Youngest son of a well-to-do Brahmin family, MANIBHAI BHIMBHAI DESAI was born on April 27, 1920 in the village of Kosmada, Surat District, Gujarat, India. As owner of 68 acres (27.5 hectares) of ancestral lands, MANIBHAI’s father, Bhimbhai Fakhirbhai DESAI, was a respected leader among the farmers of the 10 or 15 villages in the area. From their father the DESAIs' five children—one daughter and four sons—inherited excellent managerial talent which they carried to their respective careers. Their mother, Ramibahen DESAI, passed on to them her "very strong common sense."

When their father died in 1927, the eldest son took charge of the ancestral farm while the next two sons pursued careers in the textile industry, one becoming a gold medal spinner and the other an expert weaver and the general manager of one of India’s largest textile units.

At the time of his father’s death MANIBHAI DESAI was in first grade at the elementary school in his native village. For the five years he attended that school (1927-1931) he ranked first in his class; he was also good in sports and a leader in the Boy Scouts. India in these years was being shaken by Mahatma Gandhi’s hartals (abstension from work) and satyagrahas (literally "insistence on truth," but in fact calls for civil disobedience) against British rule. DESAI vividly recalls an incident that happened when he was ten that influenced his future life. A young man from the village, Narottambhai Patel, joined Gandhi on his march from Ahmadabad to Dandi where the demonstrators raided the salt stocks as a protest against the imposition of a salt tax. It was Patel’s duty on his return to the village, to see that a pinch of salt, which had become a symbol of the struggle for independence, was distributed to each household. He chose young DESAI to carry out the task. Deeply moved by the sight of villagers bowing down as they ate the salt, DESAI felt at age 10 the call of Mahatma Gandhi.

Normally if a child wished to go on to higher education in British India he would begin middle school in fifth grade in order to learn English, but Ramibahen was reluctant to let her youngest son leave home. Eventually the older brothers, all well-educated, prevailed upon her to let him go and in 1931 DESAI entered fifth grade for a second time in T. and T.V. Sarvajanik Middle School in the town of Katargam near Surat.

Anxious lest her son be spoiled by living in a hostel, Ramibahen arranged for him to stay with her married niece for the first two years. This niece, with five or six children of her own and not as well off as DESAI’s family, did not hesitate to assign her young cousin—who had never worked in his life—a wide variety of household chores, from making beds and babysitting to fetching water from the well and cleaning latrines. In addition he had to care for the cow which his mother had sent along because she did not want him to be deprived of the milk he had enjoyed at home. Thus it was the young man’s task to milk, feed and take the cow to the village pond to drink. When his work was finished, however, he still found time to study and play cricket with his friends.

DESAI found nothing oppressive in this strict regimen. Instead he recalls doing his tasks naturally and "with pleasure," and thinks of those years as having had a positive influence on his character. His mother did not agree. During a visit to Katargam in 1932 she found her son absorbed in cleaning the household’s kerosene lanterns. Shocked, she saw that he transferred to a hostel when he entered the high school section of the school in Surat the next school year. The following year she took him out of the ordinary hostel and placed him in the Anavil Ashram where he remained until completing high school in April 1938.

An ashram in India is an institution where the residents pursue their work (shram) guided by a particular philosophical approach. The Anavil Ashram had been founded by Dayaljibhai DESAI, a philosopher who was very close to Mahatma Gandhi. In the late 1920s, when Gandhi instigated his second movement against the British, the main base of the freedom fighters was the Anavil Ashram. The British seized the ashram in 1930, arrested all its residents and incarcerated Dayaljibhai DESAI for about three years. MANIBHAI DESAI joined the ashram when it was reopened in 1934.

DESAI’s contact with the leaders of the "Quit India" movement increased after he moved to the ashram. He saw and heard Gandhi in 1937 when the All-India Congress met near Surat; the boys in the ashram volunteered to help with menial tasks during the sessions, including cleaning latrines. (In India’s caste system that task was normally assigned to the casteless Untouchables; except in poor families it was never one for Brahmins. Gandhi believed, however, that all men are equal and he required his followers to forget caste differences and take on any job that needed to be done regardless of their position in society.) He also became very close to Dayaljibhai DESAI, having been asked to give him a daily massage in order to ease his pain caused by mistreatment in prison. During the hour of treatment, Dayaljibhai told the boy stories of saints and philosophers and gave him the works and biography of Swami Vivekananda (founder of the Ram Krishna order and service mission) to read. He was also influenced by Brahmanand Swami, a philosopher who visited the ashram and imparted a number of instructions designed to promote mental and physical self discipline. These included living a celibate life, rising before 4:00 a.m. and never sleeping on one’s back. For several years thereafter DESAI rose at 3:45 each morning and kept a stick in his bed to prevent himself from rolling over on his back during his sleep. He was also to opt, in the future, for the celibate life.

In June 1938 DESAI entered M.T.B. Sarvajanik College in Surat, which belonged to the Sarvajanik group of schools and was an affiliate of Bombay University, the institution issuing its final degrees. Since his brothers wanted him to become an engineer, DESAI majored in physics and mathematics. He passed his Junior Bachelor of Science in April 1942 and had entered his final year of college when the British suppression of Gandhi’s movement reached its peak. On August 9, 1942, the day all the leaders of the movement were arrested, DESAI decided, without informing his family, to leave college and join the resistance.

