Asian Development Research Institute was set up as a registered society by a group of social scientists in 1991 in Patna in Bihar. The second most populated state of the Indian Union. Bihar is geographically and demographically equivalent to France & Germany. Bihar has had an integral relationship with the rest of Asia. From the spread of Buddhism from Bihar to South, South-east and East Asia to the arrival of Sufism and other versions of Islam from West Asia to Bihar, the state has been at the centre of major exchanges of ideas. It is against this background that ADRI seeks to place itself in the context of Bihar in particular and Asia in general.

Unlike most of the Social Science Research institutes in the country, ADRI does not seek to anchor itself to either regional or even national concerns alone. In the context of globalisation, ADRI seeks to explore the relationship between the local and the global, between the particular and the general, between the specific and the universal. As such, ADRI is conceived as an organisation devoted to development research in the entire Asian continent.