Dr. M.S. Swaminathan sometimes recalls the excitement and effervescence during that period in the decade of the 1960s when a major revolution was brewing in the laboratories and fields of India. The explosion in food production brought on by the introduction of high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice in India (and later in other parts of the developing world) created agricultural history. With characteristic modesty, he deflects credit for his role in changing the face of agriculture in the developing world, but instead draws attention to the many lessons of what came to be called the Green Revolution. Apart from its more obvious and recognized ones, he underlines the important political lesson drawn from that experience. The Green Revolution disproved Malthusian predictions of famine and mass starvation for India. It made India self-sufficient in food, a factor that played no small role in strengthening the country's political sovereignty and ability to withstand international pressures at a critical juncture