JAIPUR: Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy, who spent over five decades proving that India’s rural communities could be sustainably self-sufficient so as to never require “rescuing”, died at home in Rajasthan’s Tilonia at 6.15am on Tuesday. He was 81.Fellow activist Nikhil Dey said the founder of Barefoot College, a pioneering community-based movement inspired by the Gandhian dictum that knowledge, skills and wisdom found in the villages should be harnessed for their development, “went as he wanted to, surrounded by people who loved and cared for him”.But for his calling, Roy might have lived a radically different life than the one he chose with his wife and associate Aruna in the hinterland.Doon School, St Stephen’s College, three national squash titles and a childhood of privilege pointed one way. He went the other, settling in Tilonia, a remote village in Ajmer district, to make a single argument with his life: rural communities needed to be trusted more with their ability to uplift themselves.The turning point was witnessing the ravages of the Bihar famine of 1966-67. In 1972, he arrived in Tilonia and began working with local farmers on groundwater recharge through open wells, work that grew into the Social Work and Research Centre, later renamed Barefoot College.The conviction underneath it was that villagers held knowledge and skills that conventional development models were prone to ignoring. “Barefoot College trained local people as solar engineers, health workers, midwives, teachers and handpump mechanics. It established night schools for working children and encouraged adults to continue their education,” Dey said.
