Despite India’s remarkable economic boom in recent years, poverty remains urgent and widespread in this vast country. Forty-two percent of India’s population, or roughly four hundred million people, still live below the global poverty line. At the frontlines in addressing this problem is a huge civil society movement of a million non-government organizations, or NGOs. Yet, many of these organizations are small or ineffective. It is in the context of these challenges that DEEP JOSHI evolved his development work. 

JOSHI was raised in a remote village in Uttarakhand in the Himalayas, where until today there are few motor roads. But this marginalization did not prevent him from earning a degree from the National Institute of Technology in Allahabad, a master’s degree in engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a management degree from MIT’s Sloan School. 

Returning to India, he worked as a Ford Foundation program officer and accumulated experience in development work. Encounters in the field inspired him, in particular a visit to the US-trained medical doctors Rajanikant and Mabelle Arole, who were working on rural health in remote West-Central India. Deeply impressed by how the Aroles combined their sophisticated training with strong empathy for the poor, JOSHI concluded that if only more people equipped with both knowledge and empathy decided to work in the villages, India’s rural society would be transformed. 

This idea led him in 1983 to form, together with some colleagues, Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN). A non-profit organization, PRADAN recruits university-educated youth from campuses across the country and grooms them to do grassroots work through a rigorous year-long apprenticeship which combines formal training and guided practice in the field. “Professionalizing” development work is PRADAN’s mission. JOSHI says: “Civil society needs to have both head and heart. If all you have is bleeding hearts, it wouldn’t work. If you only have heads, then you are going to dictate solutions which do not touch the human chord.”

Living and working directly with India’s poorest communities, PRADAN staff empower village groups with technical, project implementation, and networking skills that increase both their income-generating capabilities and their actual family income. Its staff, combining their professional expertise with local knowledge, also train villagers as para-veterinarians, accountants, and technicians who support their fellow-villagers in building and sustaining collective livelihood projects. 

In its twin programs of training development professionals and reducing rural poverty, PRADAN has produced impressive results. It has reached over 170,000 families in over three thousand villages of India’s poorest states. Over a thousand graduates have joined its apprenticeship program. More than three hundred professionals comprise its staff, most of them working in field-based teams across the country. 

PRADAN is not founder-centric. It is a decentralized, collegial body that has developed institutional space for second-generation leaders. JOSHI is himself an exemplar of its strength and character as a professional organization, retiring at the policy-prescribed age despite the wish of his colleagues for him to stay on. Still, he remains deeply committed to PRADAN, now working purely as an Advisor. Modest, deeply respected by colleagues for his integrity and intelligence, he has shaped the professional ethos of the organization. 

JOSHI began by asking himself: Why would engineers and management professionals, with degrees from universities like Harvard and MIT, choose to apply their brainpower to a small village irrigation project? For someone who did exactly that, the pressing question was, what is stopping them? JOSHI desires to show that for people with the finest education, there are few intellectual challenges more worthy than addressing rural poverty. He says: “Development work is considered intellectually inferior to high science, industry, or diplomacy. We want to prove it is both a challenging and a noble choice.”

In electing DEEP JOSHI to receive the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his vision and leadership in bringing professionalism to the NGO movement in India by effectively combining “head” and “heart” in the transformative work of rural development.

It is an honor to be chosen for the Ramon Magsaysay Award, named after a great humanist of our times. 

Among those from my country so honored are saints of our times like Vinoba Bhave, Mother Teresa and Baba Amte; reformers like JP Narayan; artistes like Satyajit Ray; activists like Laxmi Jain and Aruna Roy; social entrepreneurs like Vergese Kurien; scientists like M.S. Swaminathan; community workers like Ela Bhatt — It is humbling to be joining such a galaxy of fellow citizens whose selfless, path-finding work I have always admired, some of whom I have had the privilege to know personally and one of whom, Mabelle Arole, indeed inspired whatever I have made of my life. 

The award is recognition of the hard work and dedication of my colleagues in PRADAN; it celebrates the idea of PRADAN, that education must serve a social purpose, that it must first be used to trigger transformations in communities mired in poverty and hopelessness. I do hope it also reminds us of the vast challenges that lie ahead of us to create a world without want, misery and strife. On a personal note, nothing I have done would be possible without the support of my family, especially my wife Sheela. 

The word “professional” used in my citation derives from “profess”, denoting people who had discovered the Truth through years of study and reflection and used their knowledge to aid the salvation of ordinary people. Possession of unique knowledge and its use in public service thus define a professional. We hold them in high regard. They enjoy much authority and respect in society. Only fellow professionals can question or challenge them, not ordinary citizens. The world today almost totally depends on professionals. We let them run our economies, plan our cities, manage our forests and factories, dispense justice, run governments, educate our children, look after our health, plan our future and even fight our wars… Yet, as we look around, the balance sheet does not quite add up. Widespread poverty and misery, strife in many parts of the world, a planet inexorably heating towards peril… Professions and professionals have not quite acquitted themselves… Something has gone horribly wrong…

I am also trained as a professional. As a young man who grew up in a tiny village in the Himalayas I was culturally an alien to the world of professions. What an engineer or a manager normally does did not seem fulfilling. I could not think of an alternative until serendipity brought me to the work of two doctors, Mabelle and Raj Arole, in a poor, drought-prone part of rural Maharashtra in western India. Seeing Mabelle work with poor, illiterate village women was my turning point. The bond she had with those women clearly arose from her deep interest in them as human beings. Yes, she needed her medical knowledge to introduce new health practices and behavior, but it was her empathy that helped her discern what was needed and win the villagers’ trust to get her ideas accepted. 

I learnt from this encounter what professional schools never taught me, that knowledge alone does not make you a professional. Knowledge must have a social purpose and that comes from a concern for others, empathy with others. It comes from the heart, just as knowledge resides in the head. 

It is the mission of PRADAN to bring educated Indians to work with poor people, as much to use their valuable knowledge as to express their concern for others. Over the years we have demonstrated the power of this idea. I believe we have only re-invented the definition of professionalism that has always existed. I am grateful that the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation agrees with us. 

I gratefully accept the award on behalf of my colleagues, all women and men working with poor people, my family and all the people in villages who have so willingly accepted us, taught us. Thank you very much.

Rice is Asia’s staple food, the delicious grain upon which its civilizations have grown and flourished since earliest times. Over centuries, Asia’s farmers toiled to render forests into rice fields and tinkered endlessly to garner from each paddy and stalk just a little more rice. Rising populations in modern times have meant that more rice must be grown on less land, especially in China where people now number over a billion. YUAN LONGPIN, director general of the China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center, has confronted this urgent need. His brilliant innovations in hybridization offer hope that, in the years to come, there will always be enough rice. 

