As ambassador to India, he established a good relationship with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, an emerging leader of the nonalignment movement. Bowles promoted rapid economic industrialization in India, and repeatedly called on Washington to help finance it. However, Washington was angered by India's neutrality, and limited funding to literacy and health programs. During the Eisenhower years, 1953-1960, Bowles organized liberal Democratic opposition, and served as a foreign policy advisor to Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy. His reward was Under Secretary of State (1961), which enabled him to staff American embassies with liberal intellectuals and activists. However his liberalism proved too strong for Kennedy, who demoted him to a nominal job as roving ambassador to the Third World in 1961. Kennedy named him as ambassador to India again, 1962-1969, where he helped improve agricultural productivity and fight local famines.