ICRISAT IMOD. AT Magazine encourages India’s leaders

NEW DELHI - It reads: Agriculture Leadership Awards. With the eye of a teacher and a journalist, I see that India’s Agriculture Today Magazine online, a monthly, is in a class by itself in Asia. I would call it The National Encourager. I’m talking of editorial intent, not content. I’m based in Manila and when I think of our own aggie magazines in the Philippines published online or in print, that doesn’t encourage me.

I see that the Agriculture Today Group is now in its 3rd year of sponsorship of the Agriculture Leadership Awards that it itself initiated and created in 2008. The Awards coincide with the annual Indian Agriculture Leadership Summit, now one of India’s most prestigious events; EcoAgriculture says (ecoagriculture.org) the Summit is “who’s who of India’s agriculture, agribusiness, polity, industry, government, media, development and intellectual classes coming together on a common platform to share their (views) on global issues, India’s farm sector and rural transformation.” I wish we had a similar one in Manila; then we will see how much, or how less important agriculture is in the life of the people; and we will see on national TV how the media digests it all. I know the Manila media loves to pick nits and fights; I have yet to see the media look at any whole as greater than the sum of its parts, like, look at development as greater than the sum of its failures.

And so these awards must be one of the most prestigious to receive in India; this year, there are 15 leadership awards in these fields (Ahmed Sudan, 25 September, telecentre.org):
(1) JNL Shrivastava, Policy Leadership
(2) UP Bhoomi Sudhar Nigam (WB-Aided), Development Leadership
(3) Escorts Ltd (Farm Machinery Division), Industry Leadership
(4) International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Research Leadership
(5) VS Rao (former Agriculture Minister of AP), Farming Leadership
(6) Monsanto India Ltd, CSR Leadership
(7) DP Singh (Vice Chancellor of BHU), Environment Leadership
(8) National Institute of Rural Development and Agriculture Scientists Recruitment Board, Program Leadership
(9) Coromandal International Ltd, Corporate Leadership
(10) SN Puri (Vice Chancellor, Central Agriculture University), Academic Leadership
(11) Vibha Agrotech Ltd, Entrepreneur Leadership
(12) S Senthilkumaran (Director, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation), Extension Leadership
(13) State of Himachal Pradesh, State Agriculture Leadership
(14) State of Andhra Pradesh, State Horticulture Leadership
(15) MV Rao, Lifetime Achievement.

Agriculture Today says the awards recognize “leadership roles played by individuals and organizations towards the development of Indian agriculture and bringing about rural prosperity.” Awards have a way of bringing out the best in individuals, the best in institutions, the best in teams.

At his best, the great warrior and leader Napoleon Bonaparte says, “A leader is a dealer in hope.” This is not hypothesis; this is practice. Followers do falter, as leaders do, so for management to succeed, you have to encourage the leaders also. That is why I appreciate what AT Magazine is doing. In theory and practice, communication for development is not only about motivating the followers; it is also about motivating the leaders. It is not only about transferring technology to those who don’t have it; it is also about conveying responsibility to those who own it.

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics won the “Agriculture Research Leadership Award” for 2010; Director General William Dar received the award in behalf of ICRISAT at the 3rd Agriculture Leadership Summit in New Delhi on 29 September 2010. I’m not surprised. I’ve been following up the science career of ICRISAT since February 2007 (see my “The Yankee Dawdle. On Discovery Sorghum, The Great Climate Crop,” 04 February 2007, American Chronicle). I also have a dedicated blog on it (ICRISAT Watch, Blogspot). This institute is par excellence.

Of the leadership awards themselves, I’m newly intrigued; of the research leadership of ICRISAT, I’m already informed. National in scope, these Indian awards encourage excellence in leadership; they also encourage awareness of the people on the importance of leadership. I hope it also reminds them of the complementary importance of followership.

A farmer’s son, I can easily relate to agriculture. A science editor for a good many years, I have looked into its website, agriculturetoday.in, and I can see Agriculture Today is itself a leader in the field I have referred to above as communication for development (ComDev), but not apart from it. To my mind, ComDev differs from any other development support communication concept in Manila or elsewhere by not considering itself a discipline or a different force to be reckoned with, and instead is always aware & interested & desirous & active in playing its role as a sustaining part of the development process. Otherwise, communication as a force becomes subversive of the whole process of development, the force looking at itself as being on top of it all. May the force be with you!

Borrowing from sales techniques, proper communication for development follows 4 stages known by the famous acronym AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action (EK Strong, 1925, Theories of Selling, cited by changingminds.org). I can see India’s Agriculture Today is into Awareness, in this instance, awareness of the value of leadership, and that is deliberate, in both theory and practice. The magazine should itself be a recipient of a leadership award in communication for development.

Certainly, ICRISAT deserves the research leadership award. It mostly goes back to the year 2000, when William Dar became the Team Captain of ICRISAT. That year, to put it kindly, the institute was a non-active leader in research in its 5 chosen crops of chickpea, peanut (groundnut), pearl millet, pigeon pea, and sorghum. More importantly, the institute still had the crop focus; in photography, that would be using the macro or zoom lens. Good but not Great, as music hit maker David Foster would say in another context. Over the last 10 years, ICRISAT changed views using a wide-angle lens, viewing more in a single instance, looking not only at the needs for new crops but also the needs of whole villages. Food is good, but not enough. If you focus on subsistence farming, the poor farmers you are helping will always focus on being subsistence farmers.

