Sanjit 'Bunker' Roy was born in Burnpur Bengal, present-day West Bengal in 1945. His nickname “Bunker” comes from the Bengali habit of rhyming siblings’ names; his brother’s name was “Shanker.” Roy is proud to be a Bengali. Bengalis, he says, have a reputation for being forward-looking, for being great thinkers and talkers, for being emotional, and for loving music and plays.
He is an Indian social activist and educator. He went to the Doon School from 1956 to 1962 and attended St. Stephen's College, Delhi from 1962 to 1967. He earned his master's degree in English.
Bunker Roy, after his education, decided to work in the villages much to the chagrin of his parents. What changed the course of Roy’s life was the Bihar famine in the mid 1960s. He went to Bihar “out of curiosity,” he says, “to get to know another bit of India,” but the suffering he witnessed affected him deeply. Subsequently, much to his mother’s distress (she refused to speak to him for two years), he dedicated himself to improving the lives of the rural poor. His dream was to use traditional expertise rather than "bookish knowledge" for the uplift of neglected communities.
In 1970, Roy married his classmate Aruna Roy, then an officer in the Indian Administrative Service. Aruna was later to achieve fame as a political and social activist. Later Aruna became a prominent leader of the Right to Information movement, and in 2000 received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership.
In 1972 he founded the Barefoot college in Tilonia, Rajasthan. The Indian non-governmental organization was registered as the Social Work and Research Centre.
Barefoot College has trained more than 3 million people for jobs in the modern world, in buildings so rudimentary they have dirt floors and no chairs. This bottom-up approach is designed to make poor students feel comfortable. The college's "barefoot professionals" then return home to use their new skills — as solar engineers, teachers, midwives, weavers, architects, doctors and more. The philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi is reflected in the work style and lifestyle of the College. Everyone eats, sleeps and works on the floor.
Roy combines humanitarianism, entrepreneurship and education to help people steer their own path out of poverty, fostering dignity and self-determination along the way. His simple formula holds a key to what nations and aid organizations might do to build a more just world.
He was selected as one of the 100 most influential personalities in the world by TIME Magazine in 2010.
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Awards
Bunker Roy has won many awards like
- The Arab Gulf Fund for the United Nations (AGFUND) Award for promoting Volunteerism
- The World Technology Award for Social Entrepreneurship
- The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
- The Stockholm Challenge Award for Information Technology
- The NASDAQ Stock Market Education Award
- The Tyler Prize
- The St Andrews Prize for the Environment – 2003
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