Few people choose to live in poverty. And those who have to still possess the same capacity for imagination, creativity, innovation and dreaming as those of us who have been dealt a more fortunate hand in life. For Indian social entrepreneur Bunker Roy, the injustice of seeing such people being overlooked and disregarded in society incited great anger within. Thirty years ago, he eschewed the privileged life that his family had planned for him and went to live in a village to experience the life of the poor. In doing so, he discovered people of extraordinary wisdom and talent, who were just waiting for the opportunity to help themselves out of poverty. Inspired, he founded the Barefoot College – an NGO that aims to solve problems in rural communities by equipping its people with the skills and knowledge to make them self-sufficient and sustainable. Named as one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Bunker will soon share his experiences in a free public talk on October 5 as part of Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific.
What was your childhood dream?
It used to vary very often. I think I first wanted to be an engine driver and then a racing driver. Then I wanted to be a good sportsperson. I went to a very elitist, snobbish, expensive school and college in India, and I studied English at university.
What first inspired you to begin the Barefoot College?
My life had all been planned out very carefully by my family and I was all set to be a banker or a doctor or diplomat or some such boring thing. But all of a sudden I decided through sheer curiosity to go to a village in the very poor state of Bihar in India, where there was a huge famine and thousands of people were dying. That was my first exposure to a village in India and it changed my life. I went back home and told my mother that I wanted to move to a village and she was very upset. But I wanted to give it a shot; I wanted to see if I could manage. So then I started digging wells as an unskilled labourer for five years. And that upset my mother even more! In those five years I was exposed to the most extraordinary knowledge and skills and wisdom that poor people have, which are not recognised or even read about in universities. It was a living bank of so many rich skills but no one accesses it or even thinks about bringing it into mainstream. So that’s when I decided I would start a college for the poor that only reflected what the poor thought was relevant or urgent. This is now the only college in India where, if you happen to have a PhD or master’s, you’re disqualified from coming.
What, then, do you think is the true definition of education?
I like Mark Twain’s definition: ‘Never let school interfere with your education’. School is where you learn how to read and write, but education is what you get from your family, your environment and your community. For instance, in school you never learn about compassion or patience and tolerance.
What do you think is the key to the Barefoot College’s longevity?
I think what it has shown is the importance and urgency of bottom-up development. Anything that comes from the top, or from an urban area, is not going to work. It has to be generated, owned, managed and controlled by the community that you are trying to get the services to. The major message of the Barefoot College is to trust the community, take them into confidence and use their knowledge and skills and you can never go wrong. This is common sense – there’s nothing unusual about it. The fact is that, if you want to work with the poor, you can’t commute from the city to work with them; you have to live with them. It’s very simple and it mystifies me totally that people haven’t got it yet. We did a calculation between 2005 and 2010 and we’ve solar-electrified 10,000 houses and 100 villages in 25 countries and trained about 140 grandmothers to be solar engineers. The total cost of that was about $2.5 million, which is what Jeff Sachs and the Millenium Village Project spends on one village.
Why did you specifically choose grandmothers for that project?
Because we feel that men are just untrainable! They are restless, ambitious and compulsively mobile and all want a certificate. The moment you give anyone a certificate in a village anywhere in the world, they’ll use it to get a job in the city. If you go to any remote village in the world you’ll find very young people and very old people. So we thought the best investment for us would be to work with a grandmother because she’s been there for years and doesn’t want to leave, plus she’s not ambitious and doesn’t want a certificate and would be a marvellous engineer. When you train women, they like to train other women. But if you train a man, he doesn’t want to train another person because his job is threatened. None of the grandmothers have ever let me down – they’ve all stayed and become rolemodels and change agents. So what if they’re illiterate? Where is it written that if you can’t read and write you can’t be an engineer or an architect or dentist or designer? That’s what the Barefoot College has tried to prove over a long period – that you shouldn’t be penalised for being illiterate. The sky is the limit and anything is possible.
Why did you choose to focus on solar engineering at such a grassroots level?
The fact is that, for any village anywhere in the world that is remote and inaccessible, the first and biggest problem is lack of drinking water and sanitation, and of light. If you can solve both those problems, you’ve solved 80 percent of the village’s problems. If you improve the quality of life of a village by giving them clean drinking water and clean light, you’ve ensured that the community stays there. Why would anyone in their right mind go to live in a slum? What you’re doing by solar-electrifying villages is reversing migration. You’re also giving people longer hours to sell, so you find the income level of shopkeepers and barbers and farmers and everyone has gone up because of solar lighting. And if you want a family-planning tool, solar-electrify a village because then you’ll find people doing many other things than making babies. There are also enormous spin offs because children can go to school and do homework at night with solar lanterns. It actually meets Millenium Development Goals one to seven, just by solar lighting the villages.
What advice would you give a budding social entrepreneur?
If you are really a genuine social entrepreneur, you have to be misunderstood for at least ten years, because you are doing something that is really far ahead of its time. You first have to be a social activist, because you have to learn the issues of discrimination, exploitation and injustice. Only then can you become an entrepreneur because that’s when you can come up with a solution that is basic, low cost and down to earth, and one that anyone can replicate. I would suggest to anyone who wants to be a social entrepreneur something very sacrilegious – don’t waste your time for five years at university. Go to a poor community and live and work with them; your unlearning process starts from there. Learn how they think and learn a bit about yourself as a result. If you have the fire in your belly to make change, don’t delay – just get there.
What has been your greatest challenge?
To convince the literate man and woman, the high-powered movers and shakers of the world, that anyone who can’t read or write can still become an engineer, or a doctor, or a teacher. You have to have an open mind for that. The biggest challenge is to convince these people that even an illiterate grandmother in the middle of the darkest of Africa can solar-electrify a village.
What has made you not give up?
Seeing a grandmother coming into the college dispirited, battered, bruised and with no confidence, and then six months later she goes back like a tiger. You see the transformation happening before your eyes and it keeps you going.
What has been your greatest achievement?
Being able to demystify and decentralise development right down to the very people who need it most in 30 countries around the world. And I couldn’t have done it alone. My team does all the work and unfortunately I get all the glory.
Who inspires you?
People who have really come from nothing to show how they can develop themselves. They have so much courage and dignity and you can learn so much from them. So what if they are impoverished and can’t read and write? The humanity of these people is inspiring.
What inspires you?
Inspiration is very dangerous because it often doesn’t last long, but I suppose I’ve got a quiet little fire in my belly that keeps me going. I hate seeing injustice and exploitation. These sorts of things really anger me inside and if I can do something about it, I will jolly well do it, however long it takes.
What are your words of wisdom?
Hemingway said that ‘Courage is grace under pressure’. It’s so important to follow your dream and show a bit of courage, then nothing can go wrong.
Interview By Mikki Brammer
