The Foundation has taken up on oral history project in collaboration with Archives at the National Centre for Biological Sciences. The objective of the project is to critically examine the contributions of the first few generations of Indian agricultural scientists to the science of agriculture and food production, and to the practice of agricultural production in the developing economies, through their oral history interviews.

The oral history interviews gain a special relevance in light of the fact that these scientists are the last living voices of an independent agricultural research system that originated and developed along with their own academic career. These interviews will certainly add another dimension to the history of agricultural research and education in India. They will also help in identifying other official archives, and personal collections to be explored subsequently, in the second stage of the project.

Agricultural productivity and production in India grew steadily in the post green revolution period. Public institutions of agricultural research and education, and the community of agricultural scientists, were at the forefront of the transformation of Indian agriculture. This facet of agricultural development is somewhat recognised in scholarship. However, there has been limited work on the evolution of agricultural science, and its adoption in actual production in independent India from the perspective of history of knowledge. The history of the science and the practice of agricultural production has not been adequately studied in the context of the global flow of knowledge, and the contemporary economic and political history. It is this gap in scholarship that the oral histories project aims to fill.