It is strange that a voluntary organisation working in a remote village in India's desertified western Rajasthan state would return a prestigious award for architecture from the legendary Aga Khan.

But the Barefoot College at Tilonia village, 100km from the state's capital of Jaipur, has a reputation to keep as an institution that promotes reliance on traditional skills and genius in overcoming developmental problems. It was founded in 1972 as the Social Work and Research Centre.

So when the Aga Khan Foundation included Neehar Raina, a young, well-shod architect, in the group of 'barefoot architects' honoured for building 250 homes and 250 rainwater harvesting structures at the Barefoot College, its founder Sanjit Bunker Roy saw red.

Last week, Roy returned the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, given to the Barefoot College with a US$50,000 prize. It is one of nine beneficiaries that shared the prize for the eighth cycle of the triennial awards, which began in 1977.

Other recipients included the Nubian Museum at Aswan in Egypt, the SOS Children's Village at Aqaba in Jordan and the Centre for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults transformed from the historic Vazir Bathhouse at Isfahan in Iran.

The Aga Khan is regarded as the 49th hereditary imam (spiritual leader) after the Prophet Mohammad by the Ismaili Shia sect of Muslims, who are spread across the world but are largely concentrated in India and Pakistan.

The Aga Khan awards ''seek to identify and encourage building concepts that successfully address the needs and aspirations of societies in which Muslims have a significant presence''.

Roy said returning the award was a ''painful decision'' for him and his co-workers at the Barefoot College, but ''our integrity is more important to us than any honour''.

Angry architects

The Barefoot College, which drew inspiration from well-known movements of the 60s that involved the service of non-professionals such as Mao Tse Tung's 'barefoot doctors' and John F Kennedy's U.S. Peace Corps, is no ordinary NGO.

Its founder, Roy, gave up a career in India's elite administrative service to start it. His equally well-known wife Aruna Roy runs the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, a voluntary organisation of peasants and workers.

In 2000, she won the Ramon Magsaysay award, Asia's version of the Nobel prize, for community leadership and international understanding, together with J Arputham of the National Slumdwellers' Federation.

In spite of the impeccable reputation gained by the Roys through decades of voluntary work, the decision to return the Aga Khan Award has been greeted by anger, especially from architects who think an injustice has been done not only to Raina but to their profession as well.

''Where is the need to reject the award when the foundation has, after due process, found it appropriate to honour Raina?'' said S K Das, a leading member of the Delhi-based Council of Architects who has been associated with nominations for the award in past years.

The Aga Khan award for architecture's redrafted citation said that based ''upon the recommendation of the Master Jury'', Raina was being honoured ''for the college campus design for rainwater harvesting, homes for the homeless and the Barefoot College'' and described his work as ''an outstanding contribution to architecture for Muslims''.

Cause of the conflict

Apparently, what annoyed Roy was the inclusion of Raina's name after the architect complained directly to the foundation that his contribution had been ignored and that the term ''barefoot'' was in fact a misnomer.

In his complaint to a member of the foundation, Raina said the Barefoot College was in fact designed by him — and that Roy had ''made a mockery of not only the architectural profession but of the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture''.

Raina then proved his key role to senior architect Romi Khosla, deputised by the Council of Architects and the foundation, whose steering committee and judging panel included globally known names in architecture such as Frank Gehry, Kenneth Frampton, Zaha Hadid and Glenn Murcutt.

''A young architect, Neehar Raina, prepared the architectural layout and an illiterate farmer from Tilonia along with 12 other barefoot architects, constructed the buildings,'' the revised citation said, bringing Roy into conflict with the foundation.

''There was no question of accepting Mr Raina as the architect since he was a beginner and still learning from the elders in the village,'' insisted Roy.

Questionable decision

Raina and his colleagues at the Council of Architects responded by calling a press conference on July 5 at the prestigious School of Planning Architecture, from which Raina had graduated. They denounced Roy for trying to deny a qualified architect his due just because it did not suit the image the Barefoot College was promoting for itself as a grassroots group.

Said Gita Dewa Varma, an architect and Raina's former college mate, ''Roy would like the world to believe that schools of architecture produce architects far removed from traditional architecture which grows only in fields nurtured by NGOs such as the one he runs.''

For Raina, the project, executed on the 3.2ha campus of the Barefoot College and involving such concepts as Buckminister Fuller's famous geodesic dome, was like any other in which a qualified architect prepared designs according to the needs of his clients and then handed them over.

Manjari Sharma, who teaches at the School of Architecture, said that by rejecting the Aga Khan award, Roy was sending the wrong signals to young professionals who might like to work in neglected rural areas.

''What kind of incentives are we giving to young people when we deny credit for professional services rendered especially to rural communities?'' she asked.

She added that Roy's right to refuse an award which might have benefitted the impoverished people of Tilonia was questionable.

Programmes toward empowerment

The Barefoot College holds immense clout not only in Tilonia, but also in some 100 villages that surround it.

It has succeeded in breaking traditional barriers and perceptions about social and gender roles in a largely feudal state where women customarily cover their heads and faces in public.

Visitors to the village are surprised by the ability of ordinary women to handle computers, repair hand pumps, install solar lights and construct rainwater harvesting tanks, often more competently than men. Many are impressed by night schools that provide education to more than 3,000 children.

Indeed, the Aga Khan foundation itself said in the citation that the Barefoot College has succeeded in ''lifting the surrounding population out of the vicious circle of poverty and helplessness,'' and ''facilitated a revival of traditional technologies and applied them on a wider scale to solve the problems that have baffled, scientists, engineers, environmentalists and politicians for years''. — IPS