While viewed internationally as a “welfare case” of nearly 90 million people crowded into a small land where nature is treacherous, Bangladesh nevertheless has great potential. Facing the Bay of Bengal, the country is both blessed and cursed by the mighty Padma, formed as the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers join to carry the immense rainfall of the Himalayas to the sea. Rainy season floods — compounded by cyclones — regularly inundate much of the land, which in turn is parched in the dry season. But the alluvial soil is inherently fertile. 

A surplus food producing area early in this century when it held a third as many people, it was known as Shonar Bangla (Golden Bengal). Since then major problems have beset it. In World War II East Bengal was the front line of Allied resistance against the Japanese. In 1947 partition of the subcontinent into India and East and West Pakistan cost several hundred thousand lives and uprooted millions who fled across new borders. After war brought Bangladesh independence by 1972, some 10 million refugees struggled home from India to devastated villages. The new country lacked a stable, experienced government, transportation, public health, employment opportunities, sufficient food and much else. 

It was at this time that FAZLE HASAN ABED, a British citizen born in 1936 at Sylhet, in now northeastern Bangladesh, left a promising executive career with Shell Oil Company to help his birth land. Returning with refugees from India to Sulla in Sylhet District 100 miles northeast of Dacca, he led in organizing the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). The first task was relief: floating bamboo down rivers to rebuild houses, finding food, raising gardens, and training and supplying paramedics to treat the most prevalent diseases. 

Tradition long has ruled the lives of most of the 85 percent of the population who live in rural areas, and outsiders with strange ideas were suspect. BRAC’s answer was to select and train, through nonformal education, alert villagers whose leadership was more readily accepted. With BRAC’s support they formed cooperatives and medical centers, started fisheries, promoted family planning and helped provide nutrition for children, reaching in less than three years 220 villages in a 160 square mile area. 

In 1975 BRAC accepted a new challenge in Manikganj Thana, a district 40 miles west of Dacca and representative of the country’s topography, population and agriculture. Beginning with a Food-for-Work Program, it uncovered villagers’ “felt needs” and then developed solutions. In a country where one-half of all farmers are landless, building national awareness of the need for land reform was a vital by-product. 

Utilizing assistance from many countries and from the United Nations, BRAC today is creating local organizations to solve the problems of over 1.34 million people comprising 200,000 rural families in 700 villages. Included are organizations to improve literacy, landless and women’s groups and cooperatives dealing with production, marketing and water control. BRAC also publishes the country’s most important educational journal. A full-time staff of some 300 guide, assist and expedite, rather than direct. Thus they arouse villagers’ confidence in their own ability to achieve a better self-made future. 

HASAN ABED’s exceptional contribution has been to harmonize the diverse interests and groups necessary to move forward such a multifaceted community program. Remaining calm amidst crises and working constructively with established institutions, he continues to innovate, test and prove that Bangladesh’s problems can be solved by mobilizing the latent capabilities of her own people. 

In electing FAZLE HASAN ABED to receive the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes his organizational skill in demonstrating that Bangladeshi solutions are valid for needs of the rural poor in his burdened country.

I am most honored to receive the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. Achievements of those who have previously received this award have been so much more significant than mine that I am somewhat overawed by my presence here this evening. I am even more overawed by the reputation of the great man in whose memory this Award was established. I am certain his spirit will continue to inspire all men who believe in liberty and human dignity. 

Civilization is not the product of a few great men. It is the cumulative actions of all men, great and small. And yet, today, the majority of mankind are not able to act on their own behalf. They cannot seek food when they are hungry, nor can they seek shelter from sun and rain. Man is no longer a free agent — he is held in bondage by a poverty created by some who want to have more. This poverty is not the absence of resources. It is the unequal sharing of them. Yet, when mankind started out it was the need to share which brought men together into communities. 

But where are the communities of today? They are, today, divided between those who have and control, and those who do not have and are powerless. A community of greed has replaced the community of need. No genuine progress is possible without the resolution of this conflict which principally arises out of inequity. It destroys the creative urge in man and dehumanizes him. The time has come for him to reassert himself. It is imperative, not only for governments, but for each and every individual, to ensure that the future struggle to which all give highest priority is the struggle of the powerless to regain their lost humanity. 

