Manibhai Desai

Manibhai Bhimbhai Desai (April 27, 1920 – 1993) was an Indian social activist and pioneer of rural development.

Under the guidance of Mahatma Gandhi he settled in 1947 in the backward village of Uruli Kanchan near Pune, Maharashtra to begin a programme of rural development. He later founded the Bharatiya Agro-Industries Foundation (BAIF) in 1967.

HISTORY Gandhi was clear about his two enemies. The imperialist power was easy to identify. His greater struggle was against India itself. He believed that "India is poor because rural India is poor and rural India is poor because rural people are under employed".

He would often persuade his acolytes to leave the more glamorous political work and turn to the work of building rural economies. Among his many recruits for the reconstruction of India was an improbable one - Manibhai.

Manibhai was born in 1920 in a family of landed gentry in the village of Kosmada near Surat. The community of Desais were affluent but known for their diligent manual labour. When young Manibhai was sent away to a relative's house for his early schooling, along went a cow for his daily drink of milk. Manibhai had to care for it in all ways. In addition he woud cheerfully attend to the other chores set by his cousin.

He was a bright student and a strapping young man, keen on sports. He had an inheritance and a settled way of life waiting for him. But then Gandhi crossed his path. A young man of the village had gone away to join Gandhi on his famous march to Dandi, where they defied the Salt Act. He returned with a few fists of salt. Desai heard of his adventures with Gandhi and at his request went around the village to distribute pinches of the famous salt. Manibhai recalled the event many years later: "they bowed low as they ate the salt". The image was to last forever.

Manibhai's road to Gandhi was not direct. He first chose -- during the 1942 Quit India movement -- to go underground with a few friends to derail trains and blow up bridges. After about 19 months of it they heard of Gandhi mocking them: "Why behave like cowards? Come out in the open and do whatever you want to do, and --if necessary-- die." Manibhai surfaced to organise meetings and rallies. He was soon clamped in prison. During the year in jail Manibhai was drawn to Mao and Gandhi because of their concern for the poor. But a venerable elder in jail with him suggested that he meet Gandhi before making up his mind.

Gandhi --50 year older than Desai-- immediately sensed the dammed energy in the young man. Perhaps to temper his impatience, Gandhi set the young Brahmin his first task: clean the 25 latrines at Sevagram daily. The relationship between them and the influence that Gandhi had on him are movingly narrated by Manibhai himself in his memoirs published elsewhere at this site.

In 1946 Gandhi visited Urulikanchan near Pune and decided to set up a Nature Cure Ashram there. He assigned a puzzled Manibhai the task of running it. He had expected to be used in some glamorous engineering project. "Have you seen a fire bucket?", asked Gandhi and answered it himself: "You are my fire bucket. Like the fire bucket hanging on the hook, you have to be watchful and go wherever there is fire. The decision will be mine." But once there, Manibhai's energy began to find tasks equal to it. Urulikanchan was steeped in poverty. It had scarce rainfall and the little ground water that it had was brackish. It was dominated by a usurious money-lender and a marauding tribe of Mangs. The people --mostly Dalits-- were without hope and lost to drink and gambling.

Desai had Rs.100,000 sponsored by Gandhi. Mahadeo Kanchan, a local farmer gave the land on which to build the Ashram. Manibhai bought a couple of bulls and started to cultivate some horticural crops in the Ashram campus. For water he had to lay pipes from a well about a km away. The sullen village looked on. To gain an entry into their hearts Manibhai renovated the village temple and built class rooms. Then he began to teach the children. He started playing foot ball with them on the school grounds. The village perked up.

He had over time, befriended the 24 land-owners at Bhavarapur about 3 km away, on the banks of the Mula Mutha river. They had let their lands as pasture, having given up on farming. After much persuasion, Manibhai organised them into a cooperative, himself joining as a landless member. He helped the cooperative get a bank loan and built a lift irrigation system. Then he turned the sodic soil into a productive one by mixing wagon loads of gypsum. The 36 hectares steadily responded and began to produce sugarcane, wheat, grapes and other fruits. Manibhai Desai was acclaimed an agriculture expert. He had arrived.

He next organised a larger cooperative and started a sugar mill that would process the farmers' cane. Along the way the village school had grown and boasted 3000 students, nearly half of them girls. It had boarding facilities for poor students from far off villages. Hope was astir in Urulikanchan. Most abandoned alcohol, the money-lender fled and women began to form activity groups. Manibhai had disowned his inheritance, sworn to a life of celibacy and given Gandhi the word that he would "leave his ashes at Urulikanchan". It had been 20 years since he arrived, but the foundation had been laid for a lasting institution that endures till today.

He received the 1982 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, sometimes called Asia's Nobel Prize.

External links

• Citation for 1982 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service
• Biography at Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation

Persondata
Name	Desai, Manibhai
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	April 27, 1920
Place of birth
Date of death	1993
Place of death