant to viruses, diseases and pests. Bulk seed is heterogeneous. Out of that bulk, however, we can select individual plants to fit our purpose. This is how, out of thousands of Taichung plants, I had selected a few, and then multiplied them. If you use the bulk, their progeny will be mixed—good and bad.

That means it entered the country with the Green Revolution?

It has come simultaneously under the garb of the Green Revolution and I was the first to discover and realise that the mass/bulk import and introduction of seed would interfere with our productivity and once introduced, these viruses (Tungro virus, transitory virus, etc), would be difficult to eradicate. Now the dwarf genes of exotic origin in rice have become a permanent feature in India.

It is instructive to note how a country like the US with very little involvement in rice, could end up controlling rice research, and the destiny of millions.

This is how they won. If the CRRI came up, then they (the IRRI) were nowhere and the purpose of pouring in millions of dollars into the IRRI would be defeated.

They were in search of a place where they could control the rice research in respect of introducing varieties or whatever they wished to do. So first they approached the Government of India to hand over the Central Rice Research Institute to the Rockefeller Foundation Trust to establish an International Rice Research Institute. I had then just joined the CRRI.

When the subject was discussed with me, I did not favour this transfer and I argued that to establish an international organisation on the soil of India would be unhealthy because we would not have any control. I felt that the Central Rice Research Institute should function an independent institution and should not be handed over to the Rockefellers, who, after all, were a private concern. In those days, the Government of India was also of the same opinion. After this, they announced the establishment of an International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, somewhere in 1960. Good work was being carried out by the Central Rice Research Institute in this country, making germplasm collections from indigenous rice varieties which could give you 30-40 per cent higher yield. We were also evolving varieties which would be responsive to high fertilisation, and working to develop non-lodging types and work connected with green manure crops and plant nutrition, utilising radio isotopes etc but all these activities met with an abrupt end; all of a sudden these programmes were all modified and workers' activities were directed towards evolving HYVs, responsive to high fertilisers with the dwarfing gene from the dwarf rice variety TN1 and IR8, crossed with all our renewed rice variety available in the rice region of India, to be converted into high yielding dwarfs, which means that unless you use the blood from IR 8 or Taichung Native 1, you cannot get HYVs, forgetting at the same time that such genes are also available in the indigenous rice varieties.

The ICAR yielded to this pressure which I had opposed. The man behind this strategy was Dr Robert E Chandler. They went to the extent of saying that in the existing rice germplasm of India, dwarf genes do not exist, which is not a fact. If you spoke in favour of this strategy, they promoted you and if you opposed it, they (ICAR) demoted you, broke you, as they succeeded in breaking me.

So they retired you permanently?

They game me three months notice in 1966 when the CRRI was being transferred under the ICAR, i.e., on March 31, 1966. Naturally the three months' notice was handed over to me on January 1, so that I would not be able to opt for ICAR although I had filled up my option form for working under the ICAR after March 31, 1966, as I was aware of the fact that being the senior most, next to next director general, I would take over as the next director general.

So my advocate who had filed a case at the Orissa High Court against the ICAR and Government of India (ministry of food and agriculture) argued, that ‘you should give the reason why you have asked my client (Dr Richharia) to retire in such a hurry. What wrong was being done to the nation if he was allowed to continue a few months more, and retire honourably’. They had no answer. There were two aspects to my case—with one stone you kill two birds—if I retire on that particular date, their man, Dr Swaminathan, becomes the director general. Second, if I am removed, then they were free to introduce high yielding varieties of rice of any type and in any way they liked.

Two years, three years, the fourth and more passed by. I had to leave Cuttack. How long could I continue in that institute in the director's bungalow? After a certain time they would charge penal rent and take police action. At one stage, water connections were stopped and I was humiliated in many ways which I do not wish to narrate. So my advocate advised me to leave that place and go home, when it became intolerable.

So I appealed to my advocate that he must tell the Chief Justice of the great injustice that is being done to me by the opposite parties in delaying returns. At that time there were three dates fixed for the case. I had to go to Cuttack and at one stage nothing was left with us.

