The 1975 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts

CITATION for Boobli George Verghese

Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
Manila, Philippines

Encouraging economic and social progress in lands impatient for advancement requires that sound ideas be available to guide decision makers and form the basis for informed discussion. Vested upon the fourth estate is responsibility for a critique of events beyond the routine concept of news reporting. The press is obligated to apprise the public realistically of available national and regional choices, the time and effort each may demand, and the benefits to be expected.

Such reporting needs intimate knowledge of the subject, combined with historical perspective. The writer must be aware of the boundaries of his own competence, for the temptation is ever near to presume to offer opinions inadequately substantiated by experience. As a generalist, the reporter must synthesize from the experts' findings and, with utmost regard for accuracy, make these comprehensible and interesting to the lay reader.

BOOBLI GEORGE VERGHESE has practiced journalism within these exacting professional criteria with a perspicacity matched by few of his colleagues anywhere. His book, A Journey Through India, meticulously details development projects and their problems across the subcontinent in the late 1950s. Design For Tomorrow, published in 1965, similarly scrutinizes hurdles and progress on India's Five Year Plans. In March 1974 his Will to New Purpose; Gandhi's Truth Recalled presciently anticipated his nation's new quandary.

Born in 1927 in Burma where his father was an army doctor, VERGHESE by chance became a newspaperman. He was completing his studies in economics at Cambridge University and hoping for a job with the United Nations when an opening for an assistant editor with The Times of India led to apprenticeships on the Glasgow Herald and the News Chronicle before he returned to Bombay. There and in New Delhi, where for many years he was chief correspondent of The Times of India, VERGHESE evolved his style of reporting.

In an occupation encumbered by cynicism, VERGHESE has remained an optimist with critical integrity. Despite all of its uncertainties and competitiveness, journalism for him is zestful. Yet his sense of public duty is strong. In 1966 he became Information Advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, seeking to translate into official policy some of the convictions he had garnered as a reporter. From this experience in observing the limitations besetting administrative power, he moved to edit the Hindustan Times.

As one to emulate, professionally and personally, VERGHESE has few peers among a generation of Asian journalists. His accessibility, fair-mindedness, modesty of manner and life style, and generosity bespeak individual qualities matching his professional competence. His involvement with work is as consuming as is his commitment toward moving India in the direction of self-disciplined liberty as charted by the late Mahatma Gandhi. In this VERGHESE has proven himself a worthy disciple of the father of modern India.

In electing BOOBLI GEORGE VERGHESE to receive the 1975 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his superior developmental reporting of Indian society, balancing factual accounts of achievements, shortcomings and carefully-researched alternatives.