He met initially with Thakorbhai Manibhai DESAI, leader of a group of socialists under the Jayaprakash Narayan (Ramon Magsaysay Awardee in 1965 for Public Service for his "constructive articulation of a public conscience for modern India") branch of the Congress Party. To test him, T. M. DESAI told him to deliver an anti-British speech to a group of farmers, warning him that he would surely be arrested. DESAI duly delivered an inflammatory address, but in view of his young age, the police did not detain him. Nonetheless, T. M. DESAI agreed that he had done what was required and accepted him into the underground, where he spent the next 19 months derailing freight trains and blowing up bridges in an effort to disrupt British communications. Although the group avoided hurting people in their attacks, their tactics greatly disturbed Gandhi who in 1943 sent a message from prison: "Why behave like cowards? Come out in the open and do whatever you want to do and die."

The group quickly obeyed. DESAI openly addressed a number of villages and was immediately arrested. Abused by the Surat Indian police, he only smiled and exhorted them to cease behaving like slaves and join the movement. When his family learned he was in jail for anti-British activities, rather than still at the university, his uncle began a fast—a favored Indian form of protest—and informed his family that he would not stop until the boy was released. Thereupon a group of village elders went to the jail and were told that DESAI would be permitted to leave if he would sign a letter repenting his misdeeds and repudiating Gandhi. DESAI tore up the letter, adding that if his uncle died, "independence will come closer with his death and sacrifice." Understanding that DESAI had said, "Let him die!" the old man immediately asked for food.

When he was sent to serve his sentence in the main jail in Sabarmati, DESAI was placed, not with the political prisoners, but with the common criminals. Far from allowing his spirit to be broken, he made friends with his fellow inmates, many of whom had become bandits as a result of injustices suffered at the hands of the wealthy. Later when the political prisoners demanded a new manager in their kitchen DESAI was given the job. He acquitted himself so well that on his last day in confinement he was given a send-off party by the appreciative inmates.

During his year in prison DESAI read a great deal of radical political literature, including the works of Karl Marx and Mao Tse-tung. From Mao he learned that to effect social progress one should 1) eliminate the exploiting members of society, 2) move fast and 3) involve the people. These views were modified by the Gandhian approach advocated by his fellow inmates, particularly Ravishankar Maharaj. Maharaj pointed out that Mao accepted the fact that the men for whom one is presumably fighting are often not willing participants in the fight. Gandhi, on the other hand, insisted that willing participation of the people is an essential element of any movement. The goal of both men was maximum employment of the people in a non-mechanized society, but Gandhi believed this goal could be achieved without violence, through love and good organization.

By the time he left prison in April 1944 DESAI had decided to give up the idea of being an engineer and to devote himself instead to rural development. However, since a fellow inmate cautioned him that Gandhi had directed that no political prisoner should make any major decision about his life while in the abnormal atmosphere of a jail, he resumed to college to finish his final year. While there he again began organizing students, this time for social work and for the fight against social justice.

Despite his extracurricular activities, he was a merit scholar and completed his B.Sc. with a first in Physics and Mathematics in April 1945. His resolve to take up rural development never weakened, and scant hours after finishing his last paper he was on the night train for Bombay to meet Mahatma Gandhi. As part of his decision he renounced any claim to his ancestral lands realizing, as he later said, that people have greater confidence in you if you have nothing of your own—no distractions or private interests—and that in India, if you have sacrificed, "you can penetrate the minds and hearts of the people very easily."

Gandhi accepted DESAI as a disciple in principle, but told him he must first return to his village and forget everything he had learned. "Bapuji," asked the new graduate in dismay, using the affectionate term for father, "are you against education?" Gandhi replied that it was not mathematics and physics he had in mind, but the elitist attitudes taught in college which assigned to the exploiter the highest status in society and to the man who toils for his labor the lowest.

DESAI therefore returned to Kosmada where he began organizing the village for development. Four months later he received a letter from Gandhi stating simply, "Come immediately to Sevagram. Join me." The news came as a great shock to the village and to his family, since he had told no one of his meeting with Gandhi, but he pointed out to the distraught villagers who had responded to his leadership that Gandhi’s sending for him "is an honor not to me but to the village where I was born. . . .It’s a great honor to you."

On the morning of August 18, 1945 DESAI was in Gandhi’s Sevagram Ashram in Wardha District, Maharashtra State. Sevagram was the headquarters for all the institutions established by Gandhi, from education and cattle development to hospitals and associations of spinners and weavers. For the few months that he stayed there, DESAI worked primarily with Naraharibhai Parikh, a prominent Gandhian economist, while Gandhi himself was called away to Pune.

At this time Wardha District was hit by a violent outbreak of cholera. When the news reached Gandhi he wrote a letter to Sevagram stating bluntly that if the ashram were not able to control the epidemic within 10 days, its existence was futile. The situation in the cholera-stricken region was exceedingly dangerous, with about 300 people dying each day, and the ashram’s residents were understandably reluctant to go out into the villages. Nonetheless DESAI volunteered for the job and was accompanied by a group of about 50 boys and two doctors.

