A long way to go for this modest Magsaysay winner

From Subodh Ghildiyal
DH News Service
LUCKNOW, July 30

It was with surprise that Gandhian Sandeep Pandey received the news of Ramon Magsaysay Award. He concedes his pioneering project on education for poor, ASHA, is in a nascent stage and modestly reels out names of people with dedication and many years of hardwork in different fields. Scratching his brains over the reason for international recognition, he conjectures that the new category of Magsayay Award could have helped him prevail over many stalwarts. "I have been awarded Magsayay award for Emergent Leadership. It is in existence for only three years and awardees have to be under 40 years of age. May be that helped," he bares his modesty. Self-effacing to a fault, Pandey is a social worker by choice and not compulsion.

He is a man who embarked on his jamboree from a small town of Varanasi and graduated to the ultimate summit of Indian middle-class, US. Why he probably won the Magsayay was that he culled big thoughts from those big metropolis and chose to return to his roots. He did his BTech from IT-BHU, M Tech from US and PhD from University of Berkeley, and taught in the Indian temple of science, IIT, Kanpur, for one and half years, before giving vent to his frustration with the dilapidated system of education. He is now experimenting with alternative education in different districts of UP. "Education is meant to inculcate sensitivity and trust, and create self reliance while today's education churns out materialistic and job-oriented minds," he regrets.

The dream to effect a qualitative change in the system of education was conceived in partnership with Deepak Gupta, now a faculty in IIT, Kanpur, in Berkeley in 1991. The dream was taken up meticulously and with big ideas. Today, ASHA is a self-funded venture, with NRIs through 35 chapters of ASHA in US donating money for educational projects. The money raised is more than ASHA can consume and the rest is funnelled to projects elsewhere. "Big ideas and small towns is a dream to produce better human beings," says a hopeful Pandey.

Except for the overnight spotlight, Pandey promises "life will remain the same". Though it took him three days to give his consent for the Award (I accepted because Magsayay has a credibility and it would have taken me seconds to spurn any government award) , he hopes the new recognition will lend more credence to his issues and bring in more converts. "Hope they will take it more seriously," he says. The hurt is natural as his efforts to rally mass opinion on ideological issues like Disarmanent, Indo-Pak peace, mass movements against big dams and rehabilitation have been ignored by cynics. 
The man is part of National Association for People's Movement, Admiral Ramdas' Indo-Pak People's Forum for Peace and Democracy, and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace and working relentlessly to garner alternative opinion in a hawkish environment. 

Pandey undertook a march from Sarnath to Pokhran after the nuclear test and with Admiral Ramdas invited 13 school children for an exchange programme from across the border in the midst of Indo-Pak crisis. A long way to go, Pandey is busy coping with overnight popularity, hopping from channel to channel, disseminating his views. But inside, he is still to come to terms with the new development. "Its so embarrassing to be chosen ahead of many others," he shrugs his shoulders.