Man Of The Week Sandeep Pandey Hope floats Magsaysay Award winner's Asha works for basic education Ajay Uprety

Most visitors to Sandeep Pandey's house at Indira Nagar in Lucknow stop at a telephone booth in the area to ask for directions. "Had I charged them for giving away the address I would have earned a handsome sum," says the attendant at the call office, bewildered at the steady stream of people to house no. 893, ever since its resident won Ramon Magsaysay Award 2002 in the emergent leadership category.

Pandey's reaction itself was one of "utter disbelief at first and then a kind of embarrassment" when he heard the news of the award on his way back from Lalpur, the hub of his social work in Uttar Pradesh, with a CNN team on July 29. "I never thought I would be chosen," he says. "I was too young for such a big award." In fact, it took some coaxing by the president of the Magsaysay Foundation to make him accept the $50,000-dollar award.

Sandeep Pandey (right, with children in rural Uttar Pradesh) formed Asha to catalyse socio-economic change in the country through education

A cryptic email on July 16 seeking his telephone number had alerted Pandey, 37, about good news awaiting him. But when the news finally came no one in his family could believe it; wife Arundhati Dharu took it to be "a prank till a second call confirmed it".

The plight of the poor had always disturbed Pandey since childhood. But it was Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, that shaped his actions. Like his idol, Pandey, too, left a lucrative career abroadÑand western clothesÑto address social problems back home.

At Banaras Hindu University, where he did his mechanical engineering in 1982-86, Pandey had got elected as student union leader, but got disillusioned with politics. "After reading Gandhi I felt I will not be able to serve the poor through mainstream politics and chose social service," he says. He pursued his Ph.D in control theory at the University of California, Berkeley, where he lived for six years.

All the while, the faces of the underprivileged in India haunted him. With like-minded people V.J.P. Srivastavoy and Deepak Gupta, he formed Asha (hope) to catalyse socio-economic change in the country through education. Funds came as small donations like $5 or even less; the biggest contribution was $200. Nevertheless, the team raised $10,000 in a year. Asha now has 35 North American, seven Indian, and three international chapters and, in its 10 years of existence, has supported 250 projects in India.

After launching Asha, Pandey returned to India and taught briefly at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. But he got involved with labour movements, and left the job for full-time social work, much to the disappointment of his engineer-father who wanted him to enter the civil service. In 1993, he took part in Medha Patkar's Narmada Bachao Andolan, and was once jailed for his satyagraha. It was at this time that he met activist Arundhati Dharu, who later became his wife. They have two children, aged 6 and 2.

Following Asha's vision to have universal primary education in India by 2050, Pandey, with the help of local volunteers, set up non-formal education centres in Reoti and surrounding villages in Ballia district. His team has also developed an alternative educational curriculum.

Lifeline: Sandeep Pandey with wife Arundhati

It was perhaps Gandhi's influence that made Pandey set up Asha ashram, that instils self-reliance and values for a just society, in Lalpur, a predominantly Dalit village in Hardoi district. Here, students live and study among traditional artisans and engage in bee-keeping, vegetable gardening, and cottage industries.

Pandey's efforts have already transformed the lives of the villagers. "I could never dream of sending my children to school," says Satnu, 50, a Dalit whose four children study at Asha. "Sandeep bhaiya has changed their lives."

The 'crusader of Dalits' also leads strong movements against caste taboos. "We never used to sit in front of Brahmins or Thakurs until he told us that we are equal to them," says Satnu. "Now we can even shake hands with an upper caste Pande or Singh."

Besides schools, Asha runs a primary health centre for the villagers. As Lalpur does not have electricity, Pandey and his volunteers have set up solar lights in the ashram and they plan to popularise solar power in the village if the experiment succeeds.

Pandey also tries to throw light on other social and political issues: in 1999, he led a 1500-km peace march from Pokharan to Sarnath to protest against India's nuclear explosion. He has strong opinions against a missile man becoming the President of India. "I have high regards for A.P.J. Abdul Kalam for his simple living," he says. "This glorification of nuclear weapons and a scientist associated with it is not good for the community."

Again, following in the footsteps of Gandhi, who walked in Naokhali to quell communal riots following Partition, Pandey took up a 500-km peace march from Chitrakoot to Ayodhya in the aftermath of the Godhra carnage. "We wanted to give the message that the common man is religious but not communal," says Pandey, who intends to give part of the cash prize to the victims of communal riots in Gujarat. Surely, a ray of hope in times of darkness.