Indian activist gets Philippines's Magsaysay Award

 New Delhi, July 30, IRNA -- Indian activist Sandeep Pandey and six    
others have won this year's Ramon Magsaysay awards, the Asian         
equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the local media said on Tuesday.       
    Pandey won the award for helping found `Asha' (Hope), a non-      
governmental organization (NGO) which supports education and          
livelihood projects for poor children, particularly Dalits (low caste 
Hindus).                                                              
    Pandey won the award in the Emergent Leadership category, it was  
announced in Manila on Monday.                                        
    The Indian activist, after obtaining a post-graduate degree from  
University of Berkeley in California, returned to India in 1992 to    
study in the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur. But he later      
abandoned his degree to work on education instead.                    
    Working mainly in Ballia, in the northern Indian state of Uttar   
Pradesh, Pandey and his team are now developing an alternative        
educational curriculum and textbooks for schools from the kindergarten
level.                                                                
    Other winners of the prestigious awards include a Supreme Court   
of the Philippines chief justice, a Pakistani nun, a doctor from      
Myanmar, a Nepalese journalist and a South Korean Buddhist monk, the  
awards committee said.