Chidambaram Subramaniam

He was married to Shrimati Sakuntala. The couple were blessed with three children - two daughters, Shrimati Swathantra Sakthivel and Shrimati Aruna Ramakrishnan and a son, Shri Rajashekar.

On November 7, 2000, he died in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

Chidambaram Subramaniam was born on January 30, 1910, in Senguttaipalayam, a small village near Pollachi in the district of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. His father, Chidambara Gounder, was an agriculturalist.

He did his schooling in Pollachi and thereafter moved to Chennai and enrolled at the ‘Presidency College’ from where he completed his B.Sc. in Physics.

He later attended the ‘Madras Law College’ in Chennai and graduated with a degree in Law.

He was inspired by his uncle Swami Chidbhavananda who established ‘Sri Ramakrishna Tapovanam’ in Tiruparaithurai, Tiruchi district, which eventually set-up many educational institutes in the state of Tamil Nadu that promulgated the ideals of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda.

During college life he and his hostel mates Periyasaamy Thooran, Gounder, O. V. Alagesan, Justice Palanisami and K. S. Ramaswamy started an association which they named ‘Vana Malar Sangam’ (Congregation of Wild Flowers) and also initiated a magazine, ‘Pithan’ from the town of Gobichettipalayam.

After the independence of India, Subramaniam was elected as a member of the ‘Constituent Assembly’ that framed the ‘Constitution of India’.

From 1952 to 1962 he served the Madras State as the Minister of Education, Law and Finance. During this time he remained the ‘Leader of the House’ in the ‘Madras Legislative Assembly’.

In 1962 he was elected to the Lok Sabha and he became the Minister for Steel and Mines.

In 1964 he succeeded Swaran Singh as the new Minister for Food and Agriculture under the then Prime Minister of India Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri. He held the ministry till 1966 and during this tenure applied his formidable skills in initiating path breaking steps to curb the acute shortage of food grains in India.

In 1969 while the ‘Indian National congress’ was at the verge of a split Subramaniam chose to support Indira Gandhi and served as the interim president of the new party formed by her, the ‘Congress (I)’.

His best accomplishment remains crafting of the modern agricultural development policy of India as the Minister for Food and Agriculture along with two of the prominent protégés produced by him, Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan and B. Sivaraman. Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan is an Indian geneticist who played a key role in the ‘Green Revolution’ of India after being inducted by Subramaniam. Getting a go ahead from the then Prime Minister of India, Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri, Subramaniam as the Minister for Food and Agriculture successfully implemented the policy that led India to attain a record production of wheat in 1972.

As Minister of Food and Agriculture he was instrumental in introduction of new high-yielding variety of seeds along with exhaustive use of fertilizers. He also ensured that awareness of the program and its application reach out to millions of farmers. This helped the country attain higher production of cereals, thus achieving a state of self-sufficiency in production of food grains.