An evening with Manish Jain

On Friday, January 26, we had a very insightful session by Mr Manish Jain, Chief Beaver, Shikshantar.

About Mr Manish Jain

Mr Manish Jain is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems. He has been inspired by Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Ivan Illich, his illiterate village grandmother, his unschooled daughter, indigenous communities, and the Jain spiritual philosophy. Mr Jain is one of the leading voices in the country for reimagining education.

Mr Jain has served for the past 25 years as Chief Beaver (ecosystems builder) of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development based in Udaipur. He is co-founder of some of the most innovative educational experiments in the world - the Swaraj University, the Jail University, Complexity University, Tribal Farmversity, the Creativity Adda, the Learning Societies Unconference, the Walkouts-Walk-on network, Udaipur as a Learning City, the Families Learning Together network, Berkana Exchange. Mr Jain co-launched the global Ecoversities Alliance with 500+ members in 50 countries. He is a senior advisor to the Economics of Happiness network for localisation. He has worked as a facilitator with Social Labs, Art of Hosting and World Cafe. He has served as guest faculty for Schumacher College (UK), National School of Drama-Theatre in Education (India) and the Peace Boat (Japan).

Prior to this, Mr Jain worked as one of the principal team members of the UNESCO Learning Without Frontiers global initiative in the Paris Headquarters. He has also been a consultant to UNICEF, World Bank, USAID in Africa, South Asia, and the former Soviet Union. Mr Jain has also worked as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley.

Mr Jain holds a Master's degree in Education from Harvard University and a B.A. in Economics, International Development and Political Philosophy from Brown University.

About the session

Drawing inspiration from diverse cultural influences, indigenous wisdom, and his extensive work in pioneering educational experiments, Mr. Manish Jain provided transformative insights on education and fostering grassroots leadership. He explained the gaps in the current educational system. Mr Jain explored alternative learning paradigms, community empowerment, and the need to unlearn traditional educational frameworks and embrace more practical approaches.

The problem with today’s educati

Mr Jain recalled his days as a student at Harvard. The academically weak students would be put in a separate section. The only crime committed by these students was that they were not conforming to the expected norms. They did not want to be merely obedient, memorise what the teachers were providing and regurgitate it in the exam. But these students were talented in their own ways. Thus, the system was labelling talented students as failures. Mr Jain became friends with many of them. He stays in touch with some of them even today.

While working in the UN system, Mr Jain recognized the need for systematic change. The educational system could be compared to body building on steroids. The organs inside were deteriorating. Our water, forests, air, and soil were all getting polluted.

There are two kinds of people: book smart and street smart. It is the street-smart people who are more likely to build systems using jugaad. Mr Jain began to work with them to put some of his ideas into action.

Leveraging the grassroots knowledg

There is an urgent need to redesign our educational system which is still dominated by the colonial mindset. There is valuable grassroots knowledge available in India. But the educational system is treating people with this knowledge as a failure. Our indigenous knowledge system is being undermined.

By tapping into this grassroots knowledge, Mr Jain has achieved amazing results. Slum children are leading projects. On the other hand, people who have graduated from the traditional education system are not finding jobs and are prepared to accept any job.

Dealing with complex challenge

Today, the world is facing complex challenges. These are different from technical challenges such as sending man to the Moon. In case of complex problems, something which happens in one part of the world may have an impact on some other part of the world. Covid is a good example. The educational system is not preparing children to deal with such challenges.

Pursuing our passio

Mr Jain is working with children to explore their passions. Some children want to go into cooking. But their family is not supporting them. The market for chefs is huge. Good healing food is better than medicine. Mr Jain’s students have become successful chefs and given lectures to huge audiences in countries like Italy on millets and other types of slow food.

Equipping childre

We must encourage children to go beyond the theory and start doing something practical. We must encourage students to work with hot data (taking to people) than with cold data (found in reports and books)

The need of the hour is practical skills. But this should not be confused with vocational education. Vocational skilling tends to be narrow in scope and will be disrupted by AI. We must teach children human creativity, sensitivity, and empathy. These cannot be taken over by machines.

Jugaad comes naturally to us. How ironical it is that we are depending on foreigners to write about jugaad! We need a model which can encourage and support jugaad.

For example, waste is a wrong term to use. Our grandmothers would never waste anything. We must teach children to work with waste.

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship cannot be learnt by making power point presentations. Students must develop protypes and test their idea. They must become adept at rapid iteration and testing. Some amount of unlearning is also needed.

Moving away from monocultur

We must move away from the mindset of monoculture. About 100 years back, we had 114,000 documented varieties of rice. Today, we have less than 7000. As genetically modified foods take over, we may be left with only one variety. This kind of an approach is terrible for resilience. If we want resilience, we must encourage diversity and not a monoculture.

Opening up our heart

Mr Jain organizes cycle yatras. People join these yatras without any money or food or phones. Then they meet the tribal people and are amazed by their hospitality.

The tribals have little at their disposal. And yet they display an abundance mindset. Even though they do not know where their next meal will come from, they will treat us like a king. In contrast, in the cities, people though well off, are not very helpful. One indication: Beware of Dogs board in front of the gate! We must open up our hearts.

Making education more inclusive

Today, our education system, focused on academic achievements, is making students feel they are not good enough.

We must remember that respect does not come from outside, such as scoring high marks in an exam. It comes from within. It is not about learning more stuff. It is about using our heart and tapping into our creativity, sensitivity, and empathy. We must unlearn and become divine human beings.

As far as Mr Jain is concerned, the most intelligent people come from outside the education system. The village grandmother has abundant native wisdom. She also knows the secret to a happy life. (The west is miserably failing to find happiness. It is not the affluent countries but the poor Bhutan which is ranked as the happiest country in the world.) Mr Jain has also found very intelligent people in the prison system. Indeed, the jail inmates are among the sharpest minds in the country. We just need to connect them to a deeper purpose. Then they will be transformed and serve others.

Q&A