In Comilla Thana, or sub-district, lying along the eastern border of the vast alluvial plain that comprises most of East Pakistan, the highest hope of most villagers was that their lot would not worsen. The annual cycle was flood, followed by sporadic cyclones, tornadoes and hailstorms and then drought. Loss of the spring rice crop and severe damage to the autumn crop were common. In less than a century, population growth had decreased the average family holding from five to less than two acres, usually in separated fragments. 

Deeply indebted, most farmers owed one half of every crop to moneylenders. The society was bound by feudal tradition — a man owning as little as one acre spurned manual labor. Most village women were restricted to their home compounds in purdah. Each year the great silt-laden Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers enriched the soil, but the people grew poorer. Living on scattered hillocks in some 400 villages, one kinship group was usually separated from another in the same village during the flood season. Afterwards lack of roads and distrust of neighbors in the keen competition for land discouraged looking outward. Four-fifths of the villagers were illiterate. Isolation and ignorance led to withdrawal, each group thinking its hardships were distinctive and beyond hope of resolution. 

Bringing change to this society was the challenge AKHTER HAMEED KHAN accepted in becoming Director of the Comilla Academy for Rural Development. It was instituted by the Government of Pakistan in 1956 to train government and semigovernmental personnel at all levels concerned with rural development. 

His own life had been a preparation for the Comilla experiment. An outstanding student and for a time a member of the elite Indian Civil Service, he had rejected high position to become first a simple farmer and then a locksmith to understand better how to live usefully. This intimate association with “the uncounted man” led Director KHAN to stake his reputation on proving that the village peasant could rise to lead himself. 

To make teaching at Comilla Academy realistic and practical, began a pilot experiment in nearby villages to test solutions to problems identified by careful research in rural areas. Early in 1960 the government gave the Academy permission to use Comilla Kotwali Thana as a laboratory for rural development. Ford Foundation grants helped finance the Academy and the Pilot Experiment. Subsequently, the project was included in the government’s Five-Year Plan. 

Director KHAN chose the cooperative approach based on individual freedom and personal initiative. A few good farmers were trained briefly and sent back to encourage villagers in their areas to organize Societies. Three main principles were insistence upon group participation in all activities, injection of new ideas through fellow farmers chosen by the group, and enforced savings. 

In three years more than 130 primary village Societies with some 5,000 members have been organized and the number is increasing as new groups form voluntarily. All Societies have been federated in a Central Cooperative Association. It provides banking and credit facilities, machinery service and repair, and training pertinent to the needs of the villages. Organizers, model farmers and other chosen leaders, upon whom the transition from subsistence to modern commercial farming largely depends, come weekly on separate days to the Association. Given instruction in management and planning, improved agricultural methods and keeping accounts, they return to share new knowledge with villagers in weekly meetings of the Societies. 

The first agricultural machines used in Comilla Thana were pumps for dry season irrigation and tractors introduced cooperatively by the Academy through the Societies. All are operated by village “drivers” trained by the Association. As debts are paid off and savings accumulate, farmers are beginning to invest in tubewells, dairy cows and other farm animals to further increase their incomes. 

Academy training of village, town and sub-district leaders in Basic Democracy made possible local management of substantial public works. During the 1962 slack season distressed farmers and landless laborers from 195 villages cleared 35 miles of choked drainage channels. They rebuilt and constructed over 14 miles of roads and embankments. The Basic Democrats employed and supervised the workers from their villages. Direct payment to workers, one-half in wheat flour and the remainder in cash, demonstrated that foreign aid can relate directly to the village and benefit the great bulk of the population. 

Education for children and adults and active programs for women and on health are the new concerns of the Academy. Again, the approach is not telling villagers what to do but enlisting their initiative, painful as the process sometimes proves. 

Though encouraged by indications of an initial breakthrough in bringing new attitudes and skills to the rural society, Director KHAN would have preferred a longer testing period before applying the Comilla formula elsewhere. At the government’s urging, however, training in village cooperation and local government is now being extended to three additional thanas. He insisted that each thana program be centered around an educational institution, suggesting revitalized Village Agricultural and Industrial Development Institutes. Personnel for these three institutes, which will serve as three new Thana Training Centers, and all other aspects of the expanded program now are training at Comilla. 

In electing AKHTER HAMEED KHAN to receive the 1963 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his inspiring personal commitment of experience, erudition and energy to scientific testing and application of a viable pattern for rural reform among his people.

I am humbly and deeply grateful to you for selecting me as the 1963 award for Government Service. It is indeed a signal honor for me to be associated with the name and tradition of the late Ramon Magsaysay who combined in himself the qualities of statesman and administrator. It is a combination which is rare but most needed in the newly liberated countries, much troubled as they are by conflict and alienation between the common people and their rulers. A tragic fate removed this great leader too soon and we lost a bright example of what could be accomplished by imaginative and sincere government. 