So I asked my wife what we should do. We had to maintain our children also. They had sent me word that if we withdrew the case, they would allow me to go to FAO. She said, ‘Please yourself, but let me tell you one thing. If you go away, people will say that Dr Richharia must have been involved in some corruption. That is why in the end he reconciled, withdrew the case and went to FAO. So many corrupt people go to FAO’. I agreed with her.

So I accepted my wife's advice, and took a State Bank loan again, went to Cuttack for three weeks, paid the advocate his fees and the advocate explained my case to the Chief Justice. Notice was then issued to the Government of India and ICAR that by a certain time, the desired information should be returned. Then finally they sent the replies. We do not consider Dr Richharia to be a scientist and therefore we asked him to retire from ICAR. Yes sir, ICAR did not consider Dr Richharia to be a scientist and therefore did not like to accept his option! I won the case. They were not justified in giving me three months' notice.

Then naturally the judgement had to be implemented. They called me there at CRRI. I refused. Then they especially sent papers to me for my signature at Bhopal. Then I took over as director, and on the other side I handed over charge. I said I will not join now. All my papers were locked. When I handed over charge and proceeded on leave, I said to Padmanabhan, who took over charge from me, that for one month I will work in this room. He agreed and said: "Yes sir, you can work".

The next morning when I went to the institute, my room was double locked. All my research materials and scientific papers were confiscated. I have not got them till today.

When did the MP government ask you to start the Rice Research Institute?

In 1971, I joined as agricultural advisor and I continued and built up this rice germplasm bank at Raipur in Chhatisgarh (MP), so that it soon had the richest material available including that from Abhujmad of Bastar.

Tell me how did this second institute also get shut down? Why was the World Bank interested and what was Swaminathan's role in this?

Swaminathan was already interested in the IRRI and then he was made secretary and vice-chairman of the ICAR. So all these projects on rice, including the departments, were all under him. They wanted to collect all the rice material. Through the ICAR, they were collecting rice types from various places and through the ICAR, they were collecting rice types from various places and through the CRRI, Cuttack, functioning under the ICAR.

Then they came to me. I said, I am not going to part with the material until I study it: how can I pass on something about which I know nothing?

One or two persons from ICAR came and met me personally. They said, "What objection do you have to parting with your material when they also want to give you some in exchange? The IRRI representative had also very tactfully told me that they wanted material in exchange. I had made it clear to them that we were not interested in their material as it would come from the virus belt, whereas my rice material represents resistance. By that time I had already given out disease and pest resistant rice types in Chhattisgarh, the rice bowl of MP.

Was the ICAR chief in league with the IRRI?

He was behind it all, because he held all the power—how it will be organised, how much will remain with the CRRI, how half will go to Delhi and from there to the IRRI. He was the all in all. Moreover he was the secretary to the government and also the director general of the ICAR. He knew everything about India's food secrets and all its statistics. He was taken there to take advantage of his knowledge and experience on India's food policy. He knew all about our rice wealth. Where the material is, and who are the people working on it etc.

So the institute was shot down?

I did not refuse point-blank to part with my indigenous rice germplasm. I said, ‘I’ll certainly give you the material after I have studied it’. And I did give a few samples to them including some dwarf varieties which I had collected and bred. I told the scientist from IRRI who came especially to see me for this purpose, that if my rice material can do good to the South east Asian countries, do take it—on one condition, that whatever investigations you do with my material, you must send me a copy of the results achieved with special reference to dwarfing genes. They took the material but they never sent me the information.

I have been fighting to show that we have got better material in India where rice originated. They agree, and in their books they have mentioned the work of the MPRRI. That is why they wanted to get this material. They used to come at least once in two years to see my work at Raipur and nothing remained hidden. They therefore, wanted to get this material. They hoped that after the amount of suffering caused by them, I would have learnt a lesson, so they approached me to forward the material.

Then they learnt that I had not changed, and I was not happy to part with the material because neither had they financed the MPRRI nor the ICAR. It was the state government that had financed it and also my age old efforts. So I said, no objection, I'll part with this material after I have researched it. They felt I was not coming round. They also knew that there was something in my material, which is now in charge of technical staff trained by them for the purpose.

