Sulochana Gadgil has had a life-long fascination with the Asian monsoon, the seasonally shifting wind pattern driving the rain storms which are the lifeblood of India’s agricultural economy. Born in Pune, she studied mathematics in India and the USA – at Harvard and MIT – before returning to India, where she was a professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore from 1973 until her retirement a few years ago. 

Sulochana is one of the world’s leading experts on the monsoon, and she has made enormous contributions to its understanding. She has never shied away from questioning the prevailing theories, and she was the first one to demonstrate that, contrary to the explanation still found in many textbook, the monsoon is not a gigantic land-sea breeze. Instead, it is a manifestation of the “intertropical convergence zone”, a migrating planetary-scale system of tropical rain belts. Sulochana has also worked with economists and mathematicians (including her son) to quantify the impact of year-to-year monsoon variations on the Indian economy. They showed that even though the contribution of agriculture to India’s economy has diminished over the last five decades, the impact of droughts on the GDP has remained large (2 to 5%) throughout. 

Apart from her research, Sulochana also talks about growing up as a scientifically-minded girl in Pune, about the Western-centric lens in science and the thinking about environmental problems, and about the challenges of interdisciplinary collaborations.

“But I found to my dismay that agricultural scientists were least interested. Although when you talk to farmers, what is the most important factor impacting your yields, they will say climate. But agricultural scientists since the Green Revolution can only think of different varieties and pesticides and fertilizers.”

The interview with Sulochana Gadgil was recorded in December 2019. Image credit: Adam Sobel