As a boy during the Japanese War, YUAN followed his father across China to Chongqing, attending one school after another. An eager learner, he earned the nickname “Questioning student.” A visit to a horticultural garden awakened in him a love for plants. He studied agriculture in college and, as a young teacher at Anjiang School of Agriculture in Hunan, began his own experiments in crop breeding. Shocked by China’s great famine of 1958-1961 and by the impoverished life of rural villagers, YUAN devoted himself to developing higher-yielding rice plants. Thwarted by flawed Soviet theories and by the Cultural Revolution, he persisted despite disappointments and risks. Quietly shifting to sounder genetic models, he began to succeed. 

Hybridization held the key to unleashing the power of heterosis-the dramatic growth spurt that follows the crossing of genetically distant parent plants. Yet hybridization on a large scale seemed beyond the reach of plant scientists. By the early 1960s, many had abandoned the search. YUAN carried on, publishing a key scientific paper in 1966. The discovery of a naturally sterile male wild-rice variety in 1970 led to a breakthrough. With the robust support of the Chinese government, YUAN now led a nationwide team of researchers to develop in 1974 the “three-line hybridization system,” capable of producing high-yield hybrid seeds on a commercial scale. Able to yield 15-20 percent more rice per hectare than the best non-hybrid varieties of the time, YUAN’s new seeds spread rapidly in China. 

As a consequence, China’s rice production rose by 47.5 percent by the 1990s, even as some five million hectares of erstwhile paddy land was shifted to cash crops such as vegetables, fruits, cotton, and rapeseed. Meanwhile, at his research center in Changsha, YUAN raced to simplify and improve his technique, achieving a higher-yielding two-line system in 1996. Today, half of China’s rice land is planted to YUAN’s hybrids. At the same time, the business of hybrid seed production is raising incomes across the countryside. 

These days YUAN is perfecting what he calls super-hybrid rice, to yield 25-30 percent more than current hybrids. “If this materializes,” he says, “we can feed 100 million more people.”

YUAN’s research center has already trained 350 scientists from twenty-five countries. His hybrid rice technology is raising hopes for food self-sufficiency in Vietnam, India, the Philippines, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and other Asian countries. All of this delights YUAN, who says, “One of my dreams is to make hybrid rice help more people in the world.” 

Lean and wiry at seventy years and still hard at work, Yuan is a man of simple ways who rides a motorcycle to the fields daily and dresses like a farmer. He has enriched the lives of millions of Chinese villagers, who revere him and call him the Father of Rice. YUAN returns the compliment. “The peasants in our country have a very rich experience in how to grow rice,” he says. “I have a lot to learn from them.” 

In electing YUAN LONGPIN to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the board of trustees recognizes the unique contribution of his research in rice hybridization to food security in Asia.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, members of the Magsaysay Family, distinguished guests, trustees, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen: 

It is my great honor and pleasure to attend this glorious ceremony to accept the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award. 

First, I would like to express my hearty thanks to the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for recognizing the important role of hybrid rice in raising food yield and for setting a high value on my work in this research field. 

The success in the development of hybrid rice is a major breakthrough in rice breeding, providing an effective approach to increase rice yield by a big margin. In recent years, about 16 million hectares of paddy field are cultivated with hybrid rice each year in China. The average yield of hybrid rice is 7 tons per hectare which outyields the conventional pure line varieties by more than 1.5 tons per hectare. 

Our experiences showed that expansion of hybrid rice area is a most efficient and economic way to increase grain yield. At present, there are some 150 million hectares of rice in the world and the average yield is only 3 tons per hectare. According to FAO’S data, the acreage under hybrid rice in 1990 was 10% of the world’s rice area, but it produced 20% of total rice production. From this we can roughly calculate that if conventional rice were completely replaced by hybrid rice, total rice production in the world would be doubled, and this could meet one billion more people’s food requirements. Therefore, speeding up the development of hybrid rice in the world will be helpful to solve the starvation problems facing mankind. 

There is no national boundary in science. Hybrid rice technology belongs not only to China but also to the whole world. For the welfare of people all over the world, I will continue to do my best to promote the development of hybrid rice in and outside China, especially in developing countries. Let hybrid rice make greater contributions to the whole world. 

Thank you.

A decent home, everywhere, is a hallmark of human dignity. Yet in the cities of Asia today, how many millions of people lack a decent home? How many find shelter beneath bridges and overpasses, beside the rails, or perched in trashwood shanties above the drainage canals? How many subsist without legal title in ubiquitous slums lacking even the simplest amenities? We do not know exactly. In some Asian cities, squatters and slum dwellers account for more than half the inhabitants. And the number is growing as newcomers arrive daily from the countryside, overtaking completely the efforts of government to either assist or contain them. To the better-off classes, these mushrooming cities of the poor are a blight and an impediment to new business parks, condominiums, and shopping malls. Eviction is the common solution. For nearly twenty years, EDUARDO JORGE ANZORENA has devoted himself to this wrenching human dilemma.

Argentinean by birth, ANZORENA entered the Society of Jesus as a young man and joined its mission in Japan. While completing his studies in theology there, he also earned a doctorate in architecture from Tokyo University, rendering his dissertation in Japanese. As he began his teaching career at Sophia University, ANZORENA also sought exposure to life beyond the confines of his privileged university and of prosperous Japan. With Mother Teresa in Calcutta and among relocated squatters in the Philippines, he confronted first-hand the common life of Asia’s urban poor and their desperate need for secure and decent shelter. He wondered what could be done?

For ideas, ANZORENA met in 1975 with groups working to improve housing in the slums of Latin America. He then embarked upon his own study of the housing crisis in Asia, locating community organizers in the region’s poorest neighborhoods and studying NGOs and people’s organizations that worked. Thus ANZORENA began his annual pilgrimage to the cities of Asia— to search for innovative answers to the perennial problems of slum life, to share his discoveries with other housing activists, and to steer needed financial assistance toward promising experiments.

In 1976 ANZORENA launched a bi-annual newsletter in which he published the fruits of his wanderings. Here housing advocates in, say, Dhaka, could read about approaches being tried in Bombay, Manila, or Mexico City, to organize communities and reduce the cost of housing, to bring new economic opportunities to the poor, and to arrange professional assistance and links to government programs. In 1988 members of ANZORENA’s network joined formally to create the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, which mounts coordinated responses to mass evictions and works to define and achieve housing rights for Asia’s poor.

Although the strategies shared by ANZORENA’s far-flung associates are varied, they possess common premises that reflect his own beliefs. Respect for the poor is the first of these. A second is that technical assistance and funding are not enough; to change communities in the long run, the people must organize to help themselves.

ANZORENA, it is said, “teaches in Japanese, prays in Spanish, and writes in English.” These days he devotes half of each year to his travels in Asia. His network continually grows. His role within it, he says, is to merely “support and encourage.” But others think of him as a catalyst and mentor: “He asks questions and makes us think. When he leaves, we always have something to do.”