So they thought of plan, going well out of their way. I am sure the government never put up any scheme like this. They said, we will give Rs. 4 crores (naturally through some recognised agency, here it was the ‘World Bank’) for continuing rice research but since there will be a duplication of research work because of MPRRI activities, that institute should be stopped. Underlying aim being to grab all the material first in the germplasm form, simultaneously replacing it by susceptible material (dwarfs), thus creating scope for the consumption of pesticides manufactured by their companies.

They felt that if I continue with my work, I would introduce my indigenous rice HYVs. This they had to block, and they succeeded in depriving me of my material and records and rendered me helpless. They will now spread that objectionable and susceptible rice material all over India to reduce rice production.

Dr Richharia, was there a credible alternative to increasing rice production in India? You have spoken of the Adivasis and their techniques. Did your people also have their own ideas?

I had proposed that hybrid vigour exploitation is possible in India, by utilising vegetative propagation technology which constituted a direct challenge to the dwarf plant type technology concept. But the energy and intellect of our rice scientists was wasted and now attempts are being made to channelise their energy through other futile lines. That HYV dwarfs are no good has been proved beyond doubt and there are authoritative recommendations on this subject.

What next? Well, I think the plant breeders of India are free to go ahead in their own way and develop their own methods; so they (IRRI) have worked out another strategy which involves exploitation of hybrid vigour in India, on which I have been working for years and which I have been working for years and which I have developed. They suggested using male sterile lines, as done in China. To develop stable male sterile lines and restorer systems is not an ordinary business. It requires time and good material and yet success is not assured, and at the same time, it will not be possible to maintain such quality varieties as Basmati with the same aroma and increased productivity. Basmati must also have male sterile lines. It may be possible, it may not, but all these scientists must work only to find out whether you get it or not, thus diverting their attention and energy from their own line of work.

On the other hand, I said, why don't you exploit the hybrid vigour through clonal propagation which insures the economic production of crossed seeds from F1 plans for full normal crop from the F2 population (hybrid vigour persists in later generations also).

We would be committing a big mistake if we import those lines from China as it will involve a big risk as was done with TN 1 and IR 8. And I doubt if those lines would thrive well under variable Indian agro-climactic environments. It will be indeed unfortunate if we get our scientists involved in that exotic material instead of our own indigenous types. But my question is, why are we not taking this seriously?

Source : The Illustrated Weekly of India, March 23, 1986

The Great Gene Robbery by Claude Alvares

The Great Gene Robbery

(First published by the Illustrated Weekly of India in its issue dated March 23, 1986

By Claude Alvares

In 1982, Dr M S Swaminathan withdrew from his position as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SACC) and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission – he was also earlier secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture – and defected to join the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) based at Los Banos in the Philippines as Director-General. The word ‘defected’ is used here on purpose: in no other country of the world, would a scientist in such a strategically important position, privy to all the country’s scientific secrets particularly of those related to food, be permitted to leave and overnight become the employee of an institution controlled by two private foundations so closely allied to American capitalism and US foreign policy interests.

IRRI had been set up in 1960 as part of America’s efforts to control and direct rice research in Asia, even though American is hardly a rice eating country.

A famous plant-breeder had once said, in regard to rice: ‘He who controls the supply of rice will control the destiny of the entire Asiatic orbit. The most important thing to the majority of the Asia is not capitalism or socialism or any other political ideology but food which means life itself, and in most of Asia, food is rice.’

Earl Butz, a former US Secretary of Agriculture, is notorious for one sentence that he uttered in a course of an otherwise utterly insignificant life: ‘If food can be used as a weapon we would be happy to use it.’

And today, as we near the end of the twentieth century, we have to admit that the research concerning the two major cereals that rule our lives – wheat and rice – is wholly directed and controlled by institutions set up under American imperialism.

In many ways Dr Swaminathan’s appointment to IRRI would have been considered a demotion. While in India, he had lorded it over a scientific establishment that employed thousands of scientists, in the Philippines he would have not more than 200 scientists under him. The principal compensation, however, was the money, income tax free.

Already this international institute, always run by American directors, was facing the collapse of its High Yielding Varieties (HYVs) strategy, as seed after seed fell victim to waves of pest epidemics. Urgently required was a massive expansion of IRRI’s rice germplasm, genes from which were essential for passing on resistance to the HYVs. The largest collection of rice varieties, of rice germplasm, remained in the Indian sub continent. Swaminathan’s appointment was critical to this quest.