Therefore, on behalf of those who have less in my country, and to whose cause I have pledged my efforts, I dedicate the great honor bestowed on me this evening.

The life confronting writers and artists who will not compromise their self-expression is at best uncertain. Poets and painters who in times past have been appreciated and honored by courts and a scholar gentry, in the developing world today may receive only passing notice amidst the scramble for wealth, privilege and power. Mass communications catering to the lowest common denominator of taste occupy the public attention. Values most needed are frequently lost from sight.

It is the hard task of serious writers and artists in this setting to survive and be effective; the quality of their creativity alone is no guarantee. Only by joining in common cause with like-minded men and women can they become significant. This, in turn, requires self-effacing leadership, a stimulating, congenial gathering place and forums for publication or exhibition.

FRANCISCO SIONIL JOSE’s role in this many-faceted arena is a product of his wit and formative experience. Born into a poor family in the Philippine province of Pangasinan in 1924, he learned as a boy the hard life of a farmer, following a water buffalo to plow the rice field. After high school he worked with the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the 1945 battles for northern Luzon. Lacking funds for a medical education, he worked his way through school as a liberal arts student at the University of Santo Tomas. There he had his first experience in journalism, working on the collegiate Varsitarian and later on Commonwealth, the national Catholic weekly.

JOSE pursued his career in journalism as managing editor of the Manila Times Sunday Magazine, editor of Progress and later Comment, and in Hong Kong as managing editor of Asia Magazine. After two years as Information Officer for the Colombo Plan in Sri Lanka, he returned to Manila in 1965 to open the Solidaridad Book Shop and Publishing House, and the following year launched Solidarity, a monthly magazine of comment on current affairs, ideas and the arts. A year later he opened the Solidaridad Galleries to allow little known artists an outlet for their work.

Possessed of prodigious energy and curiosity, JOSE made himself an authority on land tenure and in 1968 became a consultant to the Department of Agrarian Reform. He had earlier been a founder and national secretary of the Philippine PEN and a moving spirit in the International Association for Cultural Freedom. He continued as a prolific writer of essays, short stories and novels, some of which have been translated into half a dozen languages, all the while lecturing at universities in the Philippines and abroad.

Although it is difficult to quantify, JOSE has probably made his greatest contribution through the guidance and assistance he has offered numerous Filipino and foreign writers, artists and scholars. From Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas they have come to browse among the carefully selected titles in his bookstore and glean ideas.

JOSE has earned only a modest living through his many activities. He has won instead, for the Philippines, himself, his wife Teresita and their seven children, who all help manage his enterprises, a roster of extraordinary international friends. He has fostered a cultural and intellectual exchange which is enriched by his abiding solicitude for the welfare of ordinary people and enlivened by his vigorous sense of humor. In his writings he has expressed that dimension of caring about human beings that separates trivia from writing of worth.

In electing FRANCISCO SIONIL JOSE to receive the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his intellectual courage and his concern for and encouragement of Asian and other writers and artists, for many of whom his Solidaridad Book Shop is a cultural mecca.

In times like these when a writer can best express himself, perhaps, in allegory, let me tell you a very short story.

A long time ago there lived in the Central Plain of Luzon a boy who liked to read. His forefathers had come down from the north and had cleared the virgin land only to be dispossessed by influential men afterwards. The little boy’s mother was God-fearing and hardworking and she taught her children those solid Ilocano virtues of patience and industry, without which they would not be able to endure the drudgery of the village.

That boy was free; he raced the wind and breathed God’s sweet air. He learned how to read and a new world opened up for him. His teacher lent him the novels of Rizal and he wept over the fate of that hapless, demented woman, Sisa, and her two sons. He wandered with the settlers in the prairies of Nebraska in Willa Cather’s My Antonia. And at night, when there was no kerosene for their lamp, he would walk to the far corner where, under the streetlight, he joined that knight errant, Don Quixote, in his misadventures.