In electing EDUARDO JORGE ANZORENA to receive the 1994 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the board of trustees recognizes his fostering a collaborative search for humane and practical solutions to the housing crisis among Asia’s urban poor.

I want to thank very much the trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for bestowing upon me the honor of this award for international understanding.

Many former Magsaysay awardees have taught me how the poor can improve their own situation and habitat with their own energies: Dr. Akhter Hameed Khan, Dr. Mohammed Yunus, Fr. Richard Timm, Duang Prateep, and the Bogum Jahru team from Korea.

I want to thank my Philippine friends because they called me to this work and guided me from the beginning to now. They are the organizations Freedom to Build, Marian, COPE, CHHED, Pagtambayayong, UPA, FDUP, and the Human Development Office of the Jesuits; and so many other individuals and people’s organizations.

Thanks to the friends from the Asian Coalition of Housing Rights, representing all the countries of Asia.

I need to thank especially the urban poor with whom I have related and collaborated during these years. But to tell you the truth, when I was called to this podium to receive the prize, I had a very strong feeling that I was not the real recipient of this award. The only thing I did was to try to understand the heroic struggle of millions of human beings who, for survival, left the countryside and are enduring the inhuman conditions of urban slums. Of course, I will transfer the whole amount of the prize to them, but still that is not enough. I feel that they are telling me:

Jorge, it is okay. Go ahead. You can receive the prize for international understanding for us and for our children. We are unnecessarily sick and we are dying before our time because our water is not clean. We do not have toilets and medicines. We do not have permanent jobs. Yet we are also citizens. With respect to our habitat, please ask society to stop the people who aggravate our situation by throwing our women and children to the streets. Please do not evict us without giving us a decent alternative. More than a hundred thousand of our families are evicted every year in Asia.

Ask society to please support our efforts to improve our environment. Hundreds of thousands of us are involved in innovative approaches to do this. If there are problems, please collaborate in improving communication between us and those in power. And in your good efforts to improve our lot, please be consistent from one government administration to the next. When you do that, and implement programs for several years, things begin to change.

The urban poor are asking just a little comprehension, respect, and support. The Magsaysay Foundation obviously understands this, which is not surprising since it is inspired by the example of Ramon Magsaysay. He commanded respect because he was a simple, humble man who cared for all people as individuals, including the poor, because he believed in their dignity and importance.

When South Korea’s effective modernization began a quarter of a century ago, it was geared to a manufacturing for export drive that stunned the trading world with efficient production of low cost goods. Disciplined laborers working harder, often for less, than anyone else in East Asia, were a key to this success. Unlike in Japan and Taiwan, where after World War II rural progress came first, in Korea villages felt the sweeping winds of change only a decade later. Hence seekers for employment and opportunity flocked to the cities, making Seoul one of Asia’s dozen largest cities and inevitably creating massive slums where social services lagged behind the need.

Life in a slum, though devoid of most amenities, still allows a sense of family warmth and home. Networks of relatives and co-workers cushion harsh outer realities. Now even this make-do haven is threatened by booming urban land values and both public and private redevelopment schemes that mean misery to evicted slum dwellers.

Thirteen years ago, Jesuit JOHN VINCENT DALY, a Sogang University philosophy professor, decided to learn how the poor viewed life by moving into Cheong Kyei Cheon, a Seoul slum. There he met PAUL JEONG-GU JEI, recently expelled from Seoul National University for leading demonstrations. Their first partnership in community concern lasted less than a year. JEI, after readmission to the university, was soon jailed for 11 months for antigovernment activities. Not long after he was released he and DALY decided to open a community center in two rented rooms in Yahng Pyeong Dong slum. Convinced that outside problem solvers tend to impose their perceptions, the two sought to be catalysts fostering community-determined change.

Three years later Yahng Pyeong Dong was classified for redevelopment. Little compensation or concern for their rehousing was vouchsafed the residents. Fifteen families approached DALY and JEI for help.

With US$100,000 from MISEREOR, the German Catholic Social Aid Fund, and other monies from abroad, the two were able to purchase a small plot of land 12 kilometers southeast of Seoul only days before the eviction was to be carried out. DALY, JEI, and the committee of slumdwellers which they had helped create, expected fewer but finally accepted 170 families. In May 1977 all but 20 of the families moved into tents on the new site and joined in building the village of Bogum Jahri, the Place of Happiness. With three skilled members as construction supervisors, and enthused by interdenominational prayer, the newcomers completed construction of the buildings by November 1977, and the sewage system for the 170 houses was finished by the onset of winter cold in December.

From such beginnings emerged a practical system for building housing at the equivalent of US$166 per pysong, or 3.3 square meters, largely with self-made construction materials which are one-third the cost of commercial materials. The second village was Han Dok and the third MokWha. A community center was constructed within walking distance of all three.

DALY, who was born in Philo, Illinois 51 years ago, has made South Korea his home for 26 years. Both he and his partner,JEI, who was born in 1944 in South Kyong-sang province, have become participants in the daily struggles of the homeless poor. They have established the Korean Catholic Research Institute of the Urban Poor to aid slum dwellers in learning their legal rights and correcting injustices such as unwarranted or unrecompensed evictions. The two are also attempting to prove that a rich cultural heritage can be retained and enhanced by the most disadvantaged, provided there is effective community organization and local leadership.

In electing Father JOHN VINCENT DALY and PAUL JEONG-GU JEI to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes their education and guidance of the urban poor to create vigorous, humanly sound satellite communities.

Because of the continuing spirit of President Ramon Magsaysay manifested through the Foundation and the awards named after him and the trustees and staff we have been privileged to meet in the last two days, it is a great honor to receive the Magsaysay Award. But it is an even greater honor to receive it in 1986, the year when the people of the Philippines—and the spirit at work within them—added a new chapter to human history, giving hope and courage and light to millions of ordinary “little people” all over the world.

You may wonder what I have hanging around my neck. It is a list of the names of the 135 families who rent rooms in an area of Seoul called Sang Kyei Dong who have been resisting eviction because they have no money and they have nowhere to go. Because they are delaying the construction of new high-rise apartments which will bring a $20-30,000,000 profit to someone, on June 26 of this year the 60 or 70 women who happened to be home that day were severely beaten up. Some of them were swung about in the air until they lost consciousness; their furniture and houses were half-destroyed; some of their children were picked up and tossed through the air onto piles of debris. This went on for about five hours while some 300 riot police just stood by. When the fighting ended the police arrested the 60-70 women who had been beaten up.

I lived with these families most of July and tasted, a bit, their fear and anxiety at not knowing when the next attack would come. But I tasted a lot more their courage and dignity.

