Jagriti Yatra Day 14: Barefoot College and Bunker Roy

“Don’t think that we are doing social work. We are doing political work. Anytime you are changing mindsets you are working in politics. If I go into a village and everyone is happy with what I’m doing, then I’m doing something wrong.”

Jagriti Yatra Day 15: The End in Ahmedabad

It was sunny in Ahdmedabad yesterday. The Yatris arrived in Gandhinagar and were shuttled in busses to the shady grove surrounding the house where Mahatma Gandhi lived. It was a simple house, as one would expect from the man who personified simplicity and…

Jagriti Yatra Day 5: Aravind Eye Care

It was eight o’clock, 10 hours behind schedule, when we pulled into Madurai, the town of temples. But it was not the temples we were there to see. Or at least, not the religious temples. Rather we pulled into an eye hospital, Aravind Eye Care, the most famous eye…

Jagriti Yatra Day 8: Gram Vikas (and Shit)

“Our trees, which we were so proud of, are down, but our spirits are not!” started Joe. We were in rural Orissa on New Year’s Eve meeting with Joe, the director of Gram Vikas. Joe, originally from Kerala, had come to Orissa in 1971 after another cyclone…

Jagriti Yatra Day 13: Goonj in Delhi

Goonj is a fantastic company located in the capital city.

Anshu, the founder of Goonj, first realized the importance of textiles after meeting a man who was begging not for food but for clothing. Why was clothing the most important thing…

Jagriti Yatra Day 11–12: Deoria, UP (Village Stay)

Not fully recovered from train sickness, I arrived yesterday in very rural UP, Deoria. Only three hours from the Nepali border, it was cold. We could see our breath before us like a white omen for the chilly night to come as we marched…

Jagriti Yatra Day 7: Vijayawada Waiting

Today we got stuck in Vijaywada on accident. The team was able to (impressively) pull together a speaker and a venue. The speaker (unimpressively) spoke about LED lights for an hour.

Jagriti Yatra Day 6: Tamil Birthdays

Today was my birthday and what a unique birthday it was. Last year I was skiing in the Pacific Northwest of the US. This year I was in rural Tamil Nadu learning about Indian farming techniques.

Jagriti Yatra Day 9- Day 10: Death by Train (Patna, Bihar)

To ring in the New Year, the year of two thousand and fourteen, I had a lovely bout of train sickness. ‘What kind of sickness?’ 450 curious co-passengers wanted to know. ‘None of your business’ kind of sickness. ‘I-want-to-die’…