Abstract
This article traces the history of Ford's involvement in population work in South Asia from the 1950s to the mid-1980s. The primary focus is on the transition from large-scale technical assistance programmes rooted in government and academe, to work with grass-roots women's groups and community-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In the process, the Foundation also moved from quantitative efforts designed primarily to distribute contraceptives, to a more holistic approach focusing on maternal and child health. The article concludes by relating these trends to a larger shift from a belief in the power of ‘disinterested expertise’ and university-based policymaking that marked the efforts of the major American foundations since the Progressive era, to a new emphasis on ‘self-interested expertise’ and grass-roots social activist and development NGOs that emerged in the 1970s. Changing development paradigms, political trends and a growing disillusionment with large-scale technical assistance all contributed to this transition.
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McCarthy, K.D. From government to grass-roots reform: the Ford Foundation's population programmes in South Asia, 1959–1981. Voluntas 6, 292–316 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02354018
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02354018