Surender Kumar Dalal

Surender Kumar Dalal, the Presenter of this e-book was born on 21^st November, 1948 in Hissar. He graduated in Agriculture & Animal Husbandry, from the prestigious Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana from Hissar campus. He was exceptionally hard working in field farm operations and was awarded Best Plot Worker by Norman Borlaug, the “Father of Green Revolution and Noble Peace Prize Winner” He also did a Master’s in Agriculture from Haryana Agricultural University in 1971.

He excelled in sports particularly hockey right from schooling and represented the school hockey team in inter-school and district tournaments. During college, the Presenter was privileged to learn and play hockey with two prominent Indian Hockey Team Captains, Padma Shri Prithipal Singh and Padma Shri Charanjit Singh. Under their guidance, the Presenter represented his college and university hockey teams and played inter-university/district tournaments. Later, as a faculty member, he was the Secretary of the Hockey Club of the University. He was a good wrestler and loved to ride a horse, which was taught by his father, who was also a learned horse rider. The father of the Presenter was heading the most extensive and largest Government Farm in Asia covering about 40,000 acres of land, which had an enormous number of livestock and horses. So the Presenter had an opportunity to enjoy riding horses from his childhood and later it became his hobby to go riding every weekend for hours on different naughty (mischievous) horses in different directions to the nearby forest area of the farm. So over a period of time, he became an excellent horse rider.

After post-graduation, he was directly recruited as Deputy Superintendent of Police in the Central Reserve Police Force but since he did not like that life so he resigned from his job after some time and joined Haryana Agricultural University, Hissar as Research Assistant (now re-designated as Assistant Scientist). There he was engaged in teaching undergraduate students of Agriculture and Veterinary colleges. He was also conducting research trials on various aspects of agricultural crops and published a series of research papers on different aspects of crop production, participating in research workshops and seminars. He was due for in-service admission to Ph.D but after serving the University for more than 3 years, he changed his job and joined the Government of India in the Ministry of Agriculture in New Delhi in 1976. The Presenter worked in the Department of Agriculture & Cooperation of the Ministry at the national level and looked after various national and international schemes/programmes. He was an example to serve different Divisions of the Ministry in different disciplines covering Fertilizer, Seed, Extension, and Rainfed Farming Systems. He participated in a series of national and international workshops, seminars and conferences organized in the country. He also represented a number of Central Committees and Teams from time to time on various topics.

The Presenter was deputed as an Indian representative to participate in an International Training for 2 months on the role of extension in rice cultivation techniques and extension sponsored by JICA of Japan organized at Rice Research Station, Suphanburi Province in Thailand. He again went to Thailand after about 15 years and represented as an Indian delegate in another international training on ‘Geographic Information System assisted watersheds organized at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, which is a prestigious Institute in Asia.

The Presenter was deputed as Agronomist on Long Term assignment of FAO of the United Nations (UN) Programme on ‘Special Programme for Food Security’ in Mozambique in 2000. He served there as an Indian Expert to popularize better farming techniques for increasing crop productivity and production, particularly in the case of rice crops. He supported extension functionaries for quick dissemination of new technologies and improved methods of paddy cultivation for better yields by the farmers.

After serving the Department of Agriculture & Cooperation in the Ministry in various senior positions as Senior Extension Officer, Joint Director, Director of Farm Information, and Deputy Commissioner in the Ministry, he retired from the highest technical post of Additional Commissioner in the year 2008. During the last tenure of about 2 years before retirement, the Presenter was assigned a vital task and posted with the honourable Minister of State for Agriculture in the Ministry for providing all types of technical support including parliamentary matters/issues. Even after retirement, he was retained as a Consultant by the then Minister of State for Agriculture for more than a year. After this, he got two short assignments from World Agroforestry (International Council for Research in Agroforestry-ICRAF) on ‘Bhoochetana plus Project in Karnataka State’ and another on ‘Bio-fuel status in the country’.

Subsequently, the Presenter worked as a Consultant in various leading national schemes and missions like Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, National Food Security Mission and National Mission on Oilseed & Oil Palm. Later, till 2020 worked from home on the development of publication material for an international Indo-German Project.

The Presenter served the University, the Government of India and international organizations from 1973 to 2020 for about 47 years and someplace one has to stop and say no. So after this, no more assignments were taken up but he switched his focus to social work and therefore started attending ‘hawan’ and started working for various activities of Arya Samaj Mandir, Jor Bagh New Delhi. In addition, the Presenter regularly keeps visiting village almost once a month to meet his father-like eldest brother Ram Singh and his sons and their families to know their welfare. Since all of them are engaged in farming, He also keeps interacting with respect to better management practices, the introduction of new cultivars, diversification of crops, growing high-value crops, arranging seeds of new varieties of crops & kitchen gardening, some fruit plants etc. At times, the general family issues are also discussed and sorted out with younger generations.

The Presenter was married in May, 1976 to Bina from the Kadian family migrated from village Beri in Haryana to Bhalsua village in Delhi. The couple is blessed with two children, a son, Gaurav Dalal who is an M.Tech from the US and has his own software business. He has two sons, Chetanya Veer Dalal and Bhuvan Veer Dalal both studying in the same Modern School, Barkhamaba Road, New Delhi where their father and Bua had studied. The second child is a daughter Dr Garima Dalal, who is a double MA in English and Linguistics and has done Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is working as Assistant Professor in JNU and is excelling in her domain of interest.