Then the boy left home; kindly relatives took him to the city to study. He worked his way through college, writing short stories for a living since that was the only thing he knew. He fell in love, got married and raised a family. In time, he traveled far and, on occasion, he even dined with the mighty. He lost a bit of his naivete and his good humor but, always, he treasured memories of the village where he was born.

After many years he returned to it, and to his profound dismay he saw that the village had hardly changed, that his relatives and his old friends had not read what he had written. And seeing them, he asked himself why they were still poor and why he was comfortable.

His city friends asked why his novels were sad. They were sad because memory had chained him to a past afflicted with injustices and, as he looked around him, the same injustices still prevailed. His stories were melancholy because he realized the inadequacy of his response, the futility of words.

In writing it was not his intention to present a bleak human landscape. He had sought communion with any man in any village, hoping that he would be able to express the aspirations of those he had left behind. It was their agony, instead, about which he wrote. The boy who had raced the wind was now shackled. He had become a man and deep in his heart he knew he had left his village forever.

Please bear with me and the memory with which I am burdened. This Award makes it lighter. I accept it gratefully, remembering the many individuals with whom I have worked who believe in the dignity, not only of writers, but of all men, particularly those who have less in life and therefore less in law, whereas they should have more.

I accept this Award humbly, remembering those I have left behind who have suffered for truth and justice with a courage and fortitude that will never be mine.

After Japan opened contact with the rest of the world following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, there were individuals who realized that merely borrowing from abroad forms of administrative modernization and technology was not enough. But they were often lonely thinkers. 

Intellectual insularity and ignorance, even of Asian neighbors, helped prompt the Japanese military to seize political power at home and take aggressive action abroad. Even the traumatic military defeat which ended World War II and brought in the Allied Army of Occupation failed to shatter Japanese tendencies toward national elitism and isolation. An ethnically and linguistically homogenous people, they had never learned historically to absorb foreigners and their ideas. 

SHlGEHARU MATSUMOTO is one of the small minority of Japanese who appreciated the necessity for Japan genuinely to accommodate her national aims to the realities of a larger world. MATSUMOTO was born in 1899 in Osaka, into a family of business executives. After graduating in law from Tokyo University, he went on to study at the universities of Wisconsin and Yale in the United States, and in Geneva and Vienna, before returning in 1927 to teach. 

Following the occupation of Manchuria by the Japanese military in 1931-1932 MATSUMOTO decided to become active in public affairs and pursue a career as an international journalist. For six years he was the Domei News Agency Correspondent in Shanghai, meanwhile keeping his prime minister, Prince Konoye, informed on China at his request. Throughout the Pacific War he was Editor-in-Chief and then concurrently Managing Director of Domei. When Japan surrendered he joined with associates to publish a daily tabloid, Minpo (Peoples Daily), until he was purged by the Occupation late in 1946. Together with his mentor, Dr. Yasaka Takagi, and others MATSUMOTO then founded the Japanese Association for American Studies to help younger Japanese scholars and to enlighten the public through publication of a five-volume documentary history of the United States. 

In 1952 as the allied occupation ended, MATSUMOTO, with the encouragement of John D. Rockefeller 3rd, took the lead in organizing, and became the first managing director of Kokusai Bunka Kaikan, The International House of Japan. Enlisting support in Japan to match contributions from abroad, he devoted himself to making this truly a center where all nationalities could meet and share experiences. The critical and constructive role of The International House of Japan and MATSUMOTO would have been recognized earlier by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation had not both institutions been beneficiaries of Rockefeller philanthropy. MATSUMOTO has been nominated for this Award seven times by distinguished countrymen and after 23 years his important contributions must be acknowledged. 

By birth and association a member of the Japanese elite, MATSUMOTO thinks carefully, seeks out individuals and ideas that count, and helps open doors for their acceptance. Although he moved up to become Chairman of the Board of Directors in 1965, he has actively continued to guide this unique center of informal diplomacy, with its cultural and intellectual emphasis and excellent library. Much of the world view of modern and democratic Japan is a product of the friendly discussions held in this tasteful house set in a classical garden in the heart of bustling Tokyo. The insights that have been gained here reflect MATSUMOTO’s sustained, patient furtherance of informed reason, so necessary in an era of accelerating interdependence. 

