Indian activist Deep Joshi chosen for Ramon Magsaysay Award

Kuala Lumpur/New Delhi: Prominent Indian social activist Deep Joshi, who has done pioneering work for “development of rural communities”, was today named along with five others for the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2009, considered as Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Joshi is being recognised for “his vision and leadership in bringing professionalism to the NGO movement in India, by effectively combining ‘head’ and ‘heart’ in the transformative development of rural communities,” the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation said in a press statement from its headquarters in Manila.

“I am delighted to get this honour. But the award is not for an individual, it is for an idea, for the development of rural population. We need the educated people to go to rural areas and work for their welfare,” 62-year-old Joshi told PTI.

A masters in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Masters in Management from the Sloan School, MIT, Joshi worked with the Systems Research Institute, the Ford Foundation and has nearly 30 years of experience in the field of rural development and livelihood promotion. He also advises the government on poverty alleviation strategies.

Joshi was the co-founder of Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) and now works as an independent consultant for the NGO which works for rural poor, promoting self-help groups, developing locally suitable economic activities, mobilising finances and introducing systems to improve livelihoods of rural people.

An activist from military-ruled Myanmar who has documented human rights and environmental abuses, and a Thai scientist who devoted her life to finding a cheaper AIDS drug, were among the 2009 winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards.

The awards announced on Monday are considered Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. They are named after a popular Philippine president who died in a plane crash in 1957.

Ka Hsaw Wa was a 17-year-old student activist during the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations in Myanmar. After his arrest and torture, he fled to the jungle where he exposed atrocities committed against villagers, the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation said.

EarthRights, the nonprofit group he co-founded, filed a precedent-setting case in the United States in 1996 against US-based oil company Unocal for alleged complicity in human rights and environmental abuses committed by Myanmar’s military in the building of the Yadana gas pipeline. After 10 years of litigation, Unocal agreed to compensate the 11 petitioners.

EarthRights also runs a school in Thailand that trains young people from Myanmar and other countries in nonviolent social change.

Krisana Kraisintu, a Thai pharmacologist, was honoured for working to produce much-needed generic drugs to fight HIV/AIDS.

When AIDS became an epidemic in Thailand, she conducted research on antiretroviral drugs despite the lack of government support and lawsuits from drug companies. After months of solitary work, she successfully formulated the generic version of AZT, which treats HIV and reduces the risk of mother-to-child transmission.

In 2002, she took her expertise to sub-Saharan Africa, the region hardest hit by AIDS.

Two Chinese were also honoured. Ma Jun, a former journalist, was cited for launching the first public database on water pollution in China and establishing the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Yu Xiaogang was cited as a founder of the nonprofit Green Watershed – which helped communities flooded by a dam project in Yunnan province – and Green Banking, a network of NGOs that awards banks for their contributions to environmental protection.

Filipino lawyer and environmentalist Antonio Oposa Jr. was cited for his efforts to help his countrymen “maximise the power of the law to protect and nurture the environment for themselves, their children and generations still to come.”

Source: PTI, AP

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