When I left Korea onJuly31 these people gave me this gift with their names on it, saying, “we want to be with you.” They are. They are here on this stage today. In fact, in my mind, there are many people here right now accepting this award: my mother, father, brother and sister and the rest of my family; Cardinal Steven Kim; the staff of organizations like MISEREOR (Federal Republic of Germany) and CEBEMO (Netherlands); the rest of our Bogum Jahri Team; the people of our three resettlement villages—Bogum Jahri, Han Dok, MokWha; the courageous people of areas like Mok Dong, ShinJeong Dong, Sa Dahng Dong, Oh Kum Dong, Ha Wang Shim Ni and Sang Kyei Dong; and the 3,000,000 people who will be made homeless if the government carries out its schedule of “redeveloping” 230 areas in Seoul by 1990.

I accept this award in their name. And I pray to God that this gold medal will give them the light to recognize their own infinite value so that they will have the tremendous courage they will need to continue to fight for their rights as human beings—to fight not out of hatred but out of love—love for themselves, love for their children and grandchildren, love for the people, culture and future of Korea.

I thank all of you—Mrs. Magsaysay, the trustees and staff of the Magsaysay Foundation—from the bottom of my heart for doing the one thing—in a sense the only thing—the urban poor of this world are longing and crying for, the thing they need most of all: you have recognized them as human beings come.

I only hope that your courage in taking this stance will prick the consciences of many governments and city planners and nudge them to take a second look at the urban poor, to see them not as faceless and troublesome statistics which must be removed to make room for “development,” not as stray dogs or pieces of furniture which can be driven away or moved around whenever someone has a chance to make a few dollars, but as people, as citizens and as human beings who have every right to a little bit of ground under their feet end a roofover their heads.

People’s power, Philippine style, shows us all that that day can come.

The INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL RECONSTRUCTION, or IIRR as it is known to its intimates, is unique among government and non-government agencies attempting to promote development in the Third World. The concepts shaping its efforts had their genesis nearly 70 years ago in France during World War I, where Dr. Y.C. James Yen and associates were teaching illiterate Chinese laborers — sent by the Chinese government to help in the war — to read and write. From this beginning grew the Mass Education Movement (MEM) that was remaking rural life on the north China plain until its leadership was driven out by the Japanese military in 1937. After World War II the United States Congress lent new impetus to the movement, funding the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction that, using adaptations of MEM concepts, led eventually to the transformation of rural Taiwan.

IIRR, incorporated in the U.S. in 1960 as an international rather than strictly Chinese movement, conducted a worldwide search for a physical site. In 1961 it selected a 52 hectare site in Silang, Cavite, Philippines, for its training and research headquarters. Recruitment of the individuals who were to build the INSTITUTE began then, and included Dr.Juan M. Flavier, who became president in 1978 and manages a staff now numbering 160. From the outset IIRR did not attempt to direct development. Rather it sought to serve the Rural Reconstruction Movement (RRM) already in existence in the Philippines, Colombia and Guatemala, and later developed in Thailand, Ghana and India. Workers from these lands have been trained at Silang to return home better equipped to help their neighbors.

IIRR has suffered many setbacks but has achieved much. Soon after the INSTITUTE began its work its approach of small scale, one-on-one rural development went out of fashion; massive schemes to reshape the landscape and rural life commanded both national and international financial support. This change in priorities left the INSTITUTE in the shadows, with many of its hard-earned lessons ignored.

Nevertheless IIRR clung to its precepts: going to the peasants, living among them, planning and working with them, starting with what they knew and had, learning from them and learning by doing. In time this approach proved its worth as decision makers, often reluctantly, recognized that the means as well as the benefactor of development must be the individual.

International training began in Silang in 1965 and in 1971 participants — social workers, planners, donors and missionaries — came from 11 countries and 18 government and non-government agencies to the first training course to be given to non-RRM personnel. Lectures and discussions were matched by field practice in the villages — from building water-sealed toilets to helping farmers with upland rice variety test plots, vegetable and herb gardens and cooperatives.

By 1978 training had become a major aspect of the INSTITUTE. World Vision, Christian Children’s Fund, UNICEF, UN Development Fund, FAO, the Peace Corps and USAID sponsored trainees, as did Save the Children Fund, World Concern, Redd Barna and Foster Parents Plan. Alumni of the full-curriculum courses now total 800.

For the benefit of rural foreign workers who find travel to the Philippines costly, IIRR has instituted training courses abroad. In Kenya three training courses have been given jointly with Voluntary Agencies Development Assistance for 81 participants. In Indonesia similar joint training courses have been presented.

The exchange among rural workers from around the world is generating within IIRR new understanding of the stubborn problems that hobble progress, and some options for overcoming them. The INSTITUTE has yet to become a repository of farming expertise, however, and matching social concern with hardheaded and productive profit on the land remains a near-universal conundrum for development agencies. But by training workers and farmers to organize around their common concerns and thus build a more attractive future in the world’s villages, IIRR, with its accumulated insight, has become an international asset.

In electing the INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL RECONSTRUCTION to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes its training of agrarian development workers from four continents, enabling them to share experience and ideas for more effective progress.

In the name, and on behalf, of all my fellow-workers at the INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL RECONSTRUCTION — and as representative of the countless and nameless rural workers laboring in far-flung villages — I accept this great honor.

In keeping with the institutional nature of the Award, I have with me tonight representatives from every level of our organization.

To begin with, it is not every day that an agency can present its founding father of 63 years ago, himself a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee, Dr. Y.C. James Yen.

By a stroke of happy coincidence we have visiting with us from the United States, a member of the IIRR board and president of Schott and Associates, consultants in international development, John Schott. We have also two of our vice presidents — Vice President for United States Operations Robert O’ Brien, and Vice President for Philippine Operations Antonio de Jesus. Representing the IIRR Senior Staff are Conrado Navarro, Director of Field Operations and Assistant to the President, and Terri Bumanglag, Director of our International Training Division.

Representing IIRR’s six affiliated national rural reconstruction movements — in Asia (India, Philippines, Thailand), in Latin America (Colombia, Guatemala), in Africa (Ghana) — is Saran Kumar of the lndian Rural Reconstruction Movement.

Representing the middle level staff of the INSTITUTE are Lorna Labayen of the Cavite social laboratory, Lito Pastores of the Bicol social laboratory, and Ed Macapal of our Negros operations. Representing the rural reconstruction workers and community facilitators are Bartolome Facun and Lerma Dino. Representing the support services are Rosie Legaspi of the Manila office, Empeon Mallari of the canteen services, and Lily Espineli of the clerical pool.

Representing the barrio farmers are Aling Oyang Tercero of Barrio Tibig, Mang Gorio Reyes of Barrio Pasong Kawayan II, and Juanito Llorente of Barrio Buenavista.

Last but not least, representing IIRR wives and families is my wife, Susan Flavier.