The volunteers treated patients with saline solution to prevent dehydration, carried dead bodies to the funeral ground, and gave well villagers tablets and vaccinations, teaching them also to clean the village, boil their water and cook their food well. The techniques were successful, and Dr. Shushila Nayer, who came to the area to investigate their progress, wrote a long letter to Gandhi recommending DESAI as a young man who could be entrusted with important tasks.

Gandhi had such a task in mind. He wanted to develop a center in Maharashtra for total rural development, beginning with a nature cure health program which would treat poor patients, using natural means rather than expensive medical methods they could ill afford. Before making his decision, however, Gandhi tested DESAI once more, assigning him the task of cleaning latrines and teaching him to make compost from night soil and trash. Only after a month and a half, when he was assured of his disciple’s equanimity, did he invite him to join his personal staff, working on accounts.

On January 26, 1946, the day Jawaharlal Nehru declared premature independence from Britain, DESAI took a vow of celibacy so that he could devote himself entirely to the development of his nation.

During this period DESAI became very close to Gandhi who was then an old man fifty years his senior. One day Gandhi told DESAI that there were very few people who would work for the program of rural development he considered so essential to the success of an independent India, but "among these very few," he said, "you are one." He then asked him to establish a nature cure ashram and development program in a village in Maharashtra, to be selected by him. Although DESAI was anxious to begin rural development in his native Gujarat he agreed to work in Maharashtra for two years.

Balkoba Bhave, younger brother of land reformer Vinoba Bhave (1958 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Community Leadership for "his furtherance of the cause of arousing his countrymen toward voluntary action in relieving social injustice and economic inequalities"), suggested the village of Uruli-Kanchan to which he had retired because of advanced tuberculosis. Gandhi and DESAI first came to the village on March 22, 1946. Gandhi felt it was suitable and acquired 25 acres of land—through donations in cash and kind—for the proposed ashram. Then each morning for the next few days the two men walked through the village as Gandhi showed DESAI what should be done. A strong advocate of clean living habits as the best preventive medicine, Gandhi was so disturbed when they came upon a ropemaker’s shack made of old rotten tins that he told DESAI to burn it to the ground. Remembering the sociology he had learned in prison, DESAI answered, "Bapuji, before we put this hut to fire, we will have to erect a new one where the fellow can shift." This, DESAI feels, has remained one of his guiding principles: build before you destroy.

On March 30 Lord Wavell, then viceroy of India, sent a special train to fetch Gandhi for negotiations on the transfer of power prior to independence. Although the matter was urgent, Gandhi refused to leave until after the evening prayers he had promised to hold with the villagers. His activity in Uruli-Kanchan, he told the perturbed emissary, had the same importance as the next day’s negotiations with Wavell. If after the British leave "you don't build up rural India" he said, turning to young DESAI, "your power in Delhi will have hardly any meaning."

Before proceeding north, Gandhi gave DESAI some general guidelines to follow. First, he told him, the program he designed should be labor intensive; a capital intensive program will surely produce development, but may also create disparities in income. Second, make use of all rural resources, even those that look at first glance like liabilities. For example, the farmer’s misspent time—underutilized or unutilized manpower—is a resource; in that case the goal must be to create maximum year-round gainful employment for the farmer and his family. It is as important, Gandhi insisted, to cure the farmer’s socioeconomic ills as his physical ones.

On April 1, 1946 DESAI started the Goshala Ashram in the cottage that had been given to Gandhi when he arrived; the first project he planned was the nature cure hospital. With DESAI were Balkoba Bhave, who would recover his health in these surroundings, an allopathic doctor, a social worker, and two or three women who stayed only briefly after Gandhi left.

DESAI began his program by sweeping the streets for several hours each day—encouraging others to do likewise—while he learned about village conditions. What he found shocked him. The village was plagued not only by chronic drought, but by a colony of robbers whose sole occupation was preying on the hapless villagers, and by a Pathan moneylender who charged 300 percent interest per year and whipped farmers who failed to pay. In idleness, the village boys spent their nights enjoying vulgar entertainment provided by dancing girls and slept the days away.

Reinforced by a letter from Gandhi who agreed that these social ills would have to be cured before development could take place, DESAI began to attack them one by one by presenting viable alternatives.

When the Pathan moneylender realized that DESAI would cause him trouble, he sent him a letter threatening his life. DESAI was at his door the next morning, asking where it would be most convenient to meet so that the moneylender could kill him. Unnerved, the Pathan left him alone, while DESAI introduced cooperative banking and blocked his trade network. A year and a half later the Pathan had departed the village.

DESAI spent quite a bit of time those first few years with youth, since through this relatively uncorrupted age group he hoped to build a development program. A good athlete himself, he encouraged wrestling and volleyball matches, and organized a sanskar pathak (youth culture organization). To counter vulgar professional entertainment, he persuaded the young men to stage a dramatic performance in which he himself took part. During the intermission he asked the audience, which eventually totalled 10,000, which type of entertainment they wanted— traditional religious drama, or the coarse entertainments to which they had become accustomed. The traditional plays were enthusiastically endorsed and the dancing girls left.

