Grassroots Nation

We continue our journey with pioneers in literacy and learning in India, Dr Madhav Chavan and Dr Rukmini Banerji of the Pratham Education Foundation. In this episode we dive deep into the story of Pratham and the ASER survey. Pratham is one of India’s best known non governmental organizations and was established in 1995 by Madhav Chavan and Farida Lambe. Since then the organisation has striven to...

In this episode, we hear from pioneers in literacy and learning in India: Dr Madhav Chavan and Dr Rukmini Banerji of the Pratham Education Foundation. Pratham is one of India’s best known non governmental organizations and was established in 1995. Since then the organisation has strived to improve literacy amongst India’s children with the mission ‘Every Child in School Learning Well’. Pratham con...

Aloysius Fernandez prepared for a life of service in the Church - and was even ordained as one in 1953. But when he witnessed the abject suffering caused by the Bangladesh refugee crisis and the blight of poverty on people in Maharashtra in times of drought he decided to leave the Church and pivot to working in development. An economist by training, Al Fernandez spent over forty years at Myrada, h...

How did a Doon School and St. Stephens College Alumni end up spending his life in service to rural India? Bunker Roy, born Sanjit Roy in 1945 in Burnpur, Asansol had a privileged, elite upbringing. But a visit to Bengal during the famine in 1965 affected him deeply, and made him question the privilege he enjoyed. This led him to reject a prospective career in the private sector to work in rural In...

Born in pre-independence India in 1939 Dr Kamaljit S. Bawa grew up in Kapurthala in Punjab, witnessing partition and inspired by the speeches of our country’s founding leaders. It was on a field project to the Northeast of India as a Masters student that opened his eyes to ‘a whole new world’ and set him on his journey in the space of conservation biology. Dr Bawa earned his PhD from Panjab Univer...

This is part 2 of Aruna Roy’s story. Listen to part 1 on our feed. In part 1, Aruna spoke about her early life and upbringing, her career with the Indian Administrative Service and her move to Tilonia, Rajasthan to work at the Social Work Research Centre where she developed deep friendships with the women of the village, and equally learnt from them. In this episode, Aruna speaks about her move to...

Activist. Feminist. Social leader. Aruna Roy is in a category of her own. She has been at the forefront of several people-led movements such as the Right to Information movement, the Right to Work campaign which led to the establishment of MGNREGA, and the Right to Food movement. A Gandhian, Aruna believes that change comes from within, and all her life choices have been motivated by her values an...

In our second episode, we meet Dr Hanumappa Sudarshan, a tribal rights activist who dedicated his life to working on rural healthcare and livelihoods. Dr Hanumappa Sudarshan is the founder of the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra and the Karuna Trust. Dr Hanumappa Sudarshan was born in 1950, and it was being a helpless witness to his father’s death at a young age that made him realize that while...

In this first episode of Grassroots Nation we meet Dr Ashok Khosla, an environmental visionary, a pioneer of sustainable development and the founder and Chairman of Development Alternatives. Dr. Khosla began thinking about the environment and our collective future well before climate change became something we hear, discuss and worry about on a daily basis. An experimental physicist by training, h...

Grassroots Nation is a new podcast series from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies in which we deep dive into the life, work and guiding philosophies of some of the country’s greatest leaders of social change. Part personal narrative, part oral history, each episode gives you, the listener, a chance to revisit watershed moments in India’s past through the eyes of the country’s social architects and fin...