May I request all those from IIRR to stand and remain standing to receive the recognition and thanks of all of us. In turn we of the INSTITUTE pledge to keep faith with the greatness of spirit, integrity, and devotion to duty of our late, beloved president, Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay.

Productively utilizing hitherto idle uplands and mountain slopes is an urgent challenge for Asian agriculture as populations burgeon and lowlands no longer are capable of growing sufficient food. Especially is this true in the Republic of Korea where only 22 percent of the land surface is cultivated.

Making these uplands produce food demands a type of farming new to most of Asia, accustomed to emphasis upon cultivation of rice and other grains. The predicament is acute in localities like Cheju Island, where a volcanic rock formation allows all rainfall immediately to seep down and prevents irrigation. On these slopes livestock do best with improved grasses and legumes.

When Father McGLINCHEY arrived on Cheju in 1953, just as the destructive Korean War was ending, he found “farmers extremely poor, yet basically very talented, while 50,000 hectares of land lay idle.” He took heart from what he had seen accomplished with sound livestock management when he had accompanied his veterinarian father around similarly poor agricultural areas at home in Ireland.

Upon completion of his language study in 1955, McGLINCHEY started his first pilot projects—teaching farmers improved hog raising. Founding the Isidore Development Association, he secured U.S. Public Law 480 corn through the Catholic Relief Services and built a feed mill that became the focus for other community development efforts. More than 77,000 hogs have been sold profitably since then, including about 1,000 exported monthly to Japan.

A Central Training Farm of some 1,000 hectares is the model for total livestock development. From New Zealand have come the breeding stock for a flock of sheep, now numbering 1,600, and also grasses making pastureland five times more productive than with native varieties. Hereford cattle from Australia are raised successfully and crossbred with native stock. To resist the devastating typhoons that periodically lash Cheju, McGLINCHEY constructed buildings on the principle of the ancient, vaulted Ctesiphon arch of Baghdad.

Today the Isidore Development Association is cooperating with 300 farm families to upgrade their cattle and hog raising. Abandoning his earlier lecture-type training courses as ineffective, McGLINCHEY has 78 trainees at one time living and working on the farm for 6 to 12 months. Upon returning to their villages, they are eligible to borrow one-half of the capital needed to buy sows or breeding cows from the credit cooperatives that have been organized.

This program offering practical benefit to farmers attracted private relief assistance from Germany, England, New Zealand, and Ireland for acquiring tractors and other equipment, breeding stock and for building plastic-lined reservoirs. Volunteers have come from Scotland, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, each to contribute his special skills; with the “crazy, redheaded foreigner” they are giving hope to fellow farmers on bleak Cheju Island. 

In electing Father PATRICK JAMES McGLINCHEY to receive the 1975 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes his mobilizing international support and foreign volunteers to modernize livestock farming in his adopted country.

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for electing me as the 1975 Awardee for International Understanding. Never in all my life, did I imagine that such a signal honor would be conferred upon me and I am considerably overwhelmed by the glory of it all. Since the announcement of the Award was made, I have been deluged with congratulatory cables, telephone calls and letters from people of all walks of life from all over Korea—from Cardinal Kim of Seoul, from high government officials and from farmers. I have lost count of all the newspaper, magazine, radio and television reporters who made the long journey to our farm area on Cheju Island. What I found truly astonishing and delightfully surprising was the genuine pleasure manifested by all, in my receiving this Award despite the fact that the Koreans have suspected for some time that I am not a Korean but an Irishman. It has often been said that Korea is the Ireland of the East and that Ireland is the Korea of the West. The people of both countries work very hard, if the occasion demands it. They both put up a hard fight for their rights. They are both of generally friendly disposition, do a great deal of singing and consume considerable quantities of alcoholic beverages—which is probably why they do a great deal of singing. Whether or not it is because of these similarities between the Koreans and the Irish, I do not know, but the genuine pleasure shown by them on this occasion is indicative of the extremely high regard they have for the prestigious Magsaysay Award.

I am, personally, truly gratified at receiving this Award for International Understanding. I have the honor of being a member of the Missionary Society known as the Columban Fathers. When we join the Columban Fathers in order to live as priests in the various countries of Asia, we do not abandon the citizenship into which we have been born. Rather we transcend this native citizenship and break down the boundaries of narrow nationalism to become citizens of the world. It is the avowed aim of every Columban Father to help build up and unite all the members of the human family, regardless of the superficial differences, which divide them.

Since I became involved in working directly for the farmers of Korea, I have become aware of the existence of a vast reservoir of good will amongst government officials, businessmen and young professional experts and students of many different countries. Large numbers of people are sincerely concerned about the worsening situation of the world’s poor. They are casting about for ways and means to break through the spiral of poverty, which holds so many millions of people in its grasp. The trouble is that the number of people in the world who are prepared to take the action necessary to break this spiral of poverty, is pathetically small. The problem will not be solved until the dignity of the human person is put at the very center of the scheme of things.

In President Ramon Magsaysay, the Republic of the Philippines has given to Asia and to the world a man who understood this fundamental principle clearly and who put it into practice. It is increasingly urgent that more and more people follow his way. What we need is a crusade, a great movement among those who have, to uplift those who have not. The economists and sociologists have long since indicated what basically needs to be done. But the narrow-minded selfishness must first be discarded. The Great Spirit of Ramon Magsaysay is an inspiration to us all to step out manfully upon the same high road trod by him.

In repeating my deepest gratitude for the signal honor on me here today, I pledge my utmost efforts to work for the betterment of the socioeconomic status of Korean farmers.

Most of Asia’s democratically oriented countries are burdened with values borrowed from affluent societies in the West and Japan. Concerned with liberty, they also emphasize egalitarianism and welfare state concepts. Yet at this stage these developing countries usually lack adequate economic productivity to afford such programs. Recognizing this quandary, GOH KENG SWEE treats with iconoclastic courage and skepticism “all books on economics published since World War II.” Instead, he emphasizes that in developing countries no amount of foreign loans can compensate for cultivation of those virtues propounded by that 19th century Scottish essayist, Samuel Smiles: “thrift, industry, ambition, honesty, perseverance.”

The thinker who helped Singapore’s Peoples Action Party (PAP) make of these hard necessities a compelling political program was born 54 years ago in Malacca. A career civil servant for much of two decades, he also took time out to earn a doctorate at the London School of Economics. In 1958 he resigned from government service to join in building the PAP. The next year, when the PAP won the general election and control of the Singapore Government, GOH was elected a member of parliament and named Minister of Finance.

As keeper of the public purse, GOH’s task was unenviable; government finances were in a sorry state, reflecting dwindling trade and rising unemployment. By austere economics, including salary cuts for ministers and civil servants alike, he balanced the budget within the first year. From such savings were mustered funds to initiate, in 1960, Singapore’s massive public housing, expansion of education, construction of community centers and the start of the industrialization spurred by the new Economic Development Board.

