“Change From The Ground Up” By Cielito F Habito; “Change From Top To Bottom” By Frank A Hilario

I’m reading very early this morning, Tuesday, 25 Feb 2025, the Philippine Daily Inquirer column of former NEDA Chief Cielito F Habito, and I can’t help but smile at the title, “Change From The Ground Up” because, as an inveterate wit, I immediately thought the other way around: “Change From The Top To The Bottom”! Two ways are better than one – from which to choose? (image from clipart-library.com)

I quote from Mr Habito:

“In my somewhat pessimistic piece last week, I concluded that the only way out of the self-destruction path bad politicians have led us into is for our elite and middle class to act to help shape a better future for all, as we can’t expect our elected leaders to do it.”

Lift us all up? No Sir! Not even our best elected leaders can do it, if left alone! (And the lower class?)

By saying “Change From The Top To The Bottom,” I mean select and/or elect at least one leader who knows the breadth of leadership from left to right and from top to bottom. Above all, one who has charisma and is known to be a visionary.

The only Philippine leader whom I know who has achieved all that – and succeeded in an international scale – is William Dar. He was Director General (DG) of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) based in India. He proved to be a highly successful DG that he was selected DG for 3 times, each term 5 years, from 1999 to 2013, until he had to retire because of age.

Under Dar, ICRISAT rose from dead last to first among the 15 members of the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

What Mr Dar did was this: He came out with the slogan:
“Science with a human face”
that was so people-friendly and yet challenging every single worker of ICRISAT, from top to bottom.

Another way of putting that is that ICRISAT became, first, itself friendly with the staff who became friendly with those they were serving – the people, the people from top to bottom.

As a non/slogan, “Science with a human face” was by definition and insinuation friendly with the people. The people of ICRISAT themselves knew they were working for the outside people in the semi-arid tropics who did not possess ideal lives.

“Science with a human face” I interpreted as meaning “science being brought down from the unfriendly laboratory to the ordinary lives of farmers wherever they were, to help improve their lives.

Jitendra Sinha (26 Feb 2023, “Science With A Human Face: The Untold Story,” LinkedIn) says:

“Dr William Dar and his team of Scientists defied approaches of the past, and started refocusing the efforts on research that would actually benefit farmers. (FAH’s emphasis) As mentioned by him “... we needed to do agricultural research for development, not research for research’s sake. Not science for Science sake”. The Slogan: “Science with a Human Face.” Mr Dar first showed us that!@517