The IRRI is not a premier institute of science. It is a privately-controlled agricultural research centre. Even so, it is difficult to conceive of a man with Swaminathan’s record becoming its director general. Unless of course the person being appointed is known more for his ability to get things done than for his scientific work. Certainly no scientist with an equivalent scientific record would have found an appointment as director of, say, the Max Planck Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), or the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). I ask knowledgeable people in the Philippines how Swaminathan could have been appointed to the post of director general of IRRI. The most plausible answer was also the funniest.

There were apparently three applicants for the post. The first, a vice-president of the Rockefeller Foundation, insisted on coming to the institute with both his wife and his mistress, if he got the job. The second candidate, from West Germany, was found, upon examination, not to have a degree that he had stitched on to his name. In comparison, Dr M S Swaminathan whom an article in the 1979 Yearbook of Science and the Future, published by the Encyclopedia Britannica, put in the company of Paul Kammerer and Cyril Burt, two of the leading scientific frauds of the twentieth century, appeared white as snow.

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India is rice country. Rice is a critical component of a complex eco-system, tied to legends, used as symbol, essential witness at religious ceremonies and rituals. Such an immense preoccupation with rice would, which is to be expected, call forth its own brand of competence to grow it; so we find a bewildering number of techniques, some of which even today, place Indian rice farmers, some Adivasis, in a class far ahead of international science (see box).

In the Jagannath Temple at Puri in Orissa, I was told, freshly harvested rice is presented to the deity everyday, and various varieties of rice, placed in pots, one on top of the other, with a single flame beneath the lowermost, still cook simultaneously. In Chattisgarh region there is a rice variety called Bora, which can be ground directly into flour and made into rotis. Other varieties have fascinating names, like the kali-mooch of Gwalior, the moti-chur and the khowa; the latter, as its name signifies, tastes like dried milk. The dhokra-dhokri, with its length of grain over 14 mm is the longest rice in the world and the variety Bhimsen has the largest width; there is variety called udan pakheru – because of its long, featherlike structure.

There may have been as many as 1,20,000 varieties of rice in the country, adapted to different environments, and selected and evolved by farmers for specific human needs. These varieties are a product of nature’s desire for diversity, eagerly husbanded by indigenous and non-formal science.

(Dr. R H Richharia)

The Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI), at Cuttack, had been working on the different problems associated with rice culture ever since it had been set up in the late 1950s. Dr R H Richharia took over as its director in 1959, and a number of competent scientists had come up with interesting work that sooner or later would converge into a strategy to produce more rice. Already in 1963, C. Gangadharan, a CRRI scientist had, for example, produced a mutant variety that was short-statured and produced high yields. The institute had also been working on Taiwanese and Japanese varieties. The work was slow because it takes time to discover which varieties are stable, and resistant to diseases and pests.

Gangadharan has placed the history of rice research in India into three major periods and the developments are highly suggestive. The first phase, from 1912 to the 1950s, concentrated on pure line selections, and by the end of the period, a total of 445 improved rice varieties, mostly the result of pure line methods of selection, were bred.

But what is interesting for our purpose and which starkly illuminates the major schism that would soon develop between indigenous science and ‘international science’ is the broad list of objectives of this early research. Gangadharan lists nine including earliness, deep water and flood resistance, lodging resistance, drought resistance, non-shedding of grain, dormancy of seed, control of wild rice, disease resistance and higher response to heavy manuring. Since pure line selection is itself based on natural selection occurring over centuries, there was no problem of incompatibility between genes and the environment, and therefore no pest problem.

The second phase was less promising. It involved the initially unsuccessful effort at hybridising the Japonica and Indica varieties. The objective, writes Gangadharan, ‘was to transfer the high yielding ability and response to fertilisers that characterise the Japonicas into local Indica varieties which are adapted to local conditions of culture and to the prevalent diseases and pests. Japan had used chemical fertilisers from the beginning of this century and Japonicas showed a response under Japanese conditions whereas the Indicas had not been cultivated under high fertility conditions.’

