On July 4, 2002 The Hindu reported that Barefoot College, Tilonia has returned the prestigious $ 50,000 Aga Khan Award for Architecture "following the award foundation’s decision to rewrite the original script of the citation to include the name of a Delhi based architect, Neehar Raina". The initial citation spoke of "construction of the Campus by an illiterate farmer from Tilonia along with 12 other barefoot architects, most of whom have no formal education". The revised citation reads "A young architect Neehar Raina prepared the Architectural layout and an illiterate farmer from Tilonia along with 12 barefoot architects, constructed the buildings". According to the report Mr Raina, who worked on the Tilonia campus for a project funded by CAPART in the eighties, had complained to the Foundation in March about his name not featuring in the citation, following which the Foundation had appointed "senior architect Romi Khosla to investigate. In April, Mr! .Khosla visited Tilonia with Mr.Raina and held talks with men and women on the campus". Subsequently the Foundation revised the citation. Mr Sanjit (Bunker) Roy of Social Work and Research Center / Barefoot College says in The Hindu, "The decision to change the citation came as a surprise to us in Tilonia. We had agreed to give Mr. Raina his due as a designer, but not as an architect" and that they "disagreed with the revised version" of the citation. The report says that Mr. Raina was paid Rs.72,000 and according to him all designs and drawings of the buildings were made by him. According to Mr Roy "There was no question of accepting Mr. Raina as architect since he was a beginner and still learning from the elders in the village. We had, however agreed that Raina could be acknowledged as a designer." Mr Roy also said, "Mr.Raina was not involved in any capacity as far as the building of rain water harvesting structures or homes for homeless are concerned. His contribution was only towards helping to prepare an initial layout of the Barefoot College campus. In this too, he vastly benefited from the knowledge and wisdom of local people, including rural women." The report says that the "complaint from Mr. Raina was for inclusion of his name, and it did not seemingly involve any claim over the award money. In the process, he however termed the Barefoot architects as mere masons and supervisors who executed his designs and ideas." Mr Roy is quoted saying, "We are unable to accept the claims made by Mr. Raina as far as his own contributions are concerned as well as his disparaging description of the role played by our Barefoot Architects". He also laments "The success of our endeavours since 1986 led to their being recognized in the award. It is an established practice in our society to ignore and leave unacknowledged, the often-extraordinary contributions made by the ordinary people. The whole class of people have thus remained invisible throughouthistory in spite of their brilliant creativity just because they are poor and illiterate." About returning the award Mr Roy says, "It has been an agonizing decision for all of us at the Tilonia campus. Our integrity is more important to us than any honour".
 
cont'd from…
Award [controversy] Barefoot Architects [ www.architexturez.net/+/subject-listing/000146.shtml ]

On 5 July 2002 a group of architects met in SPA Delhi to react to remarks made by Mr Roy of Barefoot College / Tilonia in The Hindu and also on STAR News later. Some of us decided afterwards to place our views on record in the form of a Joint Statement, with a view to opening up a dialogue on the issue especially in various professional forums. We would like to emphasise that it is not our intention to comment or take positions on the controversy surrounding the Aga Khan Award that Barefoot College was given and wishes to return.

The Joint Statement

This is merely a statement of certain facts about the architectural profession and practice in India.

1. In India an architect is defined by the Architect’s Act which specifies the education-training-certification-registration process for becoming an architect and it is not for anyone to ‘un-define’ an architect, calling him or her ‘not the architect, just the designer’ or anything else. Such obfuscation of specializations can only be to the detriment of quality in development.
2. The precise professional role of the architect is governed by agreements between the client and the architect that spell out the scope of architectural services and it is not for anyone to dismiss these as mere ‘paper architecture’ or anything else. By logical extension of such illogic, all services and systems can be dismissed as mere ‘paper’.
3. Professional education is institutionalised when folk wisdom, apprenticeship, etc, are considered inadequate and it is not for anyone to dismiss a duly qualified architect commissioned to work on a project as one just ‘learning from wise village men’, etc. Such dismissal of the worth of professional education in rural settings will only discourage professionals from working in villages.
4. Architects provide specialised services directly to individual clients or through institutional (including NGO) clients for groups of users. The architect-user association is symbiotic, albeit limited in scope and duration, but it is not for an NGO, with longer association with users, to refuse to acknowledge the architect’s contribution or portray the architect-user relation as being anything in the nature of adversarial. This sort of thing will only abet societal conflict.
5. The architectural product comes into being after inputs of several co-producers in design, construction, fabrication, crafting, finishing, etc – all skills supplementing rather than supplanting one another – and it is not for any one to posit that ‘credit’ can be given either to the trained architect or only to certain other co-producers. This undermines the ethos of synergy amongst co-producers.
6. The Council of Architecture, as a statutory body constituted to regulate the quality of the architectural profession to protect the interest of society, provides a platform for redress of any grievance relating to the architectural profession. To by pass the Council and dramatically air ill-informed and unfounded grievances about the architectural profession publicly on national media is hardly civil behaviour.