Despite such dedicated leadership, Singapore’s survival was repeatedly threatened. Local leftists collaborated with Indonesia’s late President Sukarno in his konfrontasi to sabotage and militarily destroy the Federation of Malaysia that Singapore joined in founding in 1963. Separation from the Federation in 1965 left Singapore precariously isolated; a vulnerability compounded by the drastic reduction in Britain’s defense forces and expenditures “east of Suez.”

Throughout these vicissitudes, GOH, alternately Defense and Finance Minister, worked with rising young, government technocrats to realize the national dream of an industrialized, trading city-state. Jurong Town Corporation symbolizes this new Singapore. Covering 17,000 acres, it is being reclaimed from mangrove swamp, hills and prawn ponds. Already completed are a deepwater port and town pier, a railway, and roads and services—including water, drainage and electricity—for the rapidly rising factories and apartments. Also included are a 50-acre bird park, a town center with a 700-acre recreation area containing Chinese and Japanese gardens of world class, restaurants and other popular attractions.

With full employment and over one billion U.S. dollars in foreign reserves, Singapore’s economy continues to burgeon. Orchids and ornamental fish are airfreighted to Europe and Japan, large-scale poultry and swine growing now are complemented by hydroponic gardening, while the world’s supertankers are refitted nearby and industrial exports become more sophisticated. All are visible proof of a philosopher-official’s sound planning.

In electing GOH KENG SWEE to receive the 1972 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes him as chief economic architect in transforming Singapore during the 1960s into Southeast Asia’s most industrially and socially vibrant state, where all benefit from prosperity.

There is reputed to be an old and wise Chinese proverb which says, “we cannot help the birds of sadness flying over our heads, but we need not let them build their nests in our hair.” Tender and subtle as the saying may be, its message is clear and relevant. It calls upon us to ensure that our minds are not submerged in pessimism in the face of the arduous task of development. At the same time it acts as a little expression of hope that we must carry with us as we pace our way through what Professor Gunnar Myrdal has aptly called “the Asian Drama.”

The hope that we carry with us must, however, be based on a solid commitment: a commitment to build a just, equal and prosperous society for all of us. It has been my belief that there are no easy solutions to the numerous problems that all of us encounter in the developing world. As I have said on previous occasions, and as the Board of Trustees of this Award have kindly reminded me, the virtues that we need to cultivate in ourselves are the simple virtues propounded by the 19th century Scottish essayist, Samuel Smiles: “thrift, industry, ambition, honesty and perseverance.” Simple as they may be, they can form the bedrock for a consolidated national effort. I hope that I am not being too bold if I say that Ramon Magsaysay’s life in many ways portrayed these simple and yet enduring qualities.

Carlos P. Romulo, in his inspiring biography of Ramon Magsaysay, said that from his village Magsaysay carried his native earthiness, deep-seated honesty, capacity for hard work, and disarmingly naive sense of country humor into the highest office of the land. Out of these simple qualities Ramon Magsaysay created a life of dedication and devotion to the task of nation-building that will long be a rich source of inspiration for many of us in Asia. To receive an award in the name of such a man is indeed a great honor.

In all fairness I must share this honor with colleagues of mine, all of whom have tried to encourage and emulate the qualities of dedication and devotion that Ramon Magsaysay has inspired.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award will also undoubtedly spur all of us in Singapore toward our aim of bringing about a more just and equal society, wherein every citizen will have the right to live in liberty and happiness and be given equal opportunities and education for a better life. The recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award over the last 14 years have come from various parts of Asia and the world.

The Award weaves a common theme into the various endeavors of government and community leaders, teachers and social workers, journalists and artists, all of whom are striving in their own way to make this world a better place to live in. By spreading the name and spirit of Ramon Magsaysay over the world, the Board of Trustees is making a valuable contribution to understanding between nations of Southeast Asia.

It is my hope that the Award will continue to symbolize the ideals that Ramon Magsaysay exemplified and act as a beacon of hope for the developing world as well as promote a spirit of international understanding.

Few problems are as critical for the developing world as the flood of rural migrants to the cities. Such rapid urbanization often creates mushrooming slums of squatter shacks. Their poorly skilled inhabitants swell the number of unemployed, threatened with the disillusion of their dreams of benefiting from industrialization.

Djakarta, where the population over the past 30 years has grown from 600,000 to nearly five million, was no exception. Neglected for the first 18 years after it was wrested from Dutch control in 1948 by leaders more interested in status monuments than sewerage and garbage disposal, this largest city in Southeast Asia had become almost unmanageable. Potholed streets, chaotic and inadequate public transport and water and power shortages combined to menace health and foster a feeling of decay, both economic and human.

When ALI SADIKIN, who had risen through the Marine Corps to command the Navy, was appointed Governor in early 1966, prospects for salvaging the capital were further clouded by a national financial malaise. Centralizing and streamlining administration with his directive of 22 June 1966, the new Governor set about learning to know the city entrusted to his care. Riding the ramshackle, overcrowded buses, wandering through unsanitary markets and exploring the slums, he gained a grasp of the people’s physical difficulties and hunger for hope. President Suharto, aware of the magnitude of the task, strengthened the Governor’s hand by naming him in 1967 the single authority in administration of the Djakarta Special Capital City Region.

Governor SADIKIN has augmented city revenue by vigorous tax collection, persuasive pleading for funds from the national government and municipal control of gambling which yields nearly one-fifth of the Region’s income and no longer is a major cause of corruption. Only 43 percent of an annual budget equivalent to roughly US$30 million is being used for routine expenditures; the balance is used for public improvements. Upon completion of a three-year plan of energetic rehabilitation, the City Council in April 1969 launched Repelita, its current five-year development program. Accomplishments include upgrading of important roads, sereets and sidewalks, construction of bridges, overpasses, bus stops and terminals, police outposts, a cultural center, a recreation center and a legislative building. Transport vehicles were repaired and new buses procured, parks and villages cleaned and the city zoo relocated and enlarged. In the first plan 162 schools were built; another 50 followed toward a target of 345. To new health centers have been added three hospitals for west, south and east Djakarta. Improvement of water supply, sewage systems and streets, traffic control and rejuvenation of markets continues, together with building new city-owned shopping complexes.

In an urban area whose residents increase by 200,000 annually, unpopular measures have been necessary such as curbing the influx of migrants without jobs or housing. Yet, as Djakarta burgeons within relatively systematic planning on the 444th anniversary of its founding as a princely capital in North Java it bespeaks the spirit of the new Indonesia. Its Governor, born in West Java 44 years ago, has given the citizenry confidence that when their latent energy is mobilized for positive ends they can effectively help themselves.

In electing Lieutenant General ALI SADIKIN to receive the 1971 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Governmene Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his innovation, foresight and compassion in design and management of a modern administration giving residents of Indonesia’s capital a sense of increased well-being in a finer community.