Only four successes were reported from this programme. The problem was that the Japonicas were both photo-period and temperature sensitive and additionally the seed had been brought from some of the coldest regions of Japan. When these varieties were planted in the tropical environment, they not only gave different but negative results. The introduction of the Philippines semi-dwarf varieties put an abrupt end to this line of research. Later the CRRI imported seed from the milder, temperate region of Japan. This time the efforts were successful but IRRI’s control over the rice research programme would effectively keep these efforts out of circulation, and science.

Which brings us to the third phase inaugurated by IRRI, and also the subject of this investigation.

IRRI was established on the basis of a note written by a Rockefeller official in 1959. Both the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations put up the money to start the institute, which was established formally in 1960 and began functioning fully in 1962. From start to finish, the CRRI would be no match in an unequal battle all the way. The IRRI officials would literally buy rice scientists from different parts of Asia, and take over most of the outstanding talent simply because of IRRI’s ability to offer them salaries not only in dollars, but out of proportion to what they received in their own countries, and its ability to provide accommodation, and opportunities for educating staff children anywhere in the world.

By 1966, IRRI had come up with its first success. It is important to emphasise that whereas the CRRI had nine objectives governing its research, IRRI had only one. IR8 was a semi-dwarf rice variety, the result of a cross between an Indonesian tall rice plant and a Taiwanese dwarf variety. Distinctive of the plant was its ability to stand heavy fertilisation, and heavier yields, without lodging. (It also inaugurated a vast market for American fertilisers all over Asia). Without water, fertilisers and pesticides, IR8 did not perform extraordinarily better than the older rices. The disadvantage of the latter was solely that they tended to lodge when given extra nutrients, thus leading to losses.

The CRRI had, as mentioned earlier, been working with identical material and in fact had isolated dwarf varieties from Taiwan that were free from susceptibility to viral attacks. When the news arrived that the Indian government was planning, at the insistence of IRRI experts, to import the new IRRI seed in bulk into India, Dr Richharia, CRRI director, objected.

The government seems to have found Dr Richharia’s advice contradictory: earlier, it had been informed by the CRRI that Taichung varieties could provide a breakthrough in rice production; now Richharia was objecting to their import. The contradiction stemmed from the fact that bureaucrats and politicians have little grounding in genetics: they did not seem to understand that seed tested after numerous adaptive trials over many seasons, and then selected and multiplied, is radically different from seed imported in bulk from abroad. The latter, because of its mixed population, will contain seed carrying disease and which might be susceptible to pests. IRRI at that point of time was too keen to get its seeds grown on a large scale before decisions could be reversed, to subscribe to caution of any kind.

It was also the tremendous leverage that the Americans maintained over the Indian science establishment that enabled IRRI to ride roughshod over the protests of Indian scientists. Though the country was allegedly nonaligned in politics, most of its policies in science and economics were largely under the control of Americans. Thus the community development programme originated with Albert Myers. Douglas Emswinger of the Ford Foundation once boasted that he had better access to Pandit Nehru than any of the latter’s cabinet colleagues. Dr Richharia first came to know of his appointment to the director’s post at the CRRI from an American, Prof Claim. Dr. Robert Chandler, director of IRRI, reported directly to Agriculture Minister, C. Subramanam.

Chandler, in his recent account of the IRRI, An Adventure in Applied Science, has admitted that he had never seen a rice plant when he took over as director of IRRI. Yet, it was at his instigation, and because he had been castigated once by Dr Richharia for bringing rice seed into the country without a quarantine certificate, thus violating the country's laws, that the government decided to retire Dr Richharia, at that time one of the world's leading rice specialists.

Once IR8 and TN1 had become fairly established within India and all rice research oriented solely in the direction of semi-dwarfs using these parents, IRRI would naturally retain the lead, with large doses of political clout and advertising to make up for shortfalls in science. Rice scientists from Asia, if they wished to make a career, would have to support the IRRI research direction.

One additional significant factor that seems to have made an impact on the government at the time were the disastrous harvests of 1965 and 1966. What weighed with the Government of India (and also former President Marcos of the Phillipines) in choosing to uncritically deploy IRRI technology, was that the latter, for the first time, offered an almost automatic method of raising food that would place it within the control of the administration, taking it out of the hands of the peasants. If the government concentrated its resources in a few, well-endowed areas, using the HYV package, it could produce a sizeable output of food that would be independent of the whims of the monsoons. Again, the very method of agriculture, based on expensive inputs, required credit, and this assured the government that a good proportion of the grain thus produced would end up in the market, in the hands of government procurement agencies, and could then be used to keep prices stable in the cities.