The established government is all important in ex-colonial countries. Power and talent is concentrated there, and development depends so largely upon administration. I have arrived at this conclusion not simply by being an official. On the contrary, as a young man, after six years in the Indian Civil Service, feeling a strong antipathy I disassociated myself from bureaucracy. Renouncing official responsibility, I spent many happy years as a worker and teacher. But as I grew older I realized that government is the foundation of common welfare. Therefore, in 1958 I returned to serve at the Academy for Rural Development in Comilla. 

Here for the last four years we have addressed ourselves to the study of two fundamental problems; how can the village economy be modernized, and what should be the new pattern of rural administration. In the small, but typical, 100 square mile area of Comilla Thana, we are trying to discover the nature of reorganization that must take place in the village, and the shape of institutions which can inspire and support a social and economic reformation. Simultaneously we are trying to evolve a system of rural administration based on partnership between the people’s representatives and the departmental officers — a system which could serve as a strong instrument of development. 

No one has benefited more from the work at the Academy than myself. In all respects it is for me a rewarding experience. As a student of public administration I can acquire fresh knowledge. As director I always receive very generous support from our government and officers. The response from the villagers is equally encouraging. Besides I have many dedicated colleagues, and the Ford Foundation and Michigan State University fortify us with help and advice. 

And now, members of the Board of Trustees, by this award you have not only honored me, you have assigned an international significance to the work in which I am so happily engaged. I thank you again for the honor, and I also thank you for the substantial sum of money you are giving to me. It would relieve me of anxiety I had lately felt for the education of my children. As I was foolish enough to renounce worldly wealth without renouncing family life, I have, at the age of 49, a seven-year-old son and very little savings. Your bounty has put an end to my only worry.

The problem of achieving peace amidst the tensions and dangers of a nuclear age occupies the mind of much of the human race, yet few within it discover a useful way to contribute. In reaffirming the essential community of interest of all ordinary people, regardless of creed or nationality, the PEACE CORPS Volunteers belong to that small but growing fraternity who by their individual efforts do make a difference.

Recognizing that the PEACE CORPS depends entirely upon the quality of its Volunteers, the screening process is rigorous. More than 70,000 Americans have volunteered. Less than 10 per cent have been accepted as trainees and of these some 16 per cent have been selected out during training. 

The first Asian contingent arrived in the Philippines on October 12, 1961. By mid-1963 some 1,400 Volunteers were serving in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Ceylon, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak and the Philippines. They represented a cross-section of urban and rural America. The youngest was 18 and the oldest a 76-year-old water supply engineer working in Pakistan. 

A few were married couples, but most were single men and women in the early summer of their lives, who had come to unknown countries to learn and share with unknown peoples their energy and technical skills. 

Tasks performed by Volunteers in Asia reflect the wide spectrum of middle-level, and sometimes advanced-level, skills requested by respective governments. Nurses, doctors, and laboratory technicians came to help staff district hospitals, rural clinics and leprosaria in Sarawak, Malaya and four other Asian countries. Mechanics have taught repair of vehicles in Afghanistan and of farm machinery in India. Instructors of vocational agriculture have been at work in Thailand. Mathematics teachers have been in Ceylon and athletic coaches in Indonesia. Engineers have built roads in North Borneo and schools in Nepal. 

In the Philippines, the 628 Volunteers were measured against the demanding earlier example of the “Thomasites” who arrived in 1901 to found the public school system. Crossing the Pacific after the Battle of Manila in a converted cattle ship, the transport “Thomas,” they journeyed often by carabao cart, banca and on foot to start the schools that became a mainstay of democracy in the Republic. The PEACE CORPS Volunteers, serving mostly as teachers aides in English to strengthen that public school system, are proving worthy successors to those intrepid pioneers. 

Far more consequential than these technical contributions are the difficult-to-measure achievements. By choosing as Volunteers to share the lot of their fellow workers in each country, economic and status barriers have been minimized. In the process of jointly tackling the problems that must be solved for progress, the Volunteers and their hosts discover the human interdependence and mutuality of satisfaction that must provide the personal basis for an enduring peace. 

In electing the UNITED STATES PEACE CORPS IN ASIA to receive the 1963 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes their voluntary service to the cause of peace and humanity in a direct and personal way. 

While the Award cites specifically the accomplishments of “persons in Asia,” the Board of Trustees also commends the PEACE CORPS Volunteers serving in the Near East, Africa and Latin America.

During his historic inauguration address President Kennedy said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” 

Since then President Kennedy has said that the PEACE CORPS is the clearest fulfillment of his inaugural challenge. 

But, for Asia, President Kennedy’s statement should have a familiar ring. This was the great challenge which President Magsaysay made to your country during his presidency. 

And both Presidents Magsaysay and Kennedy echoed the words of Dr. Jose Rizal who once said: “. . . what do you do for the country that gave you your existence, that gives you your life and provides you with knowledge?” 