The signatories, [petition] Professional Space.

		   1. Shalinee Dutt. Architect. New Delhi.
		      -- 15/08/2002 17:25 GMT
		   2. Nikhil Segel. Architect. New Delhi.
		      nikhil (at) segeldesign.com, -- 15/08/2002 04:47 GMT
		   3. poonam prakash. town planner. delhi.
		      mindware, -- 13/08/2002 15:45 GMT
		   4. Rajeev Maini. Architect. Delhi.
		      mainirajeev (at) hotmail.com, -- 07/08/2002 17:18 GMT
		   5. ANIL NANGLA. DESIGN ARCHITECT. DUBAI, U.A.E..
		      nangla (at) emirates.net.ae, -- 07/08/2002 17:17 GMT
		   6. Manjari Sharma . Architect. New Delhi.
		      -- 06/08/2002 15:29 GMT
		   7. Arun Anand. Architect. New Delhi.
		      arunz (at) vsnl.com, -- 06/08/2002 15:24 GMT
		   8. Pavan Mehra. Registered Architect. USA.
		      ppmehra (at) yahoo.com, -- 06/08/2002 13:31 GMT
		   9. Ashok Mehta. Advtg & Media Consultant. New Delhi.
		      ashok (at) tvadindx.com, -- 06/08/2002 13:07 GMT
		  10. Harsh Gupta. Architect. D-2/16, Darya Ganj, New Delhi.
		      -- 06/08/2002 11:59 GMT
		  11. Tirtharaj Paul. Conservation Architect. INTACH, 71, Lodi Estate, New Delhi 3.
		      tirtharaj_p (at) hotmail.com, -- 06/08/2002 11:14 GMT
		  12. Neeraj Manchanda. Architect. New Delhi.
		      nma (at) ndb.vsnl.net.in, -- 06/08/2002 11:06 GMT
		  13. manoj mathur. architect. new delhi.
		      mmath (at) bol.net.in, -- 06/08/2002 04:54 GMT
		  14. Preeti Goel Sanghi. Architect. Bombay.
		      sanghi (at) bom5.vsnl.net.in, -- 06/08/2002 03:47 GMT
		  15. anil laul. architect. faridabad.
		      anillaul (at) vsnl.com, -- 06/08/2002 03:42 GMT
		  16. Mihir Misra. Designer. New Delhi.
		      mihir1 (at) vsnl.com, -- 06/08/2002 03:38 GMT
		  17. Nalini Thakur. conservation architect. Delhi.
		      rak1993 (at) ndf.vsnl.net.in, -- 06/08/2002 03:23 GMT
		  18. shabnam patel. architect. visakhapatnam.
		      shabnam2 (at) sancharnet.in, -- 06/08/2002 02:31 GMT
		  19. Minoo Verma . Architect. New Delhi.
		      vvarma (at) vsnl.com, -- 05/08/2002 18:36 GMT
		  20. Sudhir Vohra . Architect. New Delhi.
		      svohra (at) vsnl.com, -- 05/08/2002 16:46 GMT
		  21. Poonam Prakash . Architect, Planner. Delhi.
		      mindware (at) bol.net.in, -- 05/08/2002 16:44 GMT
		  22. Anil Laul. Architect. Delhi.
		      anillaul (at) del2.vsnl.net.in, -- 05/08/2002 16:33 GMT
		  23. Kanchana Ganesan. Architect. Delhi.
		      kan_urite (at) hotmail.com, -- 05/08/2002 16:23 GMT
		  24. Rajat Ray. Educator, Conservationist, Architect. New Delhi.
		      -- 05/08/2002 14:51 GMT
		  25. Gita Dewan Verma. Planner. Delhi.
		      -- 05/08/2002 04:14 GMT
		  26. Anand Bhatt. Engineer, Architect. Ahmedabad.
		      interface.public (at) ab-a.net, -- 04/08/2002 19:18 GMT