In the early 1960s foreign economists had written India off. One wrote that the hunger problem was beyond solving. Famine was being treated as arithmetic — so many mouths, so much grain, no way to close the distance between them.
A scientist from Kumbakonam disagreed. M.S. Swaminathan had been a student during the Bengal famine of 1943, and had turned down better-paid work abroad to come home and grow wheat.
Indian wheat grew tall, which meant that feeding it well made it topple under its own weight. He went looking for a shorter plant — wrote to Japan, then to Washington, and was finally pointed towards a man in Mexico.
So he wrote to Norman Borlaug and asked him to come. Borlaug said he would, if the invitation was formal. In March 1963 the two of them walked Indian fields together.
By 1968 the harvest had gone from about 12 million tonnes to 17. India has not had a famine since. Borlaug won the Nobel in 1970 and gave Swaminathan the credit.
It started with one man refusing to accept a forecast, and writing a letter.