The patterns of history become strongly interwoven when we recall the words of the first PEACE CORPS Volunteer to die in Asia. Before his death he wrote a Filipino friend: “Try, before you die, to do one thing that is immortal.” 

In the work of the PEACE CORPS Volunteers in Asia, we see the bold ideas of great men transformed into the practical realities of voluntary service to the cause of peace and humanity in a direct and personal way. 

Events like these occur in history because a man like President Kennedy had confidence in the capacity for good in the people of the United States. President Magsaysay had the same confidence in the Filipino people. 

These men also had the courage to withstand the critics who distrust any new venture which relies on lofty and idealistic goals. The PEACE CORPS, too, faced these critics who labeled us the “Kiddie Corps” and the “Children’s Crusade.” But we had the people on our side and that turned the tide. 

President Magsaysay succeeded for many reasons, but one of the most important was because he refused to direct government from behind a large desk in a capital city and through subordinates more interested in their own advancement than in the goals of their government and the wishes of the people. We try to run the PEACE CORPS the same way. 

It was in this spirit that our Volunteers came to Asia not only to teach and help, but to learn and grow. 

We came to Asia because the Asians in 10 countries asked us to come. We have not asked for diplomatic immunities and privileges and would not accept them if they were offered. We work under Asian leadership and under Asian laws. We are participating in Asian plans, and not some imported idea which someone thinks is good for Asians. 

The Volunteers speak the Asian languages. They eat Asian foods. They live at Asian standards. They work with Asian counterparts. They participate by helping, not talking. And we learn by helping, not observing. 

In allowing us to participate in your struggles, you have helped us to realize that we in the United States were in danger of losing our way among the television sets and supermarkets of our affluent society. Just because those nearest to us were well cared for, we assumed that those far from us were too. We thought our struggle was over. 

Now many of us have come to realize that the American revolution is a continuing revolution. It will not be over until all peoples, everywhere, enjoy freedom and prosperity; not over until no child goes hungry; not over until each man has the right to practice the religion of his choice; not over until the last vestiges of colonialism and racial prejudice are gone; and not over until the peace that men like Rizal and Magsaysay glimpsed becomes a reality.

In the predominantly vegetarian diet of South India, milk provides protein and cooking fat called ghee. For centuries families kept their own milk cattle, usually buffalo. In Greater Bombay, as the population expanded beyond the island city to over three million, the cattle became a major problem. Crowded into unsanitary stables in congested residential areas, many animals died for lack of grazing or other feed. Producers began to overcharge for milk which was often contaminated and adulterated and in ever shorter supply. 

D. N. KHURODY began, in the early 1940s, to evolve the scheme that today is revolutionizing the processing and marketing of milk in Bombay. Now Dairy Commissioner and Joint Secretary to Maharashtra State, he was then Milk Commissioner of Bombay City. In that capacity he argued persuasively for government support and carried to implementation in 1949 the Aarey Milk Colony. Located 20 miles north of Bombay City, this largest dairy establishment in Asia is a combination of model dairy farms and milk pasteurization plant. It distributes clean milk of controlled quality and price to about one and one-half million city dwellers and over 300 hospitals and institutions. Also purchased from Aarey by the Bombay Municipality is the milk issued free daily to some 72,000 undernourished school children. 

At the Aarey Colony cattle owners pay rent for farms and the plant buys the milk. Over 20,000 cattle have been removed from Bombay city and suburbs by this means. With proper care, milk yield per animal has increased from 18 to 20 per cent and thousands of calves and buffaloes have been saved from starvation or slaughter. A second plant at nearby World which began operation in 1962, is designed to service similarly the other one-half of the city population. 

Bombay’s growing demand for milk also has provided the basis for a new rural way of life around Anand, some 200 miles inland. Here TRIBHUVANDAS K. PATEL and VERGHESE KURIEN developed the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union. It was organized in 1948 by combining two village milk producers’ societies and a dairy processing 500 pounds of milk daily. Now President of the Union, Mr. PATEL was the organizing genius in building this cooperative effort. As Manager, Mr. KURIEN provided the necessary administrative and scientific direction to a hardworking staff of specialists, laborers and villager-aides. Rapid expansion, by 1962, had brought into the Milk Producers’ Union 219 farmer societies with 46,400 members. Milk processed in that year grossed over US$6 million. 

The Kaira Union was encouraged by the then Bombay State Government, which contracted for its entire supply of pasteurized milk at stable, premium prices. Veterinary and technical aid was extended to villagers and the Public Works Department built new roads to facilitate collection of milk from outlying villages. Providing repasteurizing and distribution facilities for the milk from Anand was the Aarey Milk Colony near Bombay. 

