Chenai, January 1, 2019: Dear Members of the MSSRF family, I send you all my very best wishes for your health and happiness during 2019. We will shortly be completing 30 years of productive work but our challenges for the future are great due to both economic and ecological factors. We should therefore redouble our efforts to improve the relevance and excellence of our various research, training and extension programmes.

We should keep the following poem by Maria Rilke as our goal:

“Again and again in history

Some special people wake up

They have no ground in the crowd

They move to broader laws

They carry strange customs with them

And demand room for bold and

Audacious actions

The future speaks ruthlessly through them

They change the world”

– Maria Rilke Ranier

With my best wishes for everyone in your family for a satisfying and meaningful New Year,

M S Swaminathan