Gandhi had also suggested that DESAI take up cattle development, initially for the purpose of ensuring a good supply of milk for Bhave and the nature cure patients. When DESAI protested that his field was mathematics, not veterinary medicine, Gandhi told him to learn by getting a book on the subject and to start dismembering dead cows. He did, dissecting around 400 carcasses, and becoming in the process an authority on cattle physiology.

As the scope of the work increased, Bhave suggested to DESAI that he should stay in the village not two years, but at least the length of one tapa, a 12-year period by which Indian philosophers often measure their work or meditation. DESAI agreed and took an oath before the villagers on Gandhi’s birthday, October 2, 1946, to remain in Uruli-Kanchan for 12 years.

DESAI last saw Gandhi in April 1947 when he met him to discuss the program and its problems. He informed the old man of his oath, but instead of praise, Gandhi told him that 12 years would pass in a flash—he should make a lifetime commitment to stay. Gandhi explained that Uruli-Kanchan was a "very important program" and he himself planned to spend six months a year there as soon as independence was won. DESAI still had plans for returning to work in Gujarat and could not come to a decision. The following day, with a premonition of his death, Gandhi remarked that perhaps he would not come in person to Uruli-Kanchan, but "my soul will come. . .and if my soul sees you working for rural development my soul will be very happy." At this DESAI wept, and Gandhi brusquely responded, "Your tears will not satisfy me. I want your life-committed perspiration."

Finally on April 13, the anniversary of the "Amritsar Massacre" when 379 protesters were killed and 1,208 wounded by British troops and which was regarded by many Indians as a day of sacrifice, DESAI went to Gandhi and bowed his head and vowed to "lay my ashes in Uruli-Kanchan."

DESAI returned to Maharashtra with 100,000 rupees Gandhi ordered the headquarters at Sevagram to give him to carry on his development work. On January 30, 1948 Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.

One of DESAI’s priorities was to organize the young people who were not yet spoiled by indolence or anti-social activities. The cultural center was one way of doing this; a secondary school was another. He began the latter in 1950 by teaching 30 boys in his own cottage.

Meanwhile he tried to find out what the villagers felt was their most pressing need, sensing that he could use it to bring them to work together, and that this experience of cooperation could be carried over into development efforts. By sitting hidden near the village well and eavesdropping on the conversations of the women as they did their laundry, he learned that the one thing uniting the villagers was their desire to repair the temple. Accordingly he called a meeting and organized a committee to begin raising money for a new structure. When the group was preparing to go to Bombay to collect funds, he convinced them that if they added a school to the temple project they would be more likely to get donations.

By 1954 the new temple and the new secondary school, Mahatma Gandhi Vidyalaya, had been built. Rated nationally as one of the best schools in a rural area, it has today 90 well-qualified teachers to instruct 2,900 students in its three categories of study—academic, agricultural and industrial, and a hostel has been built to accommodate boys from distant villages. From the beginning it was recognized by the central government and therefore enjoyed financial support; in 1980 the state of Maharashtra gave the institution a grant of Rs.10,000, acknowledging its efficiency and performance.

In 1948 DESAI started a herd of dairy cattle at the ashram using the local Gir breed. He chose to develop cattle, as opposed to chickens or pigs, because the latter, having simple stomachs, eat what humans eat, and in a land of scarcity compete with men for food. Cattle, on the other hand, are able to eat products which man finds inedible, such as agricultural wastes. Goats and sheep who forage like cattle, graze closer to the ground, pulling up roots when hungry, and are therefore more damaging to pasturelands than cows.

Although India in 1948 had the largest cattle population in the world (186 million head), it had one of the lowest milk yields (about 350 liters per lactation), so that from an economic point of view the average Indian cow has been a liability to its owner. DESAI was determined to change that situation. The ashram’s Gir herd made such excellent progress that in 1953 the government of the state of Saurashtra (now part of Gujarat) donated 10 top quality animals—eight heifers, one bull calf and one adult bull—for its further improvement. From 1957 through 1962 the Goshala Ashram’s cows captured first and second prizes for highest milk yield in the country.

With the herd of cattle growing, DESAI began to look around for pasturelands, which were very scarce in a region receiving only 8 to 10 inches of rain a year. They found an area about four or five miles away in the village of Bhavarapur on the bank of the Mula Mutha river where some grass was growing under a sparse cover of acacia, a thorny tree that provided little of value. The 25 families who owned the land charged only Rs. 280 for use of the land during the two to three month grazing season.

As DESAI became better acquainted with these villagers he started to think of ways the land could become more productive. This would be possible if the trees were cut down and the land plowed, but the villagers were adamant that since the trees had been planted by their ancestors they must never be felled. DESAI did not raise the matter again for another 10 years. Then after two years of gentle persuasion, one young man who worked on the ashram’s farm agreed to cut down his acacia. When other villagers saw the money he made from selling the wood for fuel, they too began removing the trees, thereby allowing the grass to increase. By 1965 the entire plot of about 90 acres was clear. DESAI then suggested the group of families form a Joint Farming Society to be named the Bhagyodaya Cooperative, but they refused unless he himself joined. Since he did not own any of the land, he was not legally eligible, but the chief minister of Maharashtra pointed out that the law provided for 10 percent membership by landless laborers. In that capacity he became a member and was elected the group’s chairman.

