MS Swaminathan, Father of Green Revolution, Dead; Rahul Takes Position on OBCs, Ruffles the BJP

Mizoram declines to help Amit Shah oust Myanmar refugees, Adani out of Bailadila mine, Chandrayaan unlikely to revive, half of India close to drought, will the women’s reservation curse affect Modi?

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia and Tanweer Alam | With inputs from Kalrav Joshi and Anirudh SK | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal

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Snapshot of the day

September 28, 2023

Pratik Kanjilal

MS Swaminathan, architect of India’s Green Revolution, has died in Chennai aged 98. He provided the vision of the programme, which rapidly turned India from a zone of endemic hunger into a surplus nation. At the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, he learned of American crop scientist Norman S Borlaug’s work with Mexican dwarf wheat, and invited him to India. Together, they played a crucial role in the development and propagation of high-yielding varieties, which are more responsive to agricultural inputs. It took only four harvests to double wheat production. The Indian Express has republished an article by Harish Damodaran from 2015, written on Swaminathan’s 90th birthday. 

“Under the guise of combating terrorism, the Indian government has leveraged the Financial Action Task Force’s recommendations to tighten its arsenal of financial and counter-terrorism laws which are routinely misused to target and silence critics. The FATF must hold the Indian authorities accountable for the persistent weaponisation of its recommendations.” Aakar Patel, chair of Amnesty International India, has said that the Modi government is misusing the recommendations of the international watchdog against terror funding to tighten the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, Prevention of Money Laundering Act and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, and to force upon non-profits curbs and compliance requirements which cripple their legitimate work. For instance, most NGOs do not have operations in Delhi, but are required to maintain FCRA accounts at the Parliament Street branch of State Bank of India.

The Ministry of Culture has told officials of the National Museum to vacate the premises by the end of the year, so that the heritage building can be demolished by March next year. It will be replaced by a building named Yug Yugeen Bharat, reports Shyamlal Yadav in Indian Express. 

Zoramthanga’s Mizo National Front (MNF) government in Mizoram has consistently welcomed refugees from Myanmar, with whom locals have ethnic ties. Now, it has decided to ignore an order sent in April by Amit Shah’s Union Home Ministry to Manipur and Mizoram, to collect the biometrics of “illegal immigrants”. The process was to be completed this week, but Mizoram says that it will not share data which will be used to expel refugees. 

The son of Sikh community leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar says his father was meeting regularly with Canadian intelligence officers for months before he was shot dead.