Role of honour

Physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose and statistician P C Mahalanobis may not immediately be associated with Indian agriculture but the ministry of agriculture hopes to remedy that problem soon. The ministry is planning to name two conference halls after Bose and Mahalanobis to commemorate their contribution to the development of agriculture as a science. Bose, of course, was a physicist who did some pioneering research in plant science (including his famous deduction that plants can feel pain). Less well known is the fact that Mahalanobis, founder of the Indian Statistical Institution, was India’s first agriculture statistician and instrumental in setting up and developing the ministry’s agriculture statistics wing. Officials said the ministry also plans to start an annual lecture series in honour of Bose, inviting noble laureates and others to speak on agriculture-related topics. Since Bose died in 1937 and Mahalanobis in 1972, these plans can best be described as better late than never.