In electing SHIGEHARU MATSUMOTO to receive the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes his building constructive relations between Japanese and others through shared knowledge of their diverse histories, needs and national aspirations.

I am sorry that my father, SHIGEHARU MATSUMOTO, is not physically able to be here to receive in person the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding. However, I am highly honored to represent my father as his eldest son, now engaged in the work of international cooperation. 

Mr. Chairman, with your kind permission, I will read the response of my father, SHIGEHARU MATSUMOTO: 

Half a century ago, in 1929, the third conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was held in Kyoto, the culturally rich and old capital of Japan Assisting Professor Yasaka Takagi, the key member of the Japanese delegation, I served as a very junior staff member at that conference. There I met delegates from seven countries located in the Pacific basin. Among them was the late John D. Rockefeller 3rd, a junior member of the U.S. delegation, and Dr. and Mrs. Conrado Benitez from the Philippines. Attending the conference I was led to realize the existence of many worlds other than my own and this experience kindled a dream in my heart, the dream of devoting my life to building a base for international understanding somewhere in my own country. It took nearly 30 years before this dream came true in the form of a place called The International House of Japan. 

During those 30 years my dream suffered a succession of failures. I spent six years as a journalist in Shanghai. Despite all I had done, war came in China, then in the Pacific; and it was brought home to me how powerless a single individual is against waves sweeping all of us to tragedy. However I never abandoned my belief in the value of individual human dignity, nor did I give up my belief in the human capacity to accommodate different views, ideas and faiths in the search for means of peaceful coexistence. I believe one of the most effective means for attaining such accommodation is creative, mutual borrowing that strengthens awareness of shared values. 

In 1952, with support from many friends at home and abroad, including our mutual friend the late John D. Rockefeller 3rd, I managed to establish The International House of Japan. This nongovernmental institution was and is committed to cultural exchange and intellectual cooperation. More concretely, it is intended to help individuals of differing cultural background, religious affiliation, and political outlook develop closer understanding through personal contact in an atmosphere of openminded reflection and mutual respect. I recall a remark made by a close friend when I was launching The International House: “You’re a fool to try to dry up the Pacific Ocean with a tea cup, but I respect you for trying.” This comment convinced me that I’d rather be a fool than sit and do nothing. 

Looking at what is actually happening in the world today, we should not be blind to the commonality of those human aspirations which have guided human destiny in the past and which will, I hope, continue to guide it in the future. Today I humbly accept this honor, not for the little I have done thus far, but to encourage the generations that follow us to carry on the unfinished task of one who cared for all peoples as individuals and believed in their dignity and personal freedom, the late Ramon Magsaysay.

The rebirth of their ancient civilization in South Korea during the past 15 years is among the major historical events of modern Asia. Korean culture, dating back more than 3,000 years, stagnated during the 18th and 19th centuries as the “hermit kingdom” isolated itself from the outside world. When Japan in 1910 formally incorporated Korea into its empire, indigenous history, literature and learning were suppressed.

With all formal education available only in Japanese, Koreans seeking to preserve their heritage returned to the study of the archaic stylized literary forms of the yangban, the scholar-gentry officials. Ordinary rural folk, however, were not in the position to learn the complex pictographic language that would enable them to read the Confucian classics. When Korea was liberated by Japan’s surrender to the Allies in August 1945, all this changed. Korean became the language of literature, government, commerce and education in a public school system aimed at universal literacy. Perhaps inevitably the emphasis was urban; even today there are only 118 public libraries in the country, rarely within reach of rural families. 

The Village Mini-Library Movement originated from a fortuitous happening in OHM DAE-SUP’s childhood after he moved with his poor family from Korea to the Kobe area of Japan. While living in Tokuyama City he discovered that a wealthy man had opened his library to neighbors, and OHM was amazed at the knowledge stored in books. As he read avidly, OHM vowed that when he had made enough money he would bring back books to villagers in Korea. 