A substantial increase in dry season milk production at Anand was stimulated by year-round requirements of the Aarey Colony. To absorb the surplus thus created during the more productive winter months the Kaira Union ventured into milk processing. Generous financial assistance came from the Bombay Government and other help from UNICEF, New Zealand under the Colombo Plan and several foreign countries. The new plant was the first in India to produce milk powder, condensed milk and special powdered milk for babies. It is the first in the world to convert buffalo milk into powdered milk. Now marketing these products under the trade name of AMUL through their own all-India sales organization, the Union?s concern is further expansion to meet mounting orders. 

These advances have raised the quality of the dairy industry in Anand as farmer-owners under tutelage of their Union leaders gradually accept new ideas of feeding and caring for cattle and handling milk. As evidence of their pioneering leadership, DARA N. KHURODY, TRIBHUVANDAS K. PATEL and VERGHESE KURIEN today are asked to help initiate similar agencies elsewhere in India. Their efforts have become a model of accomplishment by patient but determined joining of government concern with the capabilities and aspirations of ordinary farmers. 

In electing these three men to receive the 1963 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes their creative coordination of government and private enterprise to improve the supply of an essential food and sanitation in one of Asia’s largest and most crowded urban complexes and to raise living standards among village producers.

It is a matter of great honor and privilege for any person, howsoever gifted or great, to be qualified to receive the distinguished and internationally recognized Ramon Magsaysay Award. I am a very humble individual and never expected any such distinction in the field of Community Leadership. 

A leader is no leader, unless he has a following. I, therefore, share this honor with my staff of over 8,000 strong, who have worked with me with great loyalty, sincerity and hard labor and without whose help and cooperation the Bombay Milk Scheme would not have developed to the extent it has, nor would world attention have been focused on it from all sides. 

For me, this event is of special significance. After serving my country in the field of dairy development, market research and dairy education for over 38 years, I am receiving this honor from the friendly country of the Philippines on the very eve of my retirement from government service, now within about a month. In India, government servants retire at an early age of 58, to make room for others. 

I shall now shortly be leaving India to take an appointment under the Dairy Society International. My new appointment will enable me to be of use to a wider area in the West Asian region in the field of dairy development and marketing matters. 

I am also delighted to share the cash prize with two of my distinguished and near colleagues from Anand who are present here. We have had the pleasure of working together for over a decade in pursuit of a common cause. 

During the past 18 years that I have been connected with the Bombay Milk Scheme, I have seen the good cheer it has brought to hundreds of poor homes when they started receiving regularly cheap and wholesome milk, which they could not afford before. It has minimized sickness. It has prevented pain. I have noticed gratitude on the faces of thousands of mothers when their children began to get free milk in the schools, which they could not provide by themselves. 

Proper nutrition for the poorer classes is a service, I am sure, that would have occupied a high position in the heart and in the ideals of life of that great, selfless leader — Ramon Magsaysay, on whose birthday anniversary we are gathered to pay our homage. 

We, Indians, believe in the non-destructibility of the soul. We believe soul is immortal. At this very moment, therefore, when this solemn ceremony is taking place, the noble soul of Ramon Magsaysay must be gladdened in the heavens to know these Awards are being given in the service of mankind. 

We have a saying that we enter this world with empty hands. We leave it with nothing in them. What goes with us are our deeds, through which alone we can be remembered. 

I come from an old middle class family in Central India. My father was a government servant and had a small income. Before him, his father was also a public servant. I know, therefore, what monetary handicaps can mean. I myself received my dairy education, 38 years ago, through the generosity of a dear departed distant relative. 

In these circumstances, I can do no better than to inform the Trustees, now and here, that my entire share of the cash Award, namely $3,333.33, will be donated by me to start a new endowment at the Dairy Technology Institute, Aarey Milk Colony (Bombay), to perpetuate the greatness of the spirit of Ramon Magsaysay. This endowment will render help to deserving boys and girls coming from poor families, who wish to receive dairy education. I am hopeful of increasing the fund to a sizable amount, through other contributions, so that the poor and needy students can study dairying, irrespective of who they are. This would be the first endowment in India donated to helping dairy students who cannot afford such education themselves. 

At this juncture, ladies and gentlemen, believe me, the greatest happiness of mine and that of my family is that we have been afforded by Providence a new opportunity for service by being granted the Ramon Magsaysay Award. 

Before I end, I wish to invoke, Mr. Chairman and Trustees, your blessings, that the nucleus endowment to be newly started out of the Award bestowed upon me may grow from strength to strength, to perpetuate the spirit of Ramon Magsaysay far and wide in India. Mabuhay ang Pilipinas. Jai hind.

Born at the turn of the century when Korean women were strictly secluded, HELEN KIM’s career has been intimately interwoven with their struggle for opportunities and expression. She was led to this concern as a student at Ewha Haktang. This first school to provide a modern education for Korean girls had been founded at Seoul in 1886 by Methodist missionaries with one student in attendance. By 1929, Ewha Haktang offered courses from kindergarten through college. 

