Scientific Cooperation

The notion of ‘appropriate technology’ (AT) is universally seen as emanating from the writing and activities of the economist Fritz Schumacher. In fact, the term that Schumacher himself used was ‘intermediate technology’ and derived from visits he paid to India and Burma in the late 1950s and early 1960s in his capacity as senior economist to the British National Coal Board, invited to advise these governments. His insights grew from the observation that modern farm technologies lay well beyond the financial capacities and outside the common understanding of the average South Asian peasant. At the same time, he realised that the peasants could be helped to improve their circumstances through relatively simple technological improvements. This led him to the idea that eventually the Indian peasant might become a ‘modern’ citizen but that he needed to be helped via easy steps of improvement in productivity, supposing, inter alia, stepwise – hence ‘intermediate’ improvements in technology. Besides lecturing and writing about this discovery, in 1965 Schumacher founded in the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) to develop and promote relevant technologies. This became – and even today remains – a key institution in the field.