IMOD as The iPod of Science. Out of Africa, out of poverty

PATANCHERU - I'm saying, I'm seeing: With what it calls IMOD, ICRISAT is going to change the world of research - and the world of the poor farmers in Africa and Asia. Starting now.

We are at the campus of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT at Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh in India, and we are listening to William Dar, Director General of ICRISAT, as he delivers the Welcome Address at the Annual Research Meeting on 24 January 2011. It's really an Inspirational Address. He's talking to his Team ICRISAT, and it's all about Inclusive Market-Oriented Development, IMOD, the Team's invention.

It's a brilliant speech, the most inspired and inspiring I have ever come across that William Dar has ever delivered. While the speaker may not be a fiery one, the speech is certainly meant to fire up one's imagination and spirit, especially the team spirit, which ICRISAT is well-known for. (You can read the original here: "IMOD: Innovate. Grow. Prosper" in this same blog.)

And why do I call IMOD The iPod of Science? Apple's iPod is a portable media player, especially for music and video. The similarity was not intentional on the part of ICRISAT, but if I write it thus, iMod, you will easily see that it looks and sounds so much like iPod. The iPod is Apple's ground-breaking, best-selling device for delivering music & video to the person, a feast for the eyes and ears anytime as you go anywhere. The iMod is ICRISAT's ground-breaking, best-telling stratagem for delivering theory into practice and devising science into routines that are inventive, productive and at the same time respectful of Mother Nature. It's portable too, so that while you do your science, you can carry the iMod anytime as you go anywhere.

The iMod. Inclusive Market-Oriented Development. 3 concepts in 4 words that has reinvented applied research for the hundreds of millions of poor farm families in the drylands of Africa and Asia, the territorial imperatives of ICRISAT. Unintentionally radical, intentionally sensible.

Inclusive. American Heritage Dictionary says inclusive has 2 senses: 1, taking a great deal or everything within its scope; comprehensive. 2, including the specified extremes or limits as well as the area between them. In iMod, inclusive means, as we shall see, more than anything else, inclusive of the poor.

William Dar had found in 2000, his 1st year as Director General (ICRISAT Annual Report 2001, page 4):

Why this pain amidst plenty? The answer is poverty. The poor simply cannot afford to buy the food they need. Even subsistence farmers usually purchase significant portions of their annual food supply. People go hungry because they are without a productive enterprise - and for a large proportion of the poorest, the main enterprise available to them is agriculture, whether as farmers, laborers, family members, village entrepreneurs, or others.

So: Inclusive = Inclusive of the poor.

Market-Oriented. A market is a public place or gathering for buying & selling; it is itself the business of buying & selling (American Heritage). Thus, marketing is the process whereby the traders or middlemen have their day all day capturing all of the values added to the original merchandise or produce, forgetting the original producer - the farmer. By including the farmer as the middleman in the marketing process, he gets the values added that he deserves.

So: Inclusive Market-Oriented = Inclusive of poor in the whole marketing system. While market-oriented was not invented by ICRISAT, inclusive market-oriented is radical because it includes the poor that have been left out of the marketing process. "They (the poor) cannot be left behind," Dar says. Without the "I" in iMod, he says, it would be "a hollow victory."

Development. 3 words are synonymous in this instance, according to American Heritage Dictionary: development, evolution, progress. The dictionary says the shared meaning of these nouns is "a progression from a simpler or lower to a more advanced, mature or complex form or stage." That's literal. In earlier versions of the concept where iMod has evolved, it is market-oriented enterprise, where the focus is on an income-generating or livelihood project or activity for any individual. In iMod, the focus on the enterprise is elevated into a holistic view of development, that is, the enterprise is a device not simply for personal but more so for social progress. I think not simply of progression but of inclusion of the once-excluded, which is the poor.

So: Inclusive Market-Oriented Development = Inclusive of the poor, inclusive of the whole marketing system, inclusive of enterprises, inclusive of society as a whole. That is the radical idea that ICRISAT has contributed to the world of research for development, R4D.

Since iMod has come out as a creative force for R4D, I'm interested in how it came about. In Manila on 11 January, I was asking William Dar whose idea was it to put inclusive to define market-oriented development, and he said it was his. The complete 4-word concept was born one day, but it really took a year for the whole Institute as well as its public and private partners and other people to come up with it in a year-long intellectual struggle to strategize for 2020 (see ICRISAT Strategic Plan to 2020, 56 pages). When they had come up with the concept of market-oriented development, a breakthrough in itself, William Dar asked where would they put the poor in there? And not only the poor?

My wife told me of the book yesterday but I wasn't interested in it. Today, as she looks over my shoulder writing this and when she learns of what I'm writing up, iMod, and I explain a little of it, she says a book by someone who did not believe in Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (I did), is also about being inclusive. We happen to know the author personally, so it must be interesting to find out more. Well, I have just googled for it and found the concept of inclusive is used by Cielito Habito, former Director General of the National Economic Development Authority under President Fidel V Ramos, in the very title of his book An Agenda For High And Inclusive Growth In The Philippines (December 2010, Mandaluyong City: Asian Development Bank, 76 pages, downloadable free as pdf).

By inclusive growth, Habito means "overall gains that can permeate through a broader spectrum of the economy" (page 13). What he means is prosperity that can be shared by many more, so that there will be fewer poor. The crucial word there is can - "can permeate" (Habito) - intentionally followed by "can be shared" (Hilario). Inclusive growth, while the term may be new, is the old economic habit of dreaming up packages of good(s) and delivering prosperity to the poor. "Too often," Dar says, "it just didn't happen."

By inclusive development, Dar means a vehicle and gives this metaphor: "It's like building an engine - the engine of development will only move if the parts are designated to work with each other, and placed into a real vehicle connected to real wheels that are ready to roll."

So we have the inclusive idea as used by William Dar, Director General of ICRISAT (based in India), and the inclusive idea as used by Cielito Habito, former Director General of NEDA (Philippines). Both thinkers are Filipinos. Both are thinking smart. Habito is thinking globally and acting locally; Dar is thinking globally and acting globally.

Both are PhD's, Habito in Economics, from Harvard University; Dar in Horticulture, from the University of the Philippines. Dictionary synonyms: growth, development, progress. Thus, at first glance, Habito's inclusive growth is similar in meaning with Dar's inclusive development. Yet, as different as economics is from horticulture, there are a number of dissimilarities in our experts' thinking out of the same thought. Habito's concept of inclusive growth is something old, something borrowed (from the US); Dar's concept of inclusive development is something new, something bold (from the Philippines). The differences I see are these:

In Habito's concept of inclusive growth, growth is the product of progress; in Dar's concept of inclusive development, development is the process of progress itself.

In Habito's inclusive, poverty is a premise; in Dar's inclusive, poverty is the problem.

In Habito's inclusive, you empower the public & private sectors; in Dar's inclusive, you empower the public & the private sectors - and the people, especially the poor.

In Habito's inclusive, the poor anticipate; in Dar's inclusive, the poor participate.

In Habito's inclusive, you wait for the market forces to play out. In Dar's inclusive, you send the team to play out the market forces.

In Habito's inclusive, growth is the end; in Dar's inclusive, development is the means.

In Habito's end, inclusive is faith; in Dar's means, inclusive is fact. Habito's inclusive is a leap of faith; Dar's inclusive is a feat of fact. I say it's time we measured the faith with the meter of the fact.