Though Koreans were discouraged from higher education after the Japanese annexation of their country in 1910, HELEN KIM completed her studies at Ewha, did graduate work with honors abroad and became the first Korean woman to hold a doctorate. As dean and professor, later as Vice-President and after 1939 as President of Ewha, she gave of her abundant energy, wit and devotion to prepare women for wider responsibility. 

World War II brought the first crucial test of HELEN KIM’s courage. School curricula were rigidly prescribed as the Japanese sought to enforce a system antithetical to Christian belief. Although then denied foreign support, Ewha held to its motto of Truth, Goodness and Beauty and to its insistence upon human dignity. 

The bright promise of Korean independence in 1945 was dimmed by difficulties of rehabilitation, but Ewha became a university and its curriculum expanded to meet the challenge of service in the Republic. The Communist attack, in the summer of 1950, drove Ewha to its “campus in exile” at Pusan. There for two and one-half years classes were held in rough sheds with tent roofs and no floors. Dr. KIM took Ewha Womans University back to Seoul with the signing of the truce in 1953 to find the campus looted and wrecked. Again rehabilitation was achieved with the help of parents, patrons and foreign friends. In 1961 HELEN KIM retired from active direction to chairmanship of the Board of Trustees. Under her leadership, Ewha has made a contribution to higher education for women unmatched in Korea. With its student body of over 6,500, Ewha now enrolls one-half of all Korean women who attend college and is the largest women’s university in the world. 

A fervent patriot, HELEN KIM helped found the Young Women’s Christian Association in 1922, and develop its literacy work that fostered the movement for Korean cultural awareness and independence. She was founder of The Korean Times and remained as publisher for three years. As an active member of their boards she has helped build the 4-H Clubs, the Korean Research Library and the International Night School. Five Korean Missions to the United Nations General Assembly have included her as a distinguished member. A devout Christian, she has given liberally of herself to her church and its work at home and abroad. 

In electing HELEN KIM to receive the 1963 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes her indomitable role in the emancipation and education of Korean women and sustained participation in civic affairs, symbolizing to Korean women their awakening.

While I cannot presume to accept this generous award for myself, I gratefully accept it for those whom I represent, namely Korea and all of those whose lives have been dedicated to the emancipation and education of Korean women. 

My heart is full that you have chosen to add my name to this illustrious roll, but my name stands for only part of the vision and the dreams which Christian women around the world have had for Korean women. 

When an American missionary woman felt that it was better to teach one Korean girl than to curse the inequalities and misfortunes of Korean women, Ewha was born. The seed of hope planted on that day has been nurtured and sustained by the constant dedication of consecrated men and women. That I have been privileged to work for and through this cause has been my great good fortune. The honor bestowed on me today belongs to all those hearts and lives which have been given to break the bonds of ignorance and prejudice which once enslaved our women. They would, I am sure, join with me in expressing their appreciation that our cause has been so recognized. 

I also wish to share this honor with my countrymen. May I read from an editorial published in the English language newspaper, The Korean Republic. Quote: It was with overwhelming emotion that the entire Korean people heard the news from Manila last week that Dr. HELEN KIM has been named to receive the 1963 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service. The great honor is not confined to Dr. KIM herself but shared by the entire people of this country. Unquote. 

The editorial went on to say “the occasion impels us to cite gratefully the Foundation’s particular attention given to the Republic of Korea as Dr. KIM was preceded by Mr. Chun-ha Chang, president of Sasangge, a Seoul monthly magazine, who won the 1962 Journalism and Literature Award.”

This editorial was only one of several favorable mentions from the Korean press. I do share this honor with the Korean people as a whole. Their struggle to be free and to prosper has not been a common one. Each Korean person has suffered from the inequalities of the past and daily is faced with the uncertainties of the future. 

Furthermore, we realize that our struggle is not over. The North Koreans have not accepted the 1953 Armistice as final. The rice fields on our side of the 38th Parallel still look greener. The day when our country is one, when families can be reunited, and when our countrymen are at one with each other seems as distant as outer space to us. 

There are many other problems. As an agrarian nation we have been denied our birthright of an industrial revolution. Even as an aidchild we cannot hope to take our rightful place in a prosperous world as long as our industrial potential lies buried in the north. Nor as freedom lovers can we long sustain our brothers’ suffering under communism’s false tyranny. 

But the Korean struggle on the fronts of communism, ignorance, poverty, and fear will go forward. To know that we do not fight alone is the boon of this century. To know that through joining free hands and hearts we consolidate our strength, this is the knowledge that carries us through the fight. This Award serves to remind us of the strong ties of friendship which bind our two nations, ties which no nation can soon forget. These ties serve to remind us that the Philippines was one of the 16 U.N. nations that sent her young men to our shores to carry on a fight that, while belonging to all free men, won us our present freedom. We can say literally that we are now blood brothers and we shall always seek to honor this bond. 

