Written by: Usha Rai4 min readNov 11, 2026 06:20 AM IST First published on: Nov 11, 2026 at 06:20 AM ISTSanjit “Bunker” Roy, 81, social activist, educator and entrepreneur, passed away early Tuesday morning at his home in Tilonia, Rajasthan. Bunker, as he was popularly known, had not been keeping well after he suffered from Covid.An outgoing person, Bunker, despite being a Doon School and St Stephen’s College alumnus, made rural development and empowering people his life mission. He moved to Tilonia in the early Seventies and set up the Social Work Research Centre. As a journalist covering development issues, I bumped into him in Rajasthan, workshops in Delhi and in the corridors of the Planning Commission as he sought to influence government policies and find resources for his dream projects on water, solar energy and grassroots education, and breathe new life into rural arts and crafts. The Tilonia Bazaar became a landmark event at the Triveni Kala Sangam.AdvertisementNot many people know that Bunker was a national squash champion for three successive years in the mid-Sixties, a cricketer and a competitive swimmer. Despite his elite background, in an interview to a magazine a few years ago, he said he had been inspired to work in rural India by the JP movement, the famine and poverty he saw in Bihar and Gandhian ideals. Since he had moved to Rajasthan, where water was a perennial problem, mapping and enhancing water resources was among his early priorities. He set up water pumps near villages and trained the local population to maintain them without dependence on mechanics. He founded the Barefoot College, and in addition to surveys for traditional sources of water in drought-prone areas of the state, he began educating people, many of whom had never been to a school, with skills that would enhance their livelihood opportunities while addressing the needs of villages and small towns. The Barefoot College trained people as paramedics, midwives, solar power engineers and weavers.In 1970, Bunker married Aruna Roy. An IAS officer, Aruna quit the civil service to also work at the grassroots level in Rajasthan. Along with two others, she set up the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in Devdungri. Though their areas of specialisation were different, Aruna and Bunker supported each other and brought new synergy to non-governmental, grassroots movements.In 2010, Bunker was among the 100 people selected by Time magazine for impacting development in the world. It stated, “With abiding compassion for the rural poor in India, Bunker nurtured a grassroots social entrepreneurship that is redefining the way the world thinks about fighