The quality of Robert’s relationship with staff in international aid agencies is important for understanding his influence in encouraging such agencies to adopt more participatory ways of working. The aim of the Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation project was ‘to develop a replicable and low-cost farmer participatory approach for agricultural development in rain fed farming areas of India’. Notions of community participation and bottom-up development chimed well with the prevailing Thatcherite ideology of rolling back the state. While participatory approaches were becoming mainstreamed in many aid-financed projects, the negative impact on people in poverty of donor-inspired structural adjustment policies led to a growing interest among social development advisers to have an influence on policy as well as project design.