Nor can Koreans forget the contributions which former President Magsaysay has made to the free world. For more than 4,000 years according to our lunar calendar, history has chosen to remember two kinds of men: those who busied themselves enslaving others, and those who gave their lives cutting others’ chains. 

We speak and write and memorize the lives of tyrants, as we do those of the heroes, but we preserve as sacred a niche in every heart for the emancipators, the men who have freed nations or races from tyranny’s bonds. Count every country lucky that has its emancipator-saint, for that country has left its youth a heritage to grow by. But there is one stamp of man which reaches beyond one country, beyond one principle, to embrace all the needs of all men, to ensure their God-given equalities and their God-given rights. These men belong to the whole world and the whole world does them honor. Such a man was Mohandas Gandhi, such a man was Dag Hammarskjold. Such a man was Ramon Magsaysay. 

I do not need to tell about this man. I do not need to tell you how he loved freedom or people or an upright government. But I do want to tell you why the Korean people find greatness in him. To them he is a freedom-fighter, who while pushing his fight with the communists to the limits within his own country gave those misguided men a chance to redeem themselves with his “complete force or complete fellowship” policy. He went the second mile of Christian forgiveness when he gave land and tools to those who surrendered. This was a new way to win over old enemies and one from which we can all learn. 

In my work as an educator, in my belief as a Christian and in my experience as a person, I have kept as my motto of life: “Let us live with a smiling face, let us live in belief, and let us live helping others.” 

I found a living example of this motto in my mother, who, following my baptism at seven years of age, consecrated me to God asking, “Help me to make her to be a person of large caliber, useful to Thy will.” I have always tried to follow her desire. If I have helped raise the status of Korean women through education it is because she taught me of God’s love for every person. 

In the old days in Korea a young woman was considered a slave, a wife and a mother, but never an individual. Our goal in women’s education in Korea has been not only to educate so that women can take their rightful place in social, political and national life, but to establish their individuality. For generations the Korean people accepted the Confucian idea that “women are as different from men as earth is from heaven and, though indeed human, of a lower state, and so the aim of female education is perfect submission, not cultivation and development of the mind.” 

But we all know that in the eyes of God each person is an individual, born in a situation peculiar only to himself, and none will have identical problems or meet his problems in the same way. But God has given man intelligence and freedom of choice and the moral obligation to seek truth for himself. Ewha’s motto is “Truth, Goodness, Beauty.” Our goal is to help each of our 8,000 students to recognize her individual worth, to give her the tools to find what is true for her, to give her the opportunity to find the good way of life, and to add to this all the grace and beauty which our Korean heritage holds for her. 

Today Korean women have gained social and political status. While the basic Korean marriage pattern is still the arranged marriage, and while many of our graduates marry upon graduation, we have tried to help them know better what kind of a husband and what kind of a marriage they want. There is no question that Korean men profit from Ewha too, for they are now looking for university-trained wives, and Ewha has become the most famous place in Korea to carry out this kind of research. 

We cannot claim to have righted all of the inequalities that Korean women inherit, but I have found that both equality and inequality can be relative. To correct one inequality may be to uncover another. Surely there is still much work to do, but again let me quote The Korean Republic when they say, “We are sure that the great honor given to Dr. Kim will become a lasting stimulus to women’s movements in this country in the years ahead.”

In the predominantly vegetarian diet of South India, milk provides protein and cooking fat called ghee. For centuries families kept their own milk cattle, usually buffalo. In Greater Bombay, as the population expanded beyond the island city to over three million, the cattle became a major problem. Crowded into unsanitary stables in congested residential areas, many animals died for lack of grazing or other feed. Producers began to overcharge for milk which was often contaminated and adulterated and in ever shorter supply. 

D. N. KHURODY began, in the early 1940s, to evolve the scheme that today is revolutionizing the processing and marketing of milk in Bombay. Now Dairy Commissioner and Joint Secretary to Maharashtra State, he was then Milk Commissioner of Bombay City. In that capacity he argued persuasively for government support and carried to implementation in 1949 the Aarey Milk Colony. Located 20 miles north of Bombay City, this largest dairy establishment in Asia is a combination of model dairy farms and milk pasteurization plant. It distributes clean milk of controlled quality and price to about one and one-half million city dwellers and over 300 hospitals and institutions. Also purchased from Aarey by the Bombay Municipality is the milk issued free daily to some 72,000 undernourished school children. 

At the Aarey Colony cattle owners pay rent for farms and the plant buys the milk. Over 20,000 cattle have been removed from Bombay city and suburbs by this means. With proper care, milk yield per animal has increased from 18 to 20 per cent and thousands of calves and buffaloes have been saved from starvation or slaughter. A second plant at nearby Worli which began operation in 1962, is designed to service similarly the other one-half of the city population. 

