As India gained freedom from British colonial rule in 1947, the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharal Nehru was looking for some ideas to push socio-economic development in rural India. He learnt about the Etawah experiments on ‘community development’ (supported by an initial grant by the Ford Foundation from its New York office). At the time of the launch of the First Five Year Plan in 1952, ‘community development’ became the flagship programme of the Government of India. The Second Five Year Plan launched the Community Development Programme (CDP) throughout the country. Nehru had invited the Ford Foundation to open its office in India in 1952.

When the late Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri realised the need for increasing food production in the country in 1965, and reduce both hunger and external dependence on imported food grain, he launched the modernising of Indian agriculture, which came to be known as ‘green revolution’. Prof. M. S. Swminathan, one of the pioneers of that green revolution and India’s most globally recognised agricultural scientist, had credited the Ford Foundation with its liberal support to agricultural research through a number of Indian agricultural universities in this endeavour.

It was  support from the Ford Foundation in mid 1960s that brought modern management education to India. Dr Ravi Mathai (of IIM Ahmedabad) and Dr Kamla Choudhary (Program Officer in the Ford Foundation) were instrumental in faculty up-gradation at IIMs nearly half a century ago. Shortly thereafter, with invitation from Dr Kurien (of AMUL fame), Dr Choudhary (and the Foundation) supported the establishment of Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) in Anand (Gujarat).

During the 1980s, several streams of professional education gained substantive excellence in Indian academic institutions through support from the Ford Foundation. Institute of Economic Growth (IEG) in Delhi improved its economic research competence through such support. Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai was able to establish its rural training development field with regular support from the Foundation. The discipline of nutrition as a subject for scientific research and education of professionals was established first in MS University Baroda through the Foundation’s support from 1960s onwards.

It was in the mid 1980s that the government of late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi launched a nationwide programme on wasteland development and community forestry. The success of that programme is reflected thirty years later in increased green cover in several parts of the country. Nehru Foundation for Development (Ahmedabad), Wildlife Institute of India (Dehradun) and Indian Council of Forestry Research are some of the  institutions that have received support from the Foundation to promote research and education in community forestry since then.

As Government of India began to develop policies and programmes for women’s empowerment in the early 1980s, support from the Foundation helped build teaching and research capacity in several universities like SNDT Mumbai. Likewise, many centres for urban planning and development gained support from the Foundation in the 1990s to develop programmes of research (most prominent amongst them are National Institute of Urban Affairs and School of Planning and Architecture).

New curriculum development, new forms of teaching and new formats for education of law in the country began to spread with the establishment of National Law School of India in Bangalore in the early 1990s. Today, the innovative teaching of law in the country is preparing a new generation of legal professionals commensurate with the changing demands of the Indian economy. Encouragement and support from the Foundation to these initiatives since those early days has been much appreciated by the legal education fraternity.

Many of these streams of professional education have continued to benefit from ongoing support from the Ford Foundation. Support from the Foundation provided opportunities for scholarly exchange and participation in international conferences and thus gave  research and teaching of Indian academics greater recognition and depth in a wide variety of fields. Most significantly, a large number of new fields for professional education and research developed in the country  with active support from the Ford Foundation, when the policies of the Government of India so required.

It is important that the long-term contributions of an international institution like the Ford Foundation to the development of professionals in the country is not lost sight of in the present contestation about certain projects and activities that it funded recently. The Ford Foundation can be seen as a model for other philanthropic initiatives in the country which focus on timely support to the development of new domains of knowledge and fields of professional education as India marches ahead on its own trajectory.

Dr Rajesh Tandon
UNESCO Chair on Community-based Research & Social Responsibility in Higher Education
Founder-President, PRIA, New Delhi

Source: http://pria.org/blogs.php?action=view&blog_id=2929