Bridge-builder of oil palm sustainability

I first encountered Mavath Ramachandran V. D. Nair – universally known as M.R. Chandran  at the turn of the millennium. By then, his reputation already preceded him. His name drifted through planter conferences, accompanied by that understated nod reserved for those who matter. He carried authority lightly – a rare blend of knowledge, courtesy and precision, delivered with a finesse sharp enough to cut through a room of serious planters like a parang through thick grass.

MR was deeply involved in shaping the Malaysian Palm Oil Association (MPOA) in 1999/2000, just as I was preparing to join it later. Since then, our paths have crossed at almost every planterly junction imaginable – MPOA, IJM Plantations, the Incorporated Society of Planters (ISP), MEOA and MOSTA. Wherever oil palm, plantations or sustainability are discussed, chances are MR has already been there contributing, shaping debate and quietly correcting the record.

I often refer to him as the “ubiquitous owl” – wise, watchful and seemingly everywhere, blessed with an elephant’s memory. What truly sets MR apart is that his presence is never ornamental. He does not merely attend; he influences. No conference feels complete without him rising during Q&A to ask the hard questions or nudge the industry beyond its comfort zone, always with a trademark smile and gentlemanly decorum.

In a world awash with long speeches, he possesses the rare gift of cutting straight to the bone. To some, MR is a visionary. To others, a mentor. To me, he has always been a reminder that in oil palm, those who matter most are not only the builders of estates, but the builders of bridges – between stakeholders, generations and ideas. Yes. We did not always stand at the same angle in the plantation rows, but our differences were held with respect and I have always tipped my hat to the sifu.

As I spent the past fortnight in conversation and interviews with him, one truth emerged: capturing M.R. Chandran is less about recording answers than distilling wisdom. What follows is not a transcript, but an attempt to trace the contours of a life that shaped an industry.

So here’s to MR – a man whose initials were never about Mister, but about Making Ripples. And what ripples they have been.

Beginnings as a Planter

For MR, the journey into plantations was never about ambition or career choice. It was inheritance. Quite simply, plantations chose him. Born into estate life, he grew up watching his father, V. D. Nair, rise from trade unionism to become the first Asian manager of Harrisons & Crosfield’s (H&C) Prang Besar Estate. Through the turbulence of World War II and the Emergency, MR absorbed early lessons in responsibility, labour relations and leadership.

His formative years at H&C were grounded in fundamentals. As a junior assistant, he was immersed in estate life – supervising workers, managing tapping and harvesting, learning soils, pests and diseases. He walked the fields daily. Over time, trees became teachers. Beyond agronomy, he learnt people. One lesson endured: estates are long-term commitments. A tree takes 25 to 30 years to complete its economic life, and decisions made today outlast any posting. Stewardship, not extraction, became the anchor of his philosophy.

Mentorship began at home. His father taught him that principles need not be surrendered with promotion. He also drew inspiration from Tan Sri Dr. B. C. Sekhar and from rigorous expatriate colleagues at H&C and later SOCFIN – the Franco-Belgian multinational founded in 1909. Yet MR remained clear-eyed: his greatest mentor was not any one person, but history itself.

Lifetime of Leadership in Plantations

Few individuals can claim to have reshaped an entire industry over six decades. MR is one of them. Beginning his career in the early years of Malaysia’s independence, as the plantation sector shed its colonial skin, he cut his teeth with H&C in 1959 before rising steadily through the ranks. Decades of estate life culminated at the SOCFIN Group, where he served as Director and Head of Plantations, retiring in 1995 after a remarkable 33-year tenure that cemented his standing as an industry stalwart.

If H&C taught him the craft of estate life, SOCFIN refined his leadership – defined by long-term thinking and zero tolerance for corruption – shaping not just his career, but his moral architecture. By then, MR was known as an executive fluent from nursery to boardroom – equally at ease with plant sciences and commodity markets. Coupled with an elephantine memory and a rare ability to assemble facts like a jigsaw, conversations with him often felt less like exchanges and more like masterclasses.

Retirement, however, proved a technicality. In 1999, MR became founding Chief Executive of the MPOA, tasked with unifying disparate plantation bodies under one umbrella. Unity, he believed, was not a luxury; it was survival. MPOA’s birth was therefore less about power consolidation than strategic alignment – enabling collective advocacy and coherent responses to emerging challenges.

He readily acknowledged that MPOA did not emerge in isolation. Political leadership mattered. Industry captains mattered. Figures such as the late Tun Dr Lim Keng Yaik, then Minister of Primary Industries and a generation of senior plantation leaders provided the credibility needed to turn aspiration into institution.

MR steered MPOA through its formative years from 1999 to 2005, laying foundations that continue to shape the industry. Even after that chapter closed, he hardly slowed down. If anything, he seemed to be everywhere at once – chairing, advising, questioning and, occasionally, correcting.

Reading his résumé is like attending a masterclass in agri-commodity leadership. If a major initiative mattered to the plantation sector, chances are MR had already been there. The only thing he never quite mastered, I suspect, was the art of sitting still.

MR and I share a deep appreciation for history and institutional memory. The MPOA office relocation some years ago underscored how easily archival material from an organisation’s formative years can be lost amid practical constraints. It reinforced a lesson both of us hold dear: that preserving institutional memory requires intention, not just sentiment.

Sifu of Sustainable Palm Oil

In retrospect, MR understood that MPOA’s earliest achievement was not perfect alignment, but credibility – at home and abroad. It created space for conversations the industry had long avoided, especially after the haze crisis of the late 1990s. Almost unknowingly, it also prepared Malaysia for a more uncomfortable dialogue just beginning to emerge: sustainability.

By 2003, MR was at the centre of a bold initiative – the formation of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). It brought producers, buyers, NGOs and activists into the same room, often uneasily. If MPOA unified the industry inwardly, RSPO forced it to face outward, into a global marketplace that was increasingly sceptical and unforgiving.

It was therefore no surprise that MR was asked to chair the inaugural RSPO meeting in August 2003. In a room of sharp elbows and sharper tongues, he was trusted to steady the table and move the agenda forward. What began as cautious dialogue soon became the seed of a global standard. For the first time, palm oil producers sat alongside international NGOs and multinational buyers, each carrying different fears and expectations.

Soon after, MR sought Malaysia’s support to become a founding RSPO signatory, meeting the late Tun Dr Lim Keng Yaik. The Minister was sceptical: why submit to standards shaped by European NGOs when Malaysia already possessed world-class plantation expertise?

The exchange that followed has since entered industry folklore. Tun Lim quipped that he had heard MR was planning to “sleep with the NGOs.” MR replied, without missing a beat, that while they might be sharing the same bed, they were chasing different dreams. Tun Lim laughed – then issued a sober warning: it would be MR’s neck on the line.

Both positions were principled. Tun Lim believed Malaysia should define its own mandatory national standard, anchored in local expertise and sovereign confidence. MR, ever the pragmatist, argued that global markets would not fully trust standards driven solely by industry or government. Access to premium markets, he believed, required multi-stakeholder systems that were independently verified – however uncomfortable the process.

History ultimately accommodated both views. Malaysia introduced MSPO, made mandatory by 2019, while RSPO continued as a voluntary, market-driven standard. Today, many producers carry both – MSPO for national compliance, RSPO for international B2B acceptance. With the benefit of hindsight, one might reflect that a stronger outcome could yet emerge if the processes were reversed. But such debates only underscore the complexity of leadership decisions made at pivotal moments – and the courage required to make them before outcomes are clear.

MR’s role did not end there. He served as Vice-President of the RSPO Board (2004–2005) and later as Advisor – its elder statesman and compass. His method was not diplomacy for its own sake, but translation: explaining to planters that NGO concerns were market signals, and to NGOs that change imposed too quickly could harm livelihoods.

Compromise rarely pleased everyone. RSPO drew criticism from all sides – too weak for some NGOs, too demanding for parts of industry. MR accepted that both carried truth. Never one for slogans, he insisted sustainability be more than a sticker on an annual report. He warned against greenwashing and pushed for standards that were practical, credible and continually tightened – all while keeping palm oil economically viable. That blend of realism and idealism became his hallmark.

His advocacy was forged through lived experience – haze-filled skies, fragile soils, volatile markets and countless conversations with planters and plight of smallholders. It made him a rare bridge-builder, fluent in the language of both producers and critics, persuading all that partnership, not posturing, offered the only sustainable future.

Gaps, Tensions and Work of Balance

MR has always spoken about plantation life with patience – never defensive, never dismissive. What troubles him most is how often it is misunderstood.

Plantations, he has long argued, are not simple profit-extraction machines. They are complex social and economic ecosystems. Environmental narratives, too, are often stripped of context. Yes, forests were converted – and that history is, in many cases, regrettable. But palm oil remains the most land-efficient source of dietary oil available.

And then there is the emotional gap. Those who work in plantations – workers, smallholders, assistants, managers – are deeply attached to this life. They are neither caricatures of exploitation nor greedy profiteers, but people building livelihoods, raising families and remaining rooted to land and craft. What MR consistently calls for is not sympathy, but nuance. Plantations, like societies, are imperfect – but they are not the one-dimensional villains they are often made out to be.