Bombay’s growing demand for milk also has provided the basis for a new rural way of life around Anand, some 200 miles inland. Here TRIBHUVANDAS K. PATEL and VERGHESE KURIEN developed the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union. It was organized in 1948 by combining two village milk producers’ societies and a dairy processing 500 pounds of milk daily. Now President of the Union, Mr. PATEL was the organizing genius in building this cooperative effort. As Manager, Mr. KURIEN provided the necessary administrative and scientific direction to a hardworking staff of specialists, laborers and villager-aides. Rapid expansion, by 1962, had brought into the Milk Producers’ Union 219 farmer societies with 46,400 members. Milk processed in that year grossed over US$6 million. 

The Kaira Union was encouraged by the then Bombay State Government, which contracted for its entire supply of pasteurized milk at stable, premium prices. Veterinary and technical aid was extended to villagers and the Public Works Department built new roads to facilitate collection of milk from outlying villages. Providing repasteurizing and distribution facilities for the milk from Anand was the Aarey Milk Colony near Bombay. 

A substantial increase in dry season milk production at Anand was stimulated by year-round requirements of the Aarey Colony. To absorb the surplus thus created during the more productive winter months the Kaira Union ventured into milk processing. Generous financial assistance came from the Bombay Government and other help from UNICEF, New Zealand under the Colombo Plan and several foreign countries. The new plant was the first in India to produce milk powder, condensed milk and special powdered milk for babies. It is the first in the world to convert buffalo milk into powdered milk. Now marketing these products under the trade name of AMUL through their own all-India sales organization, the Union?s concern is further expansion to meet mounting orders. 

These advances have raised the quality of the dairy industry in Anand as farmer-owners under tutelage of their Union leaders gradually accept new ideas of feeding and caring for cattle and handling milk. 

As evidence of their pioneering leadership, DARA N. KHURODY, TRIBHUVANDAS K. PATEL and VERGHESE KURIEN today are asked to help initiate similar agencies elsewhere in India. Their efforts have become a model of accomplishment by patient but determined joining of government concern with the capabilities and aspirations of ordinary farmers. 

In electing these three men to receive the 1963 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes their creative coordination of government and private enterprise to improve the supply of an essential food and sanitation in one of Asia’s largest and most crowded urban complexes and to raise living standards among village producers.

I am happy and proud to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award on this birth anniversary of a great national hero and a respected leader of Asia, the late President Magsaysay: happy because the prize links me, however, remotely, with the name of a man known throughout the world for his greatness of spirit, integrity and devotion to liberty; and proud because the Award has brought honor not only to me but also to my countrymen. 

This is the fifth such prize to be awarded to my fellow nationals in these six years of the Award; and that, if I may say so with some justifiable pride, is an indication of how much we in India cherish the ideals for which President Magsaysay stood all his life. When my fellow laureate Mr. Tribhuvandas Patel and I chose the cooperative field of activity several years ago, of organizing people of like views into a cohesive unit in the rural sector—an economically viable organization of farmers who would launch into productive enterprise through joint endeavor—we hardly thought that some day our work would bring us international recognition. Although Asian leaders throughout the ages have taught us the meaning and content of unity in action, and the power and strength of concerted effort, we were not entirely prepared for the amazing results that became evident among ourselves in a few years, or for the heartwarming response to this experiment in community life from organizations national and international. Many and eager were the helping hands extended in our direction from all quarters; they gave us material aid, they gave us moral courage, they sustained and nourished our faith in the fullest use of the cooperative system. 

Our aim has always been clear: the service of the common man through the common man. And that, I am proud to recall today, was also one of the noble aims that inspired President Magsaysay. Throughout his brilliant life and career, he was committed to the little man, or, as you say here, to the common tao. He rose to the highest position in your country, and to an enviable place among world statesmen, on the stirring pledge of service — a fair deal for the poor, the sustenance of high moral values and justice for all; he was indeed a giant among men. He taught all of us in Asia how to use our newly gained freedom to develop our personalities and enrich our lives to the fullest extent within the framework of a free and democratic way of life. President Magsaysay was a great democrat and a great Asian. Nine years ago he foresaw that the kind of resurgent nationalism which was sweeping the continent of Asia was an excellent rallying point for all free nations. It is this Asian sentiment, this unity and identity of aspirations and ideals, that lends an extraordinary significance to the Award named after him. 

May I express my gratitude once again for the honor done to me personally, and to our work in western India and to my country itself.

In the predominantly vegetarian diet of South India, milk provides protein and cooking fat called ghee. For centuries families kept their own milk cattle, usually buffalo. In Greater Bombay, as the population expanded beyond the island city to over three million, the cattle became a major problem. Crowded into unsanitary stables in congested residential areas, many animals died for lack of grazing or other feed. Producers began to overcharge for milk which was often contaminated and adulterated and in ever shorter supply. 

