William Dar will receive the “1st MS Swaminathan Global Leadership Award For Sustainable Development” on 10 Nov 2022 in India’s New Delhi. (Prophetic? “Delhi” means “gateway” and is “symbolic of the city as gateway to the Gangetic Plain” – Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org. Leadership has worlds to conquer.)
Part of the official announcement is this:
[William] Dar is an outstanding scientist and administrator, who transformed ICRISAT into the premier institution under CGIAR with massive impact worldwide towards sustainable development and global food security during his tenure as chief of ICRISAT. This award carries… a cash prize of INR one million.
How do I explain my double congratulations? I know the jury is giving the Global Leadership Award to an exceptionally deserving individual!
I am very much aware of Mr Dar’s public life as a Servant Leader. Yes, you got that – “Servant Leader.” No, “Servant Leadership” is nothis original concept, but I know he certainly practiced it – he declared so when he was Director General (DG) of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). When he became DG of ICRISAT in 2000, the institute was a poor performer among the 15 international research agencies in the CGIAR group that included/s IRRI, which is based in the Philippines.
At ICRISAT, 2000-2014, he rallied the staff in HQ and out there in Africa and Asia with the slogan, “Science with a human face.” For himself, his mantra was “Servant Leadership.” The institute’s scientists saw that they were servants of the people, especially the farmers. Public service before self interest. With that resolve, ICRISAT rose from the bottom to the top of the CGIAR ladder. That was unprecedented – just like that Swaminathan Global Leadership Award.
I have been following the Servant Leadership of Mr Dar since January of 2000 as a writer from home (WFH). He began calling himself a Servant Leader only when he became DG of ICRISAT.
But I know as an Internet hound and WFH that with his first Philippine public office directorship, that of the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) in 1987, he already was behaving as a Servant Leader. Thus, in BAR, he initiated policies & procedures for the better conduct of research in Philippine agriculture. Next, as Executive Director of the Philippine Council for Agriculture and Natural Resources Research & Development (PCARRD), he improved the extension system of PH Agriculture.
As Secretary of Agriculture under President Joseph Estrada in 1998, he successfully managed aggie programs so that when his term was up in 1999, despite the El Niño abnormality, PH Agriculture showed a growth of 9.6%, which was extraordinary.
When he became Secretary of Agriculture in 2019, he brought with him what he called “The New Thinking for Agriculture” with its supporting “8 Paradigms” – the roadmap was just starting to be travelled when his term was essentially terminated. Unprecedented!@517
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