Long before Mr Bush and Dr Rice came by to leapfrog US-India ties to a new level, it was Prof. Wheat who jump-started and nourished the relationship. Norman Borlaug, the genial scientist-pacifist who died of cancer in Dallas on Saturday, was as much India’s ‘annadaata’ as he was the Father of the Green Revolution. Around the time Dr Borlaug arrived on the scene in the mid-1960s, the specter of famine, shortages, and starvation hung over the sub-continent. India was importing huge quantities of food grains from the US - much of it dole - to feed its growing millions in a manner that was famously described as “ship-to-mouth” sustenance. Enter Norman Borlaug, a strapping, self-made, sun-burnt American from the farmland of Iowa. By cranking up a wheat strain containing an unusual gene, Borlaug created the so-called ‘‘semi-dwarf’’ plant variety—a shorter, stubbier, compact stalk that supported an enormous head of grain without falling over from the weight. This curious principle of shrinking the plant to increase the output on the plant from the same acreage resulted in Indian farmers eventually quadrupling their wheat—and later, rice—production. It heralded the Green Revolution.