Two major developments totally ruined the prospect of a promised land overflowing with rice and honey. The first was economic: the oil price hike of 1973 effectively limited a fertiliser-based agricultural strategy. It would make Green Revolution inputs so expensive that they would have to be subsidised by Governments, if farmers were not to give up using them forever. The second major problem, also irreversible, arrived in the form of disease and insects. The growing of varieties with a narrow genetic base (all with the same dwarfing gene, dee-gee-wo-gen), upset insect ecology and invented entire generations of pests. Dr Swaminathan has himself made quite a shameless summary of the fate of IRRI varieties, in a recent issue of Mazingira. He writes:

‘It is difficult to develop a variety that has a useful life of more than five to six years in tropical environments unless genes for horizontal (more stable) resistance are identified and incorporated. Year round rice cultivation causes disease and insect organisms to occur in overlapping generations and increases the chance of new races or biotypes developing; thus new pest problems continuously arise. Variety IR8, released in 1966, suffered from serious attacks of bacterial blight (BB) in 1968 and 1969. In 1970 and 1971, outbreaks of rice tungro virus (RTV) destroyed IR8 yields throughout the Philippines. The IR20 variety, released in 1969, had BB resistance and RTV tolerance, and it replaced IR8 in 1971 and 1972. However, outbreaks of brown plant hopper (BPH) and grassy stunt virus (GSV) in 1973 destroyed IR20 in most Philippine provinces. Variety IR26, with BPH resistance, was released in 1973 and became the dominant Philippine variety in 1974 and 1975. In 1976, a new BPH biotype attacked it and IR36 was released; it had a different gene for resistance to the new BPH biotype and replaced IR26 within one year. It is now the dominant variety in the Philippines. Its resistance to BPH has held till recently, but it is now being threatened by ragged stunt and wilted stunt (both new diseases), as well as by another new biotype of BPH (No. 3).

In India, the situation was equally horrifying. All of Dr Richharia's predictions had come true. ‘The introduction of high-yielding varieties,’ noted a task force of eminent rice breeders, ‘has brought about a marked change in the status of insect pests like gall midge, brown planthopper, leaf folder, whore maggot, etc. Most of the HYVs released so far are susceptible to major pests with a crop loss of 30 to 100 per cent... Most of the HYVs are the derivatives of TN1 or IR8 and therefore, have the dwarfing gene known as dee-gee-wo-gen. The narrow genetic base has created alarming uniformity, causing vulnerability to diseases and pests. Most of the released varieties are not suitable for typical uplands and lowlands which together constitute about 75 per cent of the total rice area of the country.’

The IRRI counter-strategy against the pests involved breeding of varieties, with genes for resistance to such pests, taken from wild relatives of the rice plant and its traditional cultivars. All of a sudden it seemed critical that massive efforts be made to make as complete a collection of the older varieties: many of the traditional Indicas were found to be important donors for resistance. Gene incorporation strategy, in other words, required vast germplasm resources, most of which were to be found in India. The recruitment of Dr M S Swaminathan would be instrumental in the task of collection.

In India, again, Dr Richharia stood in the way.

After he had been retired from service at Chandler's insistence, Richharia had gone to the Orissa High Court, where for three years, alone, he fought a legal battle that ruined his family, disrupted the education of his children, and brought tremendous strains on his wife's health. The legal battle was successful, for in 1970, the Court ordered his reinstatement as director of the CRRI. He had redeemed his honour.

In the meanwhile, the Madhya Pradesh government had appointed Dr Richharia as an agricultural advisor, and the rice man set about his disrupted rice work once again, with his usual zeal. Within the space of six years, he had built up the infrastructure of a new rice research institute at Raipur. Here, this extraordinarily gifted and imaginative rice scientist maintained over 19,000 varieties of rice in situ on a shoestring budget of Rs. 20,000 per annum, with not even a microscope in his office-cum-laboratory, situated in the neighbourhood of cooperative rice mills. His assistants included two agricultural graduates and six village level workers, the latter drawing a salary of Rs.250 per month. Richharia had created, practically out of nothing, one of the most extraordinary living gene banks in the world, and provided ample proof of what Indian scientists are capable of, if they are given proper encouragement.

An attack of leaf blight that devastated the corn crop of the US in 1970, and which had resulted from the extensive planting of hybrids that shared a single source of cytoplasm, and the continuous attacks on IRRI varieties, impelled IRRI to sponsor a Rice Genetic Conservation Workshop in 1977. Swaminathan attended it as an ‘observer’. The report of that workshop begins with the statement: ‘The founders of IRRI showed great foresight when in 1960-61 they planned the establishment of a rice germplasm bank.’ Nonsense. The certified aims and objects for the institute merely talk of a collection of the world's literature on rice. The workshop, being held 17 years after the establishment of IRRI, indicated that the germplasm problem was becoming important only now.

After the workshop, IRRI's covetous gaze fell on Richharia’s 19,000 varieties at the Madhya Pradesh Rice Research Institute (MPRRI). Not only had Richharia now uncovered a fascinating world of traditional rices, some of which produced between 8-9 tonnes per hectare – better than the IRRI varieties – he had also discovered dwarf plants without the susceptible dwarfing gene of the IRRI varieties. His extension work among the farmers would soon begin to pose a direct challenge to IRRI itself.

IRRI staff members journeyed to Raipur and asked for his material. Still moulded in the old scientific tradition, he refused because he had not studied the material himself. He was decidedly against any proposal for ‘exchange’, for this could only mean giving up his uncontaminated varieties for IRRI's susceptible ones.

So the IRRI did the next best thing: it got the MPRRI shut down!

The ICAR floated a scheme for agricultural development in Madhya Pradesh, particularly for rice. The World Bank contributed Rs.4 crores. The condition laid down was: close down the MPRRI, since it would lead to a ‘duplication of work.’ At a special meeting of the MPRRI Board, Madhya Pradesh's chief secretary who was not a trustee, was present. He had been earlier connected with the Ford Foundation. A resolution was passed closing down the Institute, and the rice germplasm passed over to the Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya (JNKVV), whose vice-chancellor, Sukhdev Singh, also joined the IRRI board of trustees. Scientists were sent to IRRI for training in germplasm transfer, and Richharia's team was disbanded.

This time too, they locked Dr. Richharia's rooms and took away all his research papers.

On June 4, 1982, Dr M N Shrivastava, rice breeder, JNKVV, wrote to P S Srinivasan, the IRRI liaison officer, addressed it care of Ford Foundation, New Delhi, enclosing two sets of material as requested by T. T. Chang of IRRI: ‘First set (264 accessions) is from our early duration collection and second set (170 samples) is part of those varieties which were identified to be popular with the farmers of Madhya Pradesh and Dr R H Richharia, former director of MPRRI, purified them and recommended replacing originals with these purified versions.’

But with Richharia out of the fray, nature herself now jumped into the ring. It responded with the necessary mutations, and began to lay low the new pest resistant varieties, rendering even the strategy of gene incorporation, of temporary utility. And then, in a fashion that only those with some respect for nature's awesome ways would understand, it delivered the coup de grace.

The distinctive success of the HYVs lay in their being short stemmed, able to stand heavy nitrogen applications without lodging, when compared with the older varieties. The incorporation of more and more genes from traditional cultivars not only passed on resistance characters, but also the tendency to lodge. Ergo, modern varieties began to lose their non-lodging character, the main advantage they had against the older cultivars. Research Highlights for 1983, an IRRI publication, observes:

‘Modern rices produce high grain yields with large amounts of applied nitrogen. However, heavy applications increase lodging, which reduces yields. Additionally, as higher levels of insect pest and disease resistance have been bred into modern semi-dwarf varieties, lodging resistance has tended to decline.’

The green revolution in rice had begun to involute.