It is indeed an honor to be in the presence of this very distinguished group.

As a professional soldier, never did I dream, much less expect, that I would be a recipient of an award strange to my profession. It is, therefore, with a feeling of humility that I express my most profound gratitude to the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation in general, and to the members of the Board of Trustees in particular, for having been granted the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service.

I recall that I was none too happy when, on the 28th of April 1966, I was appointed Governor of the City of Djakarta. I was aware that the task entrusted to me was one which was completely foreign to my background and experience. I embarked upon the task as the community was going through a transitional period, infected with mutual distrust.

Under these circumstances it became my obsession, in exercising the multifarious duties of Regional Chief Administrator, to place public interests over and above group or personal interests.

I found, in the first few weeks of my administration, a city replete with confusion and not properly managed. Social welfare programs were nonexistent. Population growth proceeded at a high rate and the community was heterogeneous technically and socioeconomically. The administration system and apparatus was an instrument of the spoils system, peculiar to the political condition and atmosphere at that time. The political-psychological climate was highly unfavorable due to the deteriorating confidence of the people in the city administration.

Such a situation required a pledge on my part to provide leadership dedicated to the restoration of the people’s confidence in the administration. A leadership that could attend meticulously and properly to the needs of the community. A leadership that could take positive decisions, timely and accurately, and furnish adequate and effective measures to cope with any contingency. A leadership based, to a large extent, on humanitarian principles and respect for individual rights regardless of social status, political conviction or religious affiliation. A leadership able to formulate pragmatic political policies aimed at minimizing ideological controversies which, as history taught us, hampers national progress and more often than not, leads to disaster.

As I started the administration of the city, I found out that charisma alone is not enough leadership-quality to surmount the enumerable problems of the city.

There were calculated risks I had to take and I had to neutralize challenges to my program of public order and improvements. At the same time, I had an open mind on constructive criticism and an open heart to chose that wished me well. It was indeed difficult and crying to introduce new ideas, especially to a community reluctant to accept a change because of its culture, background and exposure.

I had imposed upon myself, as Governor of the City of Djakarta, the dual role of administrator and community leader. The accomplishment, modest as it might be, of the mission to modernize and develop the city was a direct result of combining the two basic functions.

As in any city in the world, the maintenance of peace and order is a requisite to progress. There were times when, in the discharge of this responsibility, I had to risk personal popularity because I stepped on many political toes. It was and still is my determined aim to be firm of purpose and free from vacillation and timidity insofar as political interference is concerned on matters inherent to the tranquility of the city.

Please allow me, ladies and gentlemen, to add with all sincerity that the achievements during the last five years, judging by the needs of the people, are yet far from satisfactory. We feel that we are still lagging 10 to 15 years behind other neighboring metropolises on infrastructure and development. But we will try to catch up, in our own Malayan way.

Whatever success we have so far achieved, we have done so, firstly, on the basis of the attitude we have adopted and the management policies we have pursued which could very well be the guidelines of my successors; and secondly, on the basis of the peoples renewed faith and confidence in the administration and leadership of his Excellency, President Suharto.

Again, let me thank you for your indulgence.

May God Almighty shower blessings upon all of us today and henceforth.

Few countries have suffered as totally from the ravages of war in modern times as Korea. Among the human casualties were nearly two million refugees who fled from Communist rule in the north seeking greater freedom in South Korea. Subsisting on what they could scavenge and on relief, many of these refugees were farmers and, in the overcrowded peninsula, there was no unoccupied, arable land. 

KIM HYUNG SEO, his wife and newborn daughter, during the fighting in 1951 had joined the long trek, arriving eventually in the southwestern coastal region of Cholla Nam Do. Though he found odd jobs, relief food still was needed to supplement his meager earnings. Watching other less fortunate, idle refugees, he resolved to find a way for them to become self-supporting, while relief was available. In the South Korean Government’s policy of allowing refugees to resettle on reclaimed mountain or tidal land, he saw the opportunity. 

Born of a farming family on Korea’s west central coast and a teacher by profession, KIM also had learned practical engineering. Near Sachon, he discovered a suitable tide flat and won government permission to reclaim it in cooperation with 106 families from his home district in the north. Living chiefly on U.S. Public Law 480 grain provided through voluntary agencies, the refugees built a sea dike over 1,464 meters long. Upon completion, including two reservoirs, canals and a drainage gate, in December 1961, more than 106 hectares of fertile, reclaimed land were distributed among the participating families. 

This first success prompted KIM to plan the much larger Daeduk Self-Support Assimilation Project in late 1961. Largely with hand labor and pushcart railways, 5,175 men, women and children built sea dikes ranging from three to 15 meters high and nearly two kilometers long, linking three small islands with the mainland. To irrigate some 1,000 hectares of land, they dug 48 kilometers of intake canals and 32 kilometers of drainage canals. Freezing rain and snow slowed the work and storms eight times destroyed incomplete dikes. Yet, neat houses, roads and wells were all complete by May 1966, when the reclaimed land was apportioned to the 1,329 families in time for planting their first summer crop. 

Fortified by these experiences and helped by the Korean Church World Service, CARE, Catholic Welfare Service, the voluntary agency, CORSO, and the Freedom from Hunger Campaign of New Zealand, the Eighth Army and Operations Mission of the United States, and the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, KIM mobilized new groups of refugees and poor farmers to reclaim other tidal land while Daeduk was underway. The largest undertaking of KIM and his Korean Association for Development of Assimilation Projects, known as KADAP, was completed in June 1969, when 2,770 hectares were retrieved from Haechang Bay. Impressed with KIM’s achievements, the Government, meanwhile, has turned to him to complete other reclamation projects that had floundered. 

KIM acknowledges that such large-scale construction could be accomplished faster with heavy earthmoving equipment. In Korea, as in much of the developing world, however, the greatest available resource is underemployed manpower. Utilizing “food for work” with detailed engineering and selfless leadership, KIM is mustering this latent resource for national development. For himself, he takes a modest salary as Chairman of KADAP and accepted only a worker’s share of land from the first project at Sachon. On each of the nine other reclamation projects managed by KIM, he has donated the land to which he was entitled by law as project leader to families of veterans and vagrants and to a school foundation for education of the young in the new communities he has helped create. 

In electing KIM HYUNG SEO to receive the 1969 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his sturdy, productive leadership of fellow refugees and other landless countrymen in reclaiming for themselves new agricultural land from the sea.

In this renowned capital of the Republic of the Philippines, one of our allied nations in the common cause of defending freedom against communist aggression, it is only proper that a humble unknown Korean farmer should take the opportunity of this honor to express his heartfelt thanks to all the people of the Republic of the Philippines for sending their beloved husbands and sons to the battlefields of Korea. 