He often frames the industry’s dilemma simply: rising global demand colliding with the challenge of expanding production sustainably. It is the balancing act he has championed all his life. He never shied away from hard truths, but he always paired them with solutions and a measured optimism. His voice, equal parts authoritative and reassuring, has been a steady compass for those navigating agriculture’s uncertain future.

On policy, MR has never minced words. Palm oil, he believes, has been too often turned into a political football. Many decisions – particularly in Europe and North America – are driven more by advocacy pressure and domestic politics than by science. Palm oil is singled out with rules rarely applied to other vegetable oils, a practice that resembles agricultural protectionism dressed in green.

Yet his critique cuts both ways. Producer nations, he insists, must also look inward. Weak enforcement, illegal clearing and short-term expediency erode credibility. What is needed is policy maturity on all sides: less posturing, more engagement; less rhetoric, more evidence; less ideology, more balance. Only then can policy reflect the true complexity of the crop it seeks to govern.

Education, Honours and Human Thread

Despite the titles he has held and the rooms he has shaped, MR is rarely described as imposing. Those who know him speak instead of humility, approachability and quiet grounding – qualities rooted not in boardrooms, but in fields.

That grounding was reinforced by a strong education. From Kajang High School and St John’s Institution, MR went on to Kings’ College in South Australia, before graduating from the University of Adelaide with a degree in Agricultural Economics and Technology. It was an education that fused science with systems thinking – a blend that would later define his approach to plantation management.

He returned to Malaysia with more than academic credentials. At a time when the plantation industry was hungry for innovation, he brought a modern outlook and an instinctive ability to link field realities with global best practices. That fluency – between soil and spreadsheets – became one of his enduring strengths.

MR was also, quite literally, a “fellow” among planters. He was elected Fellow of several professional bodies, including the ISP, the MOSTA, the British Institute of Management and the Malaysian Institute of Management. The alphabet soup matters less than what it signifies: sustained peer recognition by communities that saw in MR a leader worth emulating. His pioneering role in sustainable palm oil was later recognised when he was named an Honorary Member of the RSPO.

Beyond estates and institutions, MR devoted himself quietly to community service, particularly causes close to the plantation fraternity and his cultural roots. He served as trustee to several foundations – including the Malaysian Estates Staff Provident Fund, the Planters’ Benevolent Trust of Malaysia, the Tan Sri Borge Bek-Nielsen Foundation, the Raja Alias Foundation and the All-Malaysia Malayalee Association – often working behind the scenes, without fanfare.

His life has been shaped by two “ISPs”: the Incorporated Society of Planters and the International School of Penang (Uplands), where he has been deeply involved since 1982. Between them, he cultivated both estates and education. He joked about this dual allegiance, but beneath the humour lay a firm conviction: industries endure only when knowledge is deliberately stewarded. Estates grow trees; education grows time.

Mentorship is where his concern shows most clearly. The old apprenticeship culture, he believes, has thinned, with experience now walking out the door too easily. While he continues to mentor where he can, he is clear that individual effort is not enough. Without structured knowledge transfer, the industry does not merely lose memory – it loses judgment.

Through it all, MR never lost sight of the human side of plantations. Whether safeguarding retirees’ pensions, uplifting communities or guiding young professionals, he connected easily across generations – perhaps because he had walked in so many of their shoes himself.

Outside work, he remains a devoted family man – blessed with his supportive wife, Sulo, three children and six grandchildren – a loyal friend and natural storyteller, able to lighten a room with a gentle joke or a recollection from the old planters’ club, when mosquitoes were plentiful and stories even more so. It was this quiet charm, as much as his professional stature, that made him not only respected, but deeply loved.

A Continued Legacy

M.R. Chandran’s legacy is already substantial. Few can match the breadth of his contributions – from plantation leadership to placing palm oil sustainability firmly on the global map; from uniting a once-fragmented industry to mentoring generations of leaders. Yet what truly sets him apart is not merely what he achieved, but how he went about it: with knowledge, humility, humour and an instinct to do what was right, even when it was inconvenient.

For a man who spent his life helping things grow, it is fitting that the seeds he planted – in institutions, sustainability and people – continue to flourish. In 2005, he was conferred the Kesatria Mangku Negara (KMN), recognising his service to the nation. Even so, among friends and colleagues, there remains a quiet consensus that a lifetime of leadership such as his merits even higher recognition.

At 87, MR is no withering tree but an evergreen – realistic about limits, yet uninterested in retreat. He continues to appear in conference halls, chairing, advising and sharing with a vitality that belies his years. His story feels less like a closed chapter than a living forest, still growing and still guiding those who walk the paths he helped clear.

If MR is to be remembered, it will not be as a crusader or a conqueror, but as a bridge-builder – one who stood long enough between trees and time, ideals and realities. In an industry measured in planting cycles rather than applause, that may be his most enduring contribution of all.