Bunker Roy founds the Social Work and Research Centre in Tilonia

In 1972, Sanjit "Bunker" Roy founded the Social Work and Research Centre in Tilonia, a village in Rajasthan, western India. The organisation later became widely known as Barefoot College.

Roy came from an elite background and had been educated at Delhi's well-known St Stephen's College. He chose to work in a rural area instead of pursuing a conventional career. The centre grew around the idea that villagers, including people with little or no formal schooling, hold practical knowledge and skills that can solve local problems.

Over the following decades, the Tilonia institution became known for training rural people, many of them women, in areas such as solar electrification, water supply and health work. Its approach drew attention in India and abroad as an alternative model of community-led development.

The founding mattered because it set the course for a long-running experiment in village self-reliance, which shaped Roy's public work and reputation until his death.