Moved by the hardships rural communities faced, he chose to work at the grassroots and moved to Rajasthan, where he established the Social Work and Research Centre in Tilonia in 1972 to address water and irrigation problems.
Social activist Sanjit “Bunker” Roy was educated at the prestigious Doon School in Dehradun and Delhi’s St Stephen’s College.
Roy challenged conventional notions of education by centering his initiative around rural communities, particularly women. He founded Barefoot College in Tilonia (Ajmer district), demonstrating that solutions to rural problems did not necessarily have to come from urban experts, government institutions or formally trained professionals. The Social Work and Research Centre, which later became Barefoot College, evolved into a wider experiment in community-led development, covering education, healthcare, livelihoods, water conservation and renewable energy. It noted that Barefoot College has trained over three million people for jobs in the modern world, in buildings so rudimentary they have dirt floors and no chairs. The magazine noted this bottom-up approach is designed to make poor students feel comfortable. Gehlot recalled his longstanding association with Roy.
TIME cited his abiding compassion for the rural poor and said Roy nurtured a grassroots social entrepreneurship that is redefining the way the world thinks about fighting poverty. It added that the college’s “barefoot professionals” then return home to use their new skills — as solar engineers, teachers, midwives, weavers, architects, doctors and more. In a post on X, Gehlot said Roy dedicated his life to empowering villages and bringing positive change to the lives of underprivileged sections. He said he recently visited Barefoot College and met Roy and his wife, social activist Aruna Roy.