D. N. KHURODY began, in the early 1940s, to evolve the scheme that today is revolutionizing the processing and marketing of milk in Bombay. Now Dairy Commissioner and Joint Secretary to Maharashtra State, he was then Milk Commissioner of Bombay City. In that capacity he argued persuasively for government support and carried to implementation in 1949 the Aarey Milk Colony. Located 20 miles north of Bombay City, this largest dairy establishment in Asia is a combination of model dairy farms and milk pasteurization plant. It distributes clean milk of controlled quality and price to about one and one-half million city dwellers and over 300 hospitals and institutions. Also purchased from Aarey by the Bombay Municipality is the milk issued free daily to some 72,000 undernourished school children. 

At the Aarey Colony cattle owners pay rent for farms and the plant buys the milk. Over 20,000 cattle have been removed from Bombay city and suburbs by this means. With proper care, milk yield per animal has increased from 18 to 20 per cent and thousands of calves and buffaloes have been saved from starvation or slaughter. A second plant at nearby Worli which began operation in 1962, is designed to service similarly the other one-half of the city population. 

Bombay’s growing demand for milk also has provided the basis for a new rural way of life around Anand, some 200 miles inland. Here TRIBHUVANDAS K. PATEL and VERGHESE KURIEN developed the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers? Union. It was organized in 1948 by combining two village milk producers’ societies and a dairy processing 500 pounds of milk daily. Now President of the Union, Mr. PATEL was the organizing genius in building this cooperative effort. As Manager, Mr. KURIEN provided the necessary administrative and scientific direction to a hardworking staff of specialists, laborers and villager-aides. Rapid expansion, by 1962, had brought into the Milk Producers’ Union 219 farmer societies with 46,400 members. Milk processed in that year grossed over US$6 million. 

The Kaira Union was encouraged by the then Bombay State Government, which contracted for its entire supply of pasteurized milk at stable, premium prices. Veterinary and technical aid was extended to villagers and the Public Works Department built new roads to facilitate collection of milk from outlying villages. Providing repasteurizing and distribution facilities for the milk from Anand was the Aarey Milk Colony near Bombay. 

A substantial increase in dry season milk production at Anand was stimulated by year-round requirements of the Aarey Colony. To absorb the surplus thus created during the more productive winter months the Kaira Union ventured into milk processing. Generous financial assistance came from the Bombay Government and other help from UNICEF, New Zealand under the Colombo Plan and several foreign countries. The new plant was the first in India to produce milk powder, condensed milk and special powdered milk for babies. It is the first in the world to convert buffalo milk into powdered milk. Now marketing these products under the trade name of AMUL through their own all-India sales organization, the Union’s concern is further expansion to meet mounting orders. 

These advances have raised the quality of the dairy industry in Anand as farmer-owners under tutelage of their Union leaders gradually accept new ideas of feeding and caring for cattle and handling milk. 

As evidence of their pioneering leadership, DARA N. KHURODY, TRIBHUVANDAS K. PATEL and VERGHESE KURIEN today are asked to help initiate similar agencies elsewhere in India. Their efforts have become a model of accomplishment by patient but determined joining of government concern with the capabilities and aspirations of ordinary farmers. 

In electing these three men to receive the 1963 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes their creative coordination of government and private enterprise to improve the supply of an essential food and sanitation in one of Asia’s largest and most crowded urban complexes and to raise living standards among village producers.

It gives me great pleasure, of a personal and lasting nature, to be able to be present here to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award. I feel that my country is being honored here even more than I myself: that is a measure of the excellence of the Award and of the excellence of the aims that inspired it. Many of you will perhaps remember that the very first recipient of the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership was a distinguished countryman of mine, Acharya Vinoba Bhave. That great soul continues, in his own unique and unobtrusive way, to represent real India in his humility, simplicity, and service qualities which characterized your own great President Ramon Magsaysay. 

President Magsaysay was a simple, humble and great man, a symbol of the hopes of poor men, a thoroughgoing democrat, an Asian with vision. Your late great President strove hard to build a nation which was freshly launched into responsibility and full freedom, to build out of it a nation in which freedom would belong to everybody, in name and in spirit, and in which man could live with man in amity, peace and dignity. These are noble qualities, noble aspirations, eternally uplifting the stature of all mankind. 

We, too, in our country had been blessed with one of the greatest of men, whose very name is a venerated watchword in every Indian hamlet and on every Indian?s lips. Mahatma Gandhi, whose humanity has already become an inspiring legend throughout the world, taught us to be proud of our heritage, to cast off the shackles of the body and the mind, so that we may mold ourselves in a pattern of thought and action in which the poor are the salt of the earth and the common man is the most important person in the world. 

Today there is an additional awareness, a new bond, which binds all Asians together. We go deep into the very basis of life when we examine the humanitarian concepts and principles that inspired Mahatma Gandhi and Ramon Magsaysay alike. The bond that unites us, as fellow humans, as people working hard for a better morrow, and as fellow Asians, is a bond that cannot ever be broken. I am happy that a little additional strength has been now given to that bond of amity and understanding by the Ramon Magsaysay Award, with which I have been honored today.