Dar had been informed of the award by MJ Khan of the National Awards Committee 2010 who wrote: “I am pleased to convey the decision of the National Awards Committee of the Agriculture Leadership Awards 2010 to confer upon ICRISAT the Research Leadership Award 2010 for its outstanding research achievements in agriculture.” Photo shows Dar receiving the award from Shivraj Patil, Governor of Punjab, as MS Swaminathan and Prahbhat Kumar look on. Swaminathan is this year’s Chair of the Organizing Committee and is a Jury of the National Awards Committee headed by AR Kidwai, former Governor of the States of Bihar and Haryana.

On receiving the award, Dar says in effect that ICRISAT cannot rest on its laurels. He says that in India, the poor farmers and their families constitute about 80% of whole villages, and that’s the size of the problem: Giant. To uplift the poor, he says:

The key challenges facing Indian agriculture today are ensuring household food and nutritional security, increasing farm income, alleviating poverty and minimizing production risks due to climate change, in addition to ensuring overall natural resource management and environmental security.

In India, Asia and Africa, the poor need to be assured of their food, secured with their nutrition, uplifted from their poverty, and insured against farming risks brought about by climate change, not to mention supported in addressing natural resource and environmental concerns as much as they can and should.

Dar says that calls for “innovative policies, appropriate institutional arrangements, and market-driven technologies (that) can harness untapped opportunities to provide benefits to the farming community.” Produce from the villages must reach the market and come back as value added, not subtracted by the marketing system.

For food security, he says there should be greater emphasis on setting up systems for producing quality seeds, using inputs efficiently, providing financing and insurance to farmers, along with “a paradigm shift in technology transfer mechanisms.” Ah, paradigm shift. The traditional top-to-bottom or scientist-teaches-farmer approach to communication for development needs to be supplanted with a bottom-to-top approach. That’s exactly what happened in what I like to call the “Adarsha Story” of ICRISAT (see my “Creative Climate Science. What ICRISAT can teach US,” 05 March 2010, American Chronicle; “Adarsha Revisited. Impacts of CGIAR research,” 20 August 2010, American Chronicle; and “Adarsha Alliance. William Dar as ICRISAT Manager,” 11 September 2010, American Chronicle). It’s not simply technology transfer. In Adarsha, the scientists went to teach the people, but they found out that they had to learn from the people first. Success has 2 fathers: one who knows, and one who knows better!

In terms of volumes of harvest, Dar says, India could increase farm yields by cultivating new lands, intensifying cropping per unit area, and planting varieties that increase yields from the same soils. “High yields are still possible under climate change,” he says, “if farmers combine improved practices with climate-adapted crop varieties.” The old crop varieties have outgrown their usefulness; the new varieties are just beginning to show theirs. Are you watching?

The citation for the ICRISAT Research Leadership Award 2010 reads in full:

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT), with a wide array of partners, has pioneered in the Research and Development arena to improve dryland agriculture in the developing world of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, home to 644 million poor people. ICRISAT maintains the largest genebank of its mandate crops with 119,000 germplasm accessions of sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut. As of today, more than 600 improved varieties/hybrids with parentage from ICRISAT have been released by partners, and almost 200 of these are released and used in India. World’s first CMS-based commercial pigeonpea hybrid ICPH 2671 - Pushkal, and India’s first marker-assisted pearl millet hybrid to reach the farms, HHB 67 Improved, which extends the economic life of this popular extra-early hybrid, are two out of many such instances where this non-profit, non-political organization has set a record. ICRISAT is involved in demonstrating crop and water-harnessing practices in 5000 sites of 25 States/UTs of India. ICRISAT and IIT Kanpur, in collaboration with five other partners, created Agropedia, an online, interactive agriculture encyclopedia. ICRISAT’s valuable global knowledge base on rural households, collected over the last 30 years, is now an International Public Good, and helps identify constraints and pathways to dryland agricultural development.

That is an enumeration of what ICRISAT has done in terms of research and knowledge innovations and inventions. That’s much. Nevertheless, I myself can see that much is not enough. That takes care of quantity for life. ICRISAT has a new strategy up to 2020, Dar says, and this revolves around inclusive market-oriented development. That takes care of quality of life.

Don’t forget the women as entry points for development. I have written about ICRISAT’s IMOD applied in Africa; see my “An African Revolution. IMOD Power to the Women!” (21 September 2010, American Chronicle).

IMOD sees the needs of whole villages. In his speech, Dar says IMOD ensures that the farm is productive; farming is stable; there is food security; and farmers have access to resources. They would need, among others, quality seeds and direct connections to markets. That is no less than empowering the poor. This, Dar says, “will check the widening rural-urban disparity,” that is to say, the urbanites getting richer, the ruralites getting poorer.

Is ICRISAT targeting only the poor? Not if it wants to be a good leader. “A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well,” business philosopher Jim Rohn says, “and to help those who are doing well to do even better.” For ICRISAT, those who are doing poorly are simply the first priority. Smart.

“Those who have less in life,” Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay says, “should have more in law.” State policy. Policy initiatives, Dar says, will have to develop skills and knowledge of poor farmers to “increase their income levels and help empower them.” And “more importantly, policy changes,” he says, “need to be transforming in nature, which calls for inspirational leadership.”

What did Microsoft brains and now philanthropist Bill Gates say towards the end of the 20th century about empowerment? “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” The same goes with communication campaigns in science - they must empower the people.

 And it all goes back to leadership.