In 1951, in his hometown of Ulsan in southern Korea, OHM used his private collection of some 3,000 volumes to found a library open to the public. By bicycle he distributed metal bookcases to 50 villages, organizing a free circulating library. After two years he moved his library to Kyongju, and discovering that it was not enough merely to distribute books, he organized community reading clubs to overcome the villagers’ apathy to reading. He also fostered local leadership in selecting, sharing and caring for books, and in discussing their contents. 

A decade later the Maul Munko (Village Mini-Library) association was formally inaugurated. Despite scoffers, OHM continued selling his assets to pay the costs of the Mini-Library Association. He lives now on income from a small building and a lot his two younger brothers bought for him in Pusan in their names so that he could not sell them for more books. Meanwhile, OHM’s struggling private, non-profit group learned to select and purchase wholesale from publishers books which deal primarily with farming, fishing, children’s and women’s interests, literature and hobbies. Others banded with him to donate mini-libraries to their hometowns, and in 1965 the Ministry of Education began to pay for bookshelves and books. In 18 years OHM’s perseverance has resulted in mini-libraries in 34,389, or 95 percent, of South Korea’s villages. A Mini-Library Club of 10 to 20 mostly young village volunteers manages each collection. 

The mini-libraries have now been incorporated in the Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement) which is upgrading and adding to the collections while OHM works unceasingly to bring all libraries up the standard of the one-third that are working well. Already this source of technical and cultural enrichment has contributed to the extraordinary economic and physical transformation of South Korea’s countryside. For professional librarians OHM helped organize and fund the Korean Library Association. At the age of 59 his driving motivation remains the concept that “only knowledge can make man free.” 

In electing OHM DAE-SUP to receive the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his abiding commitment toward making knowledge a tool for life-betterment in rural Korea.

Upon receiving the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award, I would like to begin by expressing my wholehearted appreciation for this most honored Award; and on this 73rd birthday anniversary of the late Philippine President, I wish to pay my highest respects to the memory of him who was the guardian of freedom and justice for this and other parts of the world. 

My modest campaign for the nationwide reading movement for Korean farmers and fishermen, which the Magsaysay Award recognizes, dates back about 30 years. At that time Korean farmers and fishermen had little opportunity to read books. The few public libraries which were available were in cities. Books were the exclusive possession of the privileged elite of the society. 

The people, especially farmers and fishermen, had to rely completely on their traditional way of thinking and life. My purpose in establishing village mini-libraries was to enable them to learn for themselves through books and to improve their way of thinking and life through the knowledge thus acquired. 

My idea in establishing the mini-libraries was to provide small but easy-of-access reading facilities for farmers and fishermen. After I started this movement it grew rapidly with support from various segments of society. The movement now has the strong support of the Korean Government. 

Today mini-libraries have been established in over 34,000 villages, which represent 95 percent of all the villages of Korea. Villagers themselves now operate established libraries without outside help. 

As a result of their consciousness of their need for knowledge and information from books in this rapidly changing social situation, villagers have begun to acquire books by themselves. Although the number of books each mini-library has collected on its own is small so far, the people’s understanding of the value of books has grown substantially. 

I firmly believe that for those whose formal education is limited, as is the case with farmers and fishermen, the most effective and permanent method of self-education is voluntarily to read books. In most developing countries, however, government investment in public libraries is grossly inadequate. As a result, the general public is in a pitiful situation with no systematic channel for obtaining books to meet their desire to read. 

In modern society everybody has a right to read and acquire knowledge. This is an inherent right of a human being in this age. I also firmly believe that only knowledge can liberate human beings. Recognition of my work by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation convinces me once again that book reading is the prerequisite for progress of any developing country.

Like some of its neighbors in Southeast Asia, Malaysia is endowed with substantial areas of little used or unused land, some left from slash and burn and others logged over or still in virgin jungle. For these countries such land areas offer both a potential human “safety valve” as populations increase, and an opportunity to expand production of crops increasingly demanded at home or in the world market.

Yet, for most of Southeast Asia resettlement often has remained a distant goal. Repeatedly, landless families from overcrowded communities have migrated to the frontier, only to fail as pioneering farmers. They have been defeated by lack of transportation and ineffective law and order, or they were without the means and skills to bring appropriate crops into production and to market. Individual families in particular have foundered, where effective cooperation among neighbors might have saved them all.