What then have been the ‘achievements’ of such corrupt and politically naive science? (One set of all IRRI germplasm has been sent to Fort Collins, the maximum security installation in the US, without the permission of the Indian government). Has such science achieved any of its declared aims? Bharat Dogra summed it up:

‘Starting from just five million hectares in 1970-71, over 18 million hectares or nearly half the area of (rice) has now been brought under the HYVs programme till 1982-83... Therefore, this crop must have received a substantial share of the benefit of the overall increase in irrigation and the increase in the overall consumption of NPK fertilisers. However, compared to the increase in the area under HYVs and the increase in fertilisers and irrigation, the production of rice has increased to a lesser extent. During the period mentioned above (1970-71 to 1982-83), the production of rice has gone up from 42.23 million tonnes to 46.48 million tonnes. Assuming the production of non-HYVs did not experience any increase at all and all the difference in rice production was on HYVs land, we get an increase in production of about 4 million tonnes as a result of extension of HYVs programme to nearly 13 million hectares of land. In other words, an increase of 0.31 tonnes was achieved with HYV per hectare. This is a relatively small accomplishment which could have been easily achieved even without the expensive HYV programme and its infrastructure by making better use of village-based resources.’

A 33-member official working group headed by K C S Acharya, additional secretary in the ministry of agriculture, has determined that the growth rate of rice production after the Green Revolution has been less when compared with the pre-Green Revolution period.

Millions of hectares of rice are now routinely devastated by BPH and other pests and no compensation is available to farmers who are induced to take to such ‘modernised’ agriculture. Such pest infestations have been introduced into the Indian environment. The IRRI officials knew what they were doing, and they did it for the cheap objective of wanting to assert IRRI primacy.

The unmonitored, hasty introduction of HYVs of seed has led to genetic erosion of tremendous proportions, as hundreds of priceless traditional varieties have been lost to mankind. It is only in the eighties that the IRRI has begun to acknowledge the true worth of the older varieties. What a curious circle of events!

The IRRI inaugurated the revolution in rice by holding in ridicule the basis of traditional agriculture – the traditional cultivar, itself the result of close trial and error experimentation by farmers over decades – and sought to displace it with its own product, the HYV. However, since the HYV was not closely adapted to any environment, it required extensive support, having attracted pest infestations on a mass scale. Protection could only come from the same traditional cultivars, which at the time of HYV propagation, had been loaded with abuse.

Is there a way out: how can such a state of science exist nearly 40 years after independence? Why does the director of the CRRI continue to remain as a trustee of the IRRI, which he has been since 1979? To continue and deepen the dependence? The IRRI has no future, politically, and also as far as research is concerned. Politically, its future was tied to former President Marcos, and Filipino farmers and scientists had already begun to demand its closure. As far as research is concerned, the IRRI has no new ideas, and is now eagerly visiting China to learn Chinese techniques of growing hybrid rice, the next frontier in rice yield enhancement.

The CRRI has ample talent to match Chinese science. It has still vital access to hundreds of indigenous cultivars (a recent count of rice collection centres indicated that there were about 44,000 varieties, whereas the IRRI has 70,000). What then should be done?

First, the CRRI should be upgraded to international standards, for that is the only sure guarantee of the funds it needs, and which it has been deprived of, ever since Indian politicians decided to back IRRI science. Today, the CRRI germplasm unit does not have even a jeep to operate its collection of rice cultivars.

Second, all further export of rice germplasm to IRRI should be banned, since germplasm is part of our national heritage, and its preservation is enjoined by the Constitution in the chapter on Fundamental Duties. Third, steps should be taken to gradually replace IRRI varieties, and all those having IRRI parents, with productive indigenous varieties in the fields. This is already happening in the Philippines: farmers are exchanging old varieties with each other, disowning IRRI seeds, aptly described as ‘seeds of imperialism’ and ‘seeds of sabotage.’

There seems to have been some awareness at the level of the government that the rice revolution had been grounded, due to environmental and economic factors. The late Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, had asked Dr Richharia for a rice production increase plan. After he submitted it, he heard no more about it. After an article by Dom Moraes on Richharia, the M. P. Government hastily set about attempting to find some funds to ask the latter to resume his work. Now that proposal has been scotched by the same forces that once got the MPRRI to close down.

More than 25 years have passed in this costly, wasteful, environmentally unsound, flirtation with the exogene. The sorry and sad record only serves to underline the principle – despite our continuing mesmerisation by western science – that for genuine development of any worthwhile kind, the indigene is still the best gene.