A Nutritionist Lands in UNICEF
by Peter GreavesLife begins at 40, it is said, and that was the age when I, with my family, arrived in New Delhi shortly before Christmas in 1972. An FAO nutritionist, I had been assigned to the South Central Asia Regional Office. The Regional Director, Gordon Carter, an Englishman who after World War II sought out the French woman who helped him escape when he was shot down over France and married her, was a disciplinarian who signed his memoranda etc with his first initial only, G. Those in the second rank used 2 initials, while all the rest of us had to use 3. One of his deputies, John Grun, a Dutchman (married to an English woman), spent several years of the war in solitary confinement, where he memorised chunks of Shakespeare and the Bible. He had characteristics of a Bishop, a Head Teacher, and an Actor.
I found the office was much preoccupied with developing the Framework and 8 Components of what became the Master Plan of Operations for a Programme of Services for Children in India, 1974-79. The core of the programme, Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), a government initiative, contained an item “Nutrition Education”; my first challenge was to suggest what that might mean in context, and proposed Child Care Education, with 20 components, condensed to 8 basic universal messages.
The endless meetings about the MPO in the conference room in 11 Jor Bagh were enlivened by the presence of colourful consultants, subject experts and wordsmiths. I remember one enthusiastic young American sociologist declaring: “It is necessary that we communicate in linguistically meaningful ways”. “Does he mean”, I whispered to my neighbour, “that we should talk in language that people understand?”
The incomparable Dr Bill Cousins, who ran a slum improvement programme with much stress on the mobilisation of local resources, was criticised for not using all the budget allocated to him. He responded by saying that he judged the success of his programme not by how much money he spent, but how little. This didn’t go down well. But I thought it was magnificent.
The arrival of the memorandum “ Food prospects for children in developing countries” from HQ in January 1974 “had the effect of a small bomb”, according to Grun. Its author was the legendary Dick Heyward, Deputy Director for Operations. I learned that the other Deputy Director (for Programmes), a loquacious Swiss called Dr Charles Egger, once said that he (Egger) was the voice of UNICEF, but that Mr Heyward was the brains. The bombshell related to reports of worsening global economic conditions coupled with serious floods and drought in parts of India, and led eventually to the government agreeing to a programme of Special Child Relief (SCR) for 370,000 beneficiaries in scarcity areas in 5 states.
UNICEF provided a package of services comprising supplementary food suitable for pre-school children and pregnant women and lactating mothers (including a special therapeutic food to treat severely malnourished children), simple drugs (including oral rehydration salts), emergency items such as blankets and clothing, and basic support services.
From the outset Grun was determined to record every detail of the operation, and issued 5 SCR reports from 1 November 1974 to 26 June 1975, comprising text of 244 pages of numbered paragraphs, and 188 annexes in 1068 pages. They were internal UNICEF documents and marked “Strictly Confidential”. Thus they could be totally frank, and included all communications to and from HQ, and with the Government (cables, memoranda, letters, minutes), working documents, relations with other agencies, field reports and press articles about the developing crisis.
As the programme developed UNICEF saw an opportunity to explore ways of it evolving towards ICDS, which as yet remained an idea. The government showed signs of interest too, through an extension of the programme, but Report no 5 records our bitter disappointment when the government finally said No; it would not support an appeal by UNICEF for extra funds, and SCR folded in September 1975. Its reports and related documents (4 kg) have been deposited with the UN Career Records Project in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
The MPO (380 pages) was signed for the Government of India and UNICEF on 29 November 1975. The value of the UNICEF commitment was $61,405,000. We were told that at that time it was the largest ever approved by the Executive Board.
I was invited to “come in from the cold” through an interagency transfer, and this took effect from 1 January 1976. Years later I was pleased to be known by some as JPGji.
The incomparable Dr Bill Cousins, who ran a slum improvement programme with much stress on the mobilisation of local resources, was criticised for not using all the budget allocated to him. He responded by saying that he judged the success of his programme not by how much money he spent, but how little. This didn’t go down well. But I thought it was magnificent.
The arrival of the memorandum “ Food prospects for children in developing countries” from HQ in January 1974 “had the effect of a small bomb”, according to Grun. Its author was the legendary Dick Heyward, Deputy Director for Operations. I learned that the other Deputy Director (for Programmes), a loquacious Swiss called Dr Charles Egger, once said that he (Egger) was the voice of UNICEF, but that Mr Heyward was the brains. The bombshell related to reports of worsening global economic conditions coupled with serious floods and drought in parts of India, and led eventually to the government agreeing to a programme of Special Child Relief (SCR) for 370,000 beneficiaries in scarcity areas in 5 states.
UNICEF provided a package of services comprising supplementary food suitable for pre-school children and pregnant women and lactating mothers (including a special therapeutic food to treat severely malnourished children), simple drugs (including oral rehydration salts), emergency items such as blankets and clothing, and basic support services.
From the outset Grun was determined to record every detail of the operation, and issued 5 SCR reports from 1 November 1974 to 26 June 1975, comprising text of 244 pages of numbered paragraphs, and 188 annexes in 1068 pages. They were internal UNICEF documents and marked “Strictly Confidential”. Thus they could be totally frank, and included all communications to and from HQ, and with the Government (cables, memoranda, letters, minutes), working documents, relations with other agencies, field reports and press articles about the developing crisis.
As the programme developed UNICEF saw an opportunity to explore ways of it evolving towards ICDS, which as yet remained an idea. The government showed signs of interest too, through an extension of the programme, but Report no 5 records our bitter disappointment when the government finally said No; it would not support an appeal by UNICEF for extra funds, and SCR folded in September 1975. Its reports and related documents (4 kg) have been deposited with the UN Career Records Project in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
The MPO (380 pages) was signed for the Government of India and UNICEF on 29 November 1975. The value of the UNICEF commitment was $61,405,000. We were told that at that time it was the largest ever approved by the Executive Board.
I was invited to “come in from the cold” through an interagency transfer, and this took effect from 1 January 1976. Years later I was pleased to be known by some as JPGji.
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| Paperweight Given Me In About 1974 (before I had formally joined UNICEF). |
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