DESAI arranged for the area to be plowed by tractors and irrigated from the river by means of a jack well (holding tank), all of which was financed by a Rs.100,000 bank loan. He persuaded the villagers to dig the well only by starting to dig himself. These people, he said, having lived in such extreme poverty for generations, had lost their motivation to work or even to better their lives. They had to be shown, personally, what could be done before they would do it.

When the land had been plowed and irrigated the soil was tested and found to be extremely alkaline, with a Ph factor of 9.4. A visiting team of American experts advised him to forget about this land and find another plot to work, but DESAI pointed out that these farmers had no other land; they had to work with what was available. The Joint Farming Society drew a loan from the cooperative bank to buy wagonloads of gypsum, which was poured into the soil at about two tons per acre. For their planting in the initial stages DESAI chose brinjal (eggplant) which could grow in soil replete with alkaline salts. After the salt content was brought down, other remunerative crops were introduced; in recent years brinjal has been grown on a very small area. Today the land produces crops of sugarcane, wheat, grapes and other fruit worth more than Rs.300,000 annually.

During this entire period DESAI continued farming experiments on the ashram’s own land, which had increased to 80 acres by 1958. Since agriculture was generally uneconomical in the region around Uruli-Kanchan due to the scant rainfall, DESAI experimented with horticulture to make the ashram self-sufficient and to find suitable cash crops for the farmers of adjacent villages. His researches indicated that the dry climate and light soil offered prospects for grape cultivation. In 1960 he started planting local varieties of grapes, particularly Selection 7 and Bangalore Purple, and an imported variety which seemed best suited for raisin production, Thompson’s Seedless (known in India as Madras Kismis), although a professional horticulturist advised him it was a shy bearer, producing only 2,000 to 3,000 kilograms per acre.

DESAI obtained 10,000 cuttings of Thompson’s Seedless from a small group of families in Tamil Nadu who had themselves been given cuttings by Christian missionaries. Three acres in Uruli-Kanchan were planted to the new variety. DESAI, who says his contribution was "to master the physiology of the vine," spent 14 to 15 hours a day seeing to the proper cutting, training and manuring of the vines which were spaced and trellised to let sunlight through to the ground and thus reduce Downy and powdery mildew, common blights in Indian vineyards. The plants were irrigated with the minimum amount of water for good fruiting. The crop that year yielded 15,700 kg. per acre, or more than the record California yield for the same variety. At first local farmers speculated that the plants had exhausted themselves with the first crop, but the next year DESAI’s yield was even higher, and the farmers accepted workshops in viticulture. Today Thompson grapes are the most popular cash crop in the area, with average yields running between 8,000 and 10,000 kg. per acre.

In 1960 two dams on the river which irrigated Uruli-Kanchan broke. The government proposed repairing the newer of the dams, the Panshet, and building another structure on the site of the older Khadakwasala dam. With a long legal inquiry pending on the Panshet dam and a 12-year completion date proposed for the new dam, DESAI successfully argued that the region would become desert if the Khadakwasala was not repaired immediately. This was accomplished over vehement government objections, and the dam is still standing 20 years later.

When the repair of the smaller Panshet dam was also imminent some local entrepreneurs proposed establishing the Yeshwant Cooperative Sugar Factory to take advantage of the renewed water supply. Since many of the wealthier local farmers were unwilling to risk investing in the venture the businessmen asked DESAI to persuade them of its advantages. He agreed on the condition that small farmers would also be allowed to join if money could be raised to cover their shares. These funds, amounting to Rs.5.3 million were raised in 1964 from the Bank of India, then a private bank with its main branch in Bombay. The loan was entirely repaid by the more than 500 smallholders after the Panshet water became available in 1969. The Yeshwant Cooperative Sugar Factory soon developed numerous branches and became actively engaged in other community socioeconomic developments, e.g. schools, hospitals, water resources.

In the mid-1960s it became apparent to DESAI that if the fruits of his 20 years of work were to reach the rest of rural India, a more sophisticated professional organization, utilizing top-level managerial skills, would be required. Accordingly he founded the Bharatiya Agro-Industries Foundation (BAIF), which was registered in Bombay on August 22, 1967 as a public trust with headquarters in Uruli-Kanchan. Two days later it was formally inaugurated by the President of India in front of a marble plaque in Pune, where central finance and administrative offices would later be located and from where the field programs would be coordinated. However for the next two years BAIF existed only in concept.

In 1969 Uruli-Kanchan was visited by an English agricultural economist, Tristram Beresford, who was chairman of Britain’s Agricultural Society. Although Beresford has come only for a brief look at the dairy herd, he found time to visit the rehabilitated farmland at Bhavarapur and the rest of the ashram’s projects. Deeply impressed with what he saw he offered his services to raise contributions for the ashram. Even more importantly, he procured, through the British Milk Marketing Board, the ashram’s first consignment of 7,000 doses of frozen semen from top quality Jersey and Holstein-Friesian bulls, as well as two containers for the liquid nitrogen to preserve them.