This Award for Public Service is, as you all know, associated with the highest spirit of sacrifice and service for the public good, illustrated by the life and work of one of the world’s greatest leaders, the late President Ramon Magsaysay, in whom your country takes great pride and whom we of Korea, Asia and the whole world admire. You can never imagine how much privilege and honor I feel upon receiving the Award on this inspirational occasion marking the 62nd birth anniversary of that great man of service. This is the most glorious moment that I have had in my life. 

I have only done what I considered to be my duty, and will continue to do so. I sincerely believe this Award is far above what I deserve and that it may well be a meaningful impetus for my future endeavor in the service of the public good. More importantly I would rather assume that this Award is not meant for a single person but for all my fellow refugees and all displaced people who have tried hard to stand on their own feet and have combined their efforts to develop their newly settled communities in the spirit of self-help. 

At the time I moved to the south with other refugees and found freedom we were confronted with the imminent need for subsistence. We turned our back on the communist tyranny only to find ourselves in the midst of a new enemy that was poverty. 

We came to realize that communist aggression is not the only threat to our lives, peace and security. An even greater threat comes from ignorance, poverty and disease. We have fully realized that where these major social evils exist communism can prevail and we can enjoy neither genuine freedom nor peace and prosperity. All through the dark days in a warstricken land we never gave up hope but struggled against every obstacle and hardship. We all pooled our utmost energies to become self-reliant so that we might regain our God-given right to lead a decent human life. 

At this moment I recall to my mind the great spirit of dedicated service of the late President Ramon Magsaysay who devoted his life to the security and welfare of his people. He inspired all freedom-loving people with his revered personality and through his admirable performance as a model of a democratic citizen. He was a cogent symbol of the fact of life that nothing is impossible where there is a will. 

My heart is overwhelmed by a strong feeling that this Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service is an indelible mark of the truth that perseverance and cooperation for the good of society and the country can bring about a miracle in human life. This truth was also realized by the late President Ramon Magsaysay. I deeply appreciate the decision of the Trustees of the Foundation to confer the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service on me. 

“I also wish to express my appreciation to the Government of the Republic of Korea, international organizations and foreign voluntary agencies without whose assistance our self-help efforts would not have been successful”. 

“Finally, I pray that God bless the People of the Republic of the Philippines with eternal peace and prosperity”.

The career of a concerned civil servant never is easy. Yet, despite the internal and external pressures that have ravaged China during his 58 years, Ll KWOH-TING has sustained through adulthood his commitment to help his people through effective government service. Schooled in his native Nanking and in England, LI returned to China in 1937 to teach physics. Within four years he was drafted to spur defense production in the remote interior where the Chinese maintained their resistance against the Japanese. 

A gifted planner of China’s postwar industrial rehabilitation, LI transferred his efforts to Taiwan as Communist armies seized the mainland. From organizing shipbuilding he rose to help plan the island’s industrialization. In 1958 he became responsible for coordinating U.S. economic assistance which LI and his colleagues used so efficiently that by 1965 aid no longer was needed. Through successive posts LI overcame internal resistance to chart sound policies attracting private domestic and foreign capital and management and international loans to create an ever-expanding economy based on balanced encouragement of both agriculture and industry. 

Spurred by government actions largely designed or actively supported by LI, Taiwan’s foreign trade grew from US$420 million in 1960 to US$1,173 million in 1966. The island became the world’s leading exporter of canned mushrooms. Processing of other agricultural commodities has continually expanded. Increasing sales abroad of electronic components, chemicals, plastics and metal manufactures and appliances bespeak a growing sophistication of industry. Over the past 10 years, the annual rate of industrial growth has averaged 13.8 percent. 

Widely acknowledged as a model for agricultural modernization complete with effective land reform and of diversified industrialization, Taiwan is now helping other developing countries. Nearly 4,000 foreign technicians have come to learn on farms and in factories. More than 30 teams of Chinese specialists now are working in some 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, sharing their experience. 

As a chief architect and promoter of the industrial miracle that has emerged following the growth in Taiwan’s rural productivity and buying power, K. T. Ll has channeled national resources where they were most needed. With the cooperation of his peers he has shown that what counts more than material resources and funds for national development is enlightened and discriminating use of human skill and determination. 

In electing LI KWOH-TING, Minister of Economic Affairs of the Republic of China, to receive the 1968 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his vigorous, rational guidance of Taiwan’s economy, generating one of the world’s most rapid rates of industrial growth.

I am highly honored to have been nominated the recipient of the 1968 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service. In accepting this award and the honor that goes with it, I consider myself no more than a representative of all of my fellow countrymen, both in and outside of the government, who have contributed toward the postwar industrial development on Taiwan, the island province of the Republic of China. To me, the Board of Trustees’ decision is more of a recognition of the swift and orderly transformation of my country’s economy than a reflection of my own part in it. The industrialization of any developing country is such a complicated and complex process that success can be achieved only through well-coordinated efforts on the part of government officials, farmers, workers, businessmen and professionals. 

It is perhaps no coincidence that another of my fellow countrymen, the late Dr. Chiang Mon-lin, received the first Government Service Award from this Foundation 10 years ago for his inspiring leadership in establishing a sound rural economy and improving life in the countryside of Taiwan. Indeed, rural prosperity has been one of the most important prior conditions for our economic growth in the early stage. Even though the emphasis has gradually been shifted to industrial development in more recent years and Taiwan’s industry is undergoing a process of sophistication which is extremely heartening to all of us who have been involved in it. Our policy has remained one of maintaining a balanced growth between agriculture and industry. As the Board of Trustees rightly pointed out, this has been the basis of our expanding economy.

Ladies and gentlemen, the part of the world we are living in is still largely a developing area. People are impatient for a more rapid growth of their national economies so that their hopes and aspirations for a better life can be fulfilled at an early date. This has tended to expand the traditional role of government. It is no longer enough for a government simply to collect taxes, maintain law and order, or provide basic services. Active government participation in development activities — such as planning for more effective allocation of resources has become increasingly necessary. And this has, in turn, pointed to the increased need for government workers of competence and dedication. 

The inclusion of government service as a field of endeavor from which persons are selected for the Ramon Magsaysay Award testifies to the importance the farsighted founders of the Foundation have attached to it and, I feel, it is a source of great encouragement to those Asians already engaged or about to join in government service to make their contributions to the cause of more rapid economic development and growth. Personally I know of no other international award that is offered specifically to encourage better performance in government service.

Finally, speaking of encouragement and inspiration, there is nothing that can compare with the very story of the man himself, whom this Award has been established to honor. Ramon Magsaysay rose from very humble beginnings to legendary height in both stature and in fame. His example as a great patriot and outstanding leader of our epoch is truly “a source of strength and confidence to men everywhere who are sincerely concerned about the well-being of their fellowmen.”