Even before Malaysian independence in 1957, leaders of the emerging nation studied how to transform landless laborers into productive planters. The Emergency, resulting from communist insurrection, and racial tensions, arising from economic and cultural differences among Malays, Indians and Chinese, demanded basic solutions. Over 116,000 unprocessed land applications had accumulated, and land hunger was compounded by rural unemployment and poverty.

Initially, the federal government relied upon providing an infrastructure of roads, schools, public health facilities and mosques, leaving much of the actual land development to individual states. When this proved inadequate, the Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) shifted to a “systems approach.” Each resettlement project was planned in advance; contractors built roads, houses and other facilities, cleared land and planted rubber and oil palm trees. As selected families moved in they earned a subsistence allowance tending the eight or ten acres assigned to them, meanwhile starting orchards and gardens on their two-acre home sites. More recently FELDA shifted to allotting settlers shares in jointly managed plantation blocks.

Nearly 60,000 families, resettled on approximately 1.3 million acres, are repaying most capital costs with interest over 20 years. Settler family monthly incomes frequently equal US$245 to US$300 or more. Increasingly, farm leaders share in FELDA’s management of marketing, and operation of oil palm mills and rubber factories, as they have done in recent expansion into production of sugar and cocoa.

More than anyone else, the modest public servant who has made a success of FELDA is Raja MUHAMMAD ALIAS. Born in Negri Sembilan in 1932, he entered the Malayan Civil Service in 1958, serving with distinction as District Officer. He was appointed Deputy Chairman of FELDA in 1966 and was elevated to Group Chairman in 1979.

Raja ALIAS has steadily shaped FELDA as a more human-oriented enterprise. By recognizing and mobilizing the initiative of settlers, he is fostering new communities with a growing sense of self-reliance. A thorough planner who has resisted political pressures by insisting FELDA must follow rules, he has quietly organized a high-caliber staff. His own working hours are longest. He refuses fees from the many FELDA-connected enterprises he helps direct. His schoolteacher wife shares family costs. With this quality of commitment he has been able to demonstrate that even on some of Malaysia’s less fertile lateritic soils, once-indigent families can create productive agriculture and contribute to community and national well-being.

In electing Raja MUHAMMAD ALIAS to receive the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his steadfast, principled administration in translating Malaysia’s “land for the landless” schemes into prosperous realities.

I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to the Chairman and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for having bestowed upon me such a great honor. As an employee of the Government of Malaysia, I believe that this honor properly belongs to the government. When I joined the Malaysian Civil Service in 1958 I was told by my superior that, as a newly-independent nation, our country needed hard work and dedication from its civil servants. We had a big task ahead of us, particularly in rural development. Ever since I have tried to do my duty to the government and the people. For doing my duty I have been honored with this Award. It was a real surprise to me.

I do not think I have done anything exceptional. I have only carried out what is expected of me. This Award is not so much for me as for my organization, the Federal Land Development Authority, or FELDA for short. Earlier this year FELDA was honored with a similar award by the Malaysian Tun Razak Foundation. Now another award? a most coveted one? has come its way. 1980 is, therefore, a very auspicious year for FELDA.

What FELDA has been doing and trying to do in the last 23 years is nothing novel or new. It has been organizing land settlement projects for the many landless rural people in Malaysia. Our objective is not different from that of the late President Magsaysay. His efforts in rural reform and helping the poor will be long remembered. His untimely demise deprived the people of Asia of a dedicated leader and a statesman. Nevertheless the flame that he lit continues to burn, not only in the hearts of the Filipino people, but all over Asia. The creation of the Ramon Magsaysay Award is fitting tribute to a great leader, who made the eradication of human poverty his obsession in the service of his people. It is no exaggeration to say that I am overawed on this occasion. To be able to bask in some of the glory of this great leader is something that I have never dreamed of.

To the Chairman and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, I thank you once again for this honor which I will always treasure. This Award cuts across national boundaries and through the artificial barriers that humans build; such contribution to mankind will always be cherished. To the people of the Philippines, I wish to say thank you for your hospitality.