CENTRE OF НОPE

The Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan, is a centre of learning and unlearning with a difference. The organisation has completed its five-decade journey of fostering a change in rural India.

- Neha Kirpal

In 1967, a young man named Sanjit (Bunker) Roy, a national squash champion for three years, was deeply moved by what he had witnessed during the Bihar Famine of 1966-67. He left his successful career track post his highly privileged education and decided to walk the road not taken. His journey took him to Tilonia, a small village located in Ajmer District of Rajasthan. Along with his farmer friend, Meghraj, he began with the simple task of drilling open wells for water recharge in one of India's most water-stressed regions of Rajasthan. The project was located in a deserted government warehouse and campus.

"For the next few years, I chose to dig wells in villages. That was how I inculcated the extraordinary knowledge, wisdom and skills that poor people have. With the thought of starting a college only for the poor, I formed a body of people who belonged to the backward and OBC communities. We decided that once somebody comes to Tilonia, they will pick up a skill," begins Roy. The Barefoot journey had just begun.

The Barefoot beginning

The journey of a young man's dream of fostering change in rural India drew other like-minded people together. The vision broadened and developed into an inclusive integrated developmental model focusing on issues of villagers' access to potable water, proper nutrition, health, livelihood, education, women empowerment and the right to live with self-respect and dignity. "When I started as a 24-year-old in 1971, I wanted to come, live and work in a village. I got my first grant from the Tata Trust as I was from St Stephen's College, the University of Delhi. I then went to the Government of Rajasthan, but the people there thought I was too elitist and would not last more than a year. Last year, we completed 50 years," he states matter-of-factly.