For young readers: Meet Modadugu Vijay Gupta, a scientist who revolutionised Indian aquaculture

Modadugu Vijay Gupta was born on August 17, 1939, in Bapatla, Guntur district, of the then Madras Presidency (present-day Andhra Pradesh), to Nagendra Gupta, a lawyer, and Rajyalakshmi. The sublime Suryalanka Beach was barely five kilometres from his house. Visits to the beach with his father formed a significant part of Gupta’s childhood memories. Young Gupta looked forward to visiting the beach, but not for its breathtaking sunrises and sunsets, and surely not to build castles in the golden sand.

As Gupta swam along the shore with his head under water for as long as he could hold his breath, he saw fish! Plenty of small fish. Fish of all kinds. Soon, he learned how to identify species. He wanted to catch a fish and show it to his mother, though their household was vegetarian. But as much as he tried, he couldn’t catch a single one.

One day, Gupta saw a frail man, his skin taut to his skeleton, walk away from the shore with lots of fish in his net. His father explained that he was a fisherman and catching fish was his livelihood. Even though men and women like him worked hard to catch fish, they seldom had enough food to feed their families. Gupta made up his mind to do something to make life better for fishermen and their families.

His father suggested Gupta become a doctor – what better way to serve people, especially those who came from less privileged backgrounds? But after he graduated from Bapatla High School, Gupta took up biology. He wanted to do more research on fish and fisheries.

Guntur College and then Benares Hindu University were Gupta’s homes for the next few years. After a stint as a lecturer and also serving as the head of the zoology department at Sibsagar College, Assam, he began his hands-on study of the fishermen, their families and their hardships.

Gupta understood that the fishermen neither had money to buy their own food nor to buy land to grow food. Fish were all they had. Malnutrition and severe vitamin deficiency, especially in children, were common. Globally, in the 1940s and 1950s, millions across the world suffered from hunger and malnutrition due to famines and wars.

Gupta found it hard to accept that though India was achieving economic development and was one of the largest producers and exporters of wheat, rice, cotton and spices, there were still hundreds of millions of people who were malnourished and struggling for even one square meal a day. This was not just about food security – it was the need to save a humongous part of the population from hunger and for creating a sustained supply of food that was easy to procure, economically viable and gave adequate amounts of vital nutrients.

Gupta believed the solution lay in aquaculture. After completing his PhD in biology from the University of Calcutta, he joined the Indian Council of Agricultural Research in Calcutta as a research associate in 1962 to study fisheries. Some may have doubted his plan to boost fish populations as food for a nation where a sizable percentage of the populace was vegetarian. But Gupta was adamant.

Gupta began his work at the grassroots level by trying to understand existing fishing techniques because clearly, they were not successful. Aquaculture experiments, under ideal conditions, improved yields four times, but farming environments were far from ideal. What worked in controlled conditions in labs did not always work in fish farms. They were expensive to implement and even if the farmers invested in them, what was the guarantee they would succeed?

Thus began Gupta’s journey of making the farm his lab.

Gupta adopted a two-pronged approach to increase fish harvests, especially among the poorest of the poor.

First, he had to gain the fisherfolks’ trust if he wanted to prove to them that the new aquaculture techniques were superior to the traditional ones they had been using. Second, he gathered data from farmers and their farms – their natural and human resources and constraints, their existing yields and living conditions. Most importantly, the possibilities!

His deep involvement made farmers more receptive to his suggestions. He taught them how to recycle farm waste – rice, weeds, bran, even manure – to support and grow a larger fish stock. Once the aquaculture techniques he recommended were implemented, Gupta recorded his observations and monitored the quantity and quality of the fish.

In the first year of implementation, the yield per hectare doubled. Soon, the yield was seven times of what they had been producing! Gupta’s formula had worked. His model was slowly applied countrywide.

By 2014, India was producing over four million tonnes of fish annually, from just 75,000 tonnes in the 1970s! Gupta had given a huge boost to India’s Blue Revolution. And it was just the beginning.

When India was investing in developing high-end, high-cost aquaculture methods, such as shrimp farming, Gupta focused only on researching aquaculture methods for extremely poor farmers. He developed methods such as fish polyculture (cultivating diverse species of fish in the same pond), and integrated aquaculture and agriculture.

Gupta also partnered with local communities. He formed small groups of five to ten landless farmers and worked relentlessly to teach them his methods. He helped farmers start a small fish farming business in leased ponds, providing them with unconditional financial support for the start-up costs of fish farming.

Excerpted with permission from 10 Indian Scientists Whose Extraordinary Work You May Not Know, Vaishali Shroff, Duckbill.