With the acquisition of the frozen semen BAIF ceased being merely an idea and became a functioning organization. DESAI recruited six veterinarians and placed them in small local centers established and supported by the Sugar Cooperative as a service for the entire area. Local cows belonging to individual farmers were inseminated in order to produce high quality crossbred animals. From mothers who could not give 200 liters of milk in a lactation, cows were bred that produced 2,500 liters. In this way poor cows which were a liability were converted into economic assets. The new crossbreeds are called kamdhenu, meaning cows that bring what is desired.

The veterinarians also trained the farmers in the care of these animals. This approach of bringing modern technology to the door of the farmer instead of having the farmer come to a regional center is an essential component of DESAI’s concept of development. His concern is always to humanize the process; "meeting the farmer," he says, "is more important than meeting the cow."

BAIF subsequently received another 2,000 doses of Holstein-Friesian frozen semen through the Church of Scotland, and prepared a project outline for a larger program of Rs.3.5 million to present to the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), as a binational agreement, in 1970. When the project was approved according to the usual procedures by the government of India, DESAI took it to Copenhagen to plead his case in person. DANIDA told him that it would approve the request under two conditions: 1) if BAIF actively advocated the slaughter of cows in India and 2) if DESAI advocated the eating of beef. Although the slaughter and consumption of cows is strictly forbidden by the Hindu religion and it would therefore spell disaster for any organization advocating it, DESAI readily agreed. "As soon as I return to India," he told the astonished board, "I will start slaughtering cows myself, and I will send them to you. But for every dead cow I send, you must send me in return one uterus [capable of producing a live calf] ." This, of course, was an impossible request, and DESAI gently chided the board, saying "Gentlemen, why are you asking me to slaughter what you cannot replace?" In consequence the project was approved unconditionally and over the next four years DESAI was able to obtain 200 prize Jersey and Holstein-Friesian heifers.

As DESAI began soliciting money from major industrialists to finance BAIF’s programs, he realized that contributions would be limited unless the foundation qualified as a research institution eligible for tax-deductible donations. When he approached the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) for certification he was told that in order to qualify, a research institution must handle at least 6,000 head of cattle. Frustrated, DESAI was returning to Uruli-Kanchan when he met with an accident and broke both legs. During his three-month confinement he thought of a method for circumventing the ICAR restrictions: he would get permission from the thousands of farmers in his region to use their cows for research purposes, giving the owners any benefits that might accrue from the project. A few months later, armed with a list of 11,000 cows, DESAI returned to ICAR and obtained recognition of BAIF as a research body.

Two subsidiary research centers were established under the BAIF umbrella in 1971. The first was the BAIF Research Institute for Cattle and Agricultural Development, started on 100 acres of land donated by the government of Maharashtra, and now operating on a total of 300 acres. Supporting the development institute is the BAIF Research Institute for Animal Health which began producing vaccine against foot and mouth disease in 1974 with a donation of equipment from DANIDA.

In 1977 the Ministry of Agriculture approved a recommendation by the Planning Commission to entrust to BAIF the production of 100,000 crossbred cows in blocks or areas designated eligible for the Drought Prone Area Program. National and state governments shared the operating expenditures of the centers, each of which was responsible for registering at least 2,000 conceptions of local cows during a five-year crossbreeding program. The infrastructure for chilling, collecting and marketing the milk from the new breed of cows had already been established in most of the states. Although the cost of operating each center seems high at Rs.60,000 a year, the expense is covered by the guaranteed output in terms of pregnant cows. The income generated by the milk produced by the new cows is more than 10 times the expense incurred by the farmers for the foundation’s services.

Meanwhile in 1972 DESAI began to experiment with growing trees in dry soil. He planted 10,000 shade trees, of the sort that normally grow along Indian roadsides, on the 142 acre barren plot given him by the government. Realizing that the tender roots of a young plant are not capable of drawing more water than they need, DESAI devised a system by which maximum use would be made of a very small amount of water. He covered the area around each seedling with black plastic to prevent evaporation and moistened the soil under it with only one small glass of water every tenth day, and later every fourteenth. Six drums of water daily, taken from a nearby farmer’s well, sufficed to irrigate all 10,000 plants in this way. As the trees grew, the dribble-circumference was extended, thus only the root tips continued to be watered. Ten years later these trees average 30 feet in height.

Following his rural development strategy of optimizing his resources, DESAI started looking for a fodder plant that would not only grow with scanty water in extremely poor soil, but could, as a legume, enrich that soil by drawing nitrogen from the air. In the Philippines and Australia he learned of a variety of Leucaena leucocephala which had these characteristics, but which grew slowly—and DESAI had learned that if a program to eradicate poverty doesn't have fast results, the man who is the target of that program will lose confidence in it.

Finally in 1974 he received an ounce of seeds of the Hawaiian Giant (K-8) variety of Leucaena leucocephala from Professor James L. Brewbaker of the University of Hawaii. This tree had all the desired characteristics of the other varieties as well as rapid growth. Subabul, as it is now known in India, has proven to be an easily renewable source of fuel, wooden poles for building materials, and fodder.

For its valuable nitrogen-fixing action in the soil to take place it is necessary for certain rhizobia (a bacteria) to be active in the nodules of the plant’s roots. The laboratories on BAIF’s campus have produced very effective rhizobia cultures for use in both acidic and alkaline soils and the rhizobia is supplied to farmers along with the Leucaena seeds In addition the BAIF researchers have found that sulfa phosphate is a critical requirement of the plant and it too is supplied when seedlings are sold. The foundation now has a 400-acre plantation of Hawaiian Giant at Uruli-Kanchan and a 200-acre farm in northern Gujarat. The latter is irrigated with extremely brackish water, having 5,500 parts of salt per million (normally tolerable brackishness is only 1,200 ppm), yet thesubabul is growing well.

Through experimentation BAIF has standardized the Hawaiian Giant planting-cutting systems, according to intended use. If fodder alone is desired, the seeds are planted close together, with only 12 inches between rows, and the branches are cut every 40 days. Animals are not allowed to graze the plants because the mimosine (a toxic amino acid) content of the tip leaves is very high and animals which eat them sicken and/or abort. But BAIF researchers have discovered that when the whole branch is chopped up as fodder, the mimosine content per feeding is reduced to the point that BAIF has been maintaining six healthy animals exclusively on 40 kg. of Hawaiian Giant a day for the last two and a half years—although it normally recommends mixing the Leucaena with other fodder.

If the tree is to be used for building materials it is planted at least three meters from its neighbors and allowed to grow for approximately three years before cutting. In a biomass plantation, where trees will be used for fuel, two meters between rows is optimal, with half a meter between the plants. The tree is cut every three years, so if three plots are prepared in rotation, one-third of the crop can be harvested annually. The wood can be used as sticks, made into an excellent charcoal, or converted into steam to run a turbine or boiler. An Indian farm family can fulfill its fuel needs from a small biomass plot.

Hawaiian Giant is very good for afforestation programs. In areas where it has been growing for a long time the soil, which was previously rocky and barren, has been converted into humus and can now be used to plant corn or other food crops. BAIF is promoting permanent agroforestry arrangements of intercropping rows of Hawaiian Giant, planted about five meters apart and pruned to a suitable height, with a normal grain crop. As of May 1982 BAIF had distributed 5 tons of Hawaiian Giant seed to the 6,000 villages under its centers, and another 25 tons to thousands of other villages through their state governments.

In 1980 BAIF started experimenting with sericulture (raising silkworms) as an income-producing activity to complement the established dairy program. In this project mulberry trees, to provide food for silkworms, are planted in conjunction with subabul, to feed the cattle. The mulberry plants grow to a height of about one meter in six months, when the leaves can be plucked for feeding the silkworms. Subabul grows faster than mulberry, particularly after the first year of its establishment. The combined projects provide employment for the farmer’s entire family. DESAI is planning to develop cooperative units for processing the cocoons.

In connection with BAIF, DESAI has traveled extensively for both research and fundraising. His first trip in 1968 was to Thailand, the Philippines and Taiwan. He was particularly impressed with Taiwan’s irrigation system, its decentralized hydraulic generation of power and the involvement of schools in planting programs. He visited Denmark five times beginning in 1970 in connection with the cattle breeding program and participated in a study tour in Israel in 1971. During his two visits to the United States he established close contacts with breeders' associations and American agricultural universities such as Cornell, Pennsylvania State, the University of Wisconsin, St. Paul Agricultural University and the University of California at Davis. In Washington D.C. he studied the administrative set-up of worldwide churches, seeking models for expanding BAIF across the entire subcontinent of India. In this connection he was invited in 1972 to view the work of the United Church of Christ in Canada, and in 1975 he returned to that country to get approval for a project from the Canadian Freedom from Hunger foundation and to meet members of major cattle breeders' associations in the Toronto area.

DESAI stayed in Japan for a week, observing cattle in Hokkaido, and examined an excellent hill planting system in Hong Kong. He visited the Netherlands three times and Germany once in connection with cattle breeding and semenology. During his five visits to France he studied the manufacture of vaccines and succeeded in establishing a collaboration with the Institut National de Recherches Agronomiques. Trips to Australia and New Zealand also produced valuable contacts among scientists in the various fields of BAIF’s interests and enabled BAIF to continue receiving assistance from Australia’s Community Aid Abroad. Similarly DESAI’s travel to England enabled BAIF to continue receiving assistance from the Milk Marketing Board and a number of aid organizations such as OXFAM and Christian Aid.

Aside from being director of the various organizations he founded in the area around Uruli-Kanchan, DESAI was director of the Maharashtra State Irrigation Development Corporation (1970-1977) and of the Marathwada Development Corporation (1975-1979). He has been director of the Gujarat State Rural Development Corporation in Ghandinagar since 1978, board member of the All-India People’s Action for Development in New Delhi since 1969, and member of its Maharashtra branch since 1975. Since 1971 he has been on the governing board of Mahatma Phule Krishi Agricultural University, from which he received an honorary doctorate in 1977. He is presently a member of a number of other organizations, including the Consultative Committee of the Indian Dairy Corporation (since 1972); the Committee on Research on Education Sciences (1976); and the International Collaboration Agreement Screening (1972) and Standing (1973) committees of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research. The President of India recognized his services in 1968 by honoring him with the Padma Shree Award.

In 1980 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi combined all rural development programs into the Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP) on a nationwide basis. This means that BAIF is no longer confined to Drought Prone areas, but can operate anywhere in the country. It has 400 centers operating under the IRDP in several states—Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan—which service some 800,000 cows. All these centers are presently managed from Uruli-Kanchan, but the plan is to decentralize the system by establishing 10 separate organizations, each responsible for 50 centers. DESAI already has a training program underway to supply appropriate administrators.

Such a system will require very strong coordination from foundation headquarters. This will be possible since from its inception BAIF was a pioneer among voluntary non-profit, nongovernmental organizations in India in its emphasis on professional management and on financial control systems. The man most responsible for this professionalism is Madhukar P. Marathe, chief finance manager and secretary of the BAIF trust who, having been associated with DESAI since 1946, gave up his flourishing private practice to join BAIF full time in the early 1970s when the scope of its operations became apparent.

BAIF is set up in a three-tiered operational system. The operating agency is BAIF itself, which works at the grassroots level. At the next level is a sponsoring agency, usually one of India’s main industrial houses such as the Mafatlal and Kirloskar groups, Asian Paints and Parle Products. After any given project—e.g. cattle development, sericulture, subabul research—is approved by the government, BAIF approaches an industrial firm to underwrite the project on a tax-deductible basis. In general the money solicited is for a specific period of time and is designated for the establishment of infrastructure. At the end of the designated period the project is expected to be self-sufficient with regard to day-to-day expenditures.

The third level consists of a monitoring agency, made up of experts in the field appropriate to a particular project. These outside consultants are called in on a voluntary basis to evaluate the progress and effectiveness of the various programs. Although most of the consultants are technical experts, recently BAIF has acquired the service of a group of sociologists, financed by the Agriculture Refinance Development Corporation. This group is trying to define and measure socioeconomic growth in regions where BAIF is working—a project made all the more complex by the sheer number of development activities operating in the same locations.

Despite the size and ever-increasing sophistication of BAIF, DESAI never ceases to remind his highly educated staff that the focus of their work is not research, but the man who is to benefit from it. "We in BAIF," he wrote in the 1982 BAIF Journal, "have never looked down on the rural people as either pitiable or contemptible creatures. India’s rural people represent perhaps the finest specimen of hardy manhood. They have withstood generations of exploitation and tyranny and yet retain love of the land, love of the animals and, above all, zest for life and the capacity to adapt to changing times. As such, we recognize the rural people as men richly worthy and deserving of being given an opportunity, as their right, to work for their own betterment. . . .the realization that we have the opportunity to work as partners, nay brothers, with the rural people, can certainly be our richest and most satisfying reward."

DESAI, a practical genius as one observer has noted, represents the finest expression of Gandhian principles, western practicality and just Indian pride. At peace with himself and the world, he is constantly open to new ideas, seeking to explore them in depth, but he remains Indian to the core, wearing the traditional dress of his region and the white cap popularized by Gandhi as a symbol of Indian independence, and proud of his people.

October 1982
Manila

REFERENCES:

Beresford, Tristram. "The Case of Uruli-Kanchan: A Study in Development," Journal of Agricultural Economics. Kent, England: Agricultural Economics Society. Vol. 24, no. 1, 1973.

Chopra, Pran. "Afforestation: A Success Story," Indian Express. Bangalore. September 19, 1980.

______. "Regenerating the Rural Economy,"Indian Express. Bombay. October 6, 1980.

Desai, Manibhai Bhimbhai "Exclushely for You from the Director’s Cell," BAIF Journal. Pune, India. Vol. 2. no. 1 October 2,1981.

______. "Helping the Man on the Land." Presentation to Group Discussion. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Manila. September 1, 1982.

______. "Growing Scarcity of Fodder and Fuel," Commerce. Bombay. Vol. 143, no. 3670, October 17, 1981.

______. "Background Story of BAIF." Lecture delivered at Government of India workshop on Integrated Rural Development through Cross-breeding of Cattle under DPAP Program. Pune India. August 1,1977.

Kubabul, the Miracle Plant. Brochure. Pune: BAIF. (N.d.)

Marulkar, R.P. "Gandhiji’s Unique Rural Scheme," Indian Express. Bombay. August 25, 1980.

Relwani, L.L. "Subabul, the Superb Fuelwood Tree," Science Today. Bombay, Vol. 15, no. 10, October 1981.

Relwani, L.L. and D.V. Rangnekar. "The Second Green Revolution," Ibid. Bombay, Bennett Coleman & Co. Vol. 15, no. 10, October 1981.

Rural Liabilities Become Productive Assets the BAIF Way. Pamphlet. Uruli-Kanchan, Pune: BAIF. 1981.