How did Asha happen?
It happened in the summer of 1991, during my student days at California. After reading a report prepared by MIT, which stated that more than 50 per cent of India’s children are uneducated and never went to school. Along with two of my friends at the university, V.J.P. Srivatsavoy and Deepak Gupta, we decided to do something for the less privileged and Asha was born. I returned to India to join IIT-Kanpur as professor and after a one-and-a-half-year stint, I called it quits and plunged into the Asha programme. The first chapter was launched at Ballia, my ancestral village, and today Asha has over 60 chapters across the globe. Your concept of non-formal education? At Asha, we do not believe in formal education. We believe in a system that would teach human values like cooperation, love and coexistence. In conventional or formal education that is not possible. Formal education is directed towards jobs and is based on competition. This environment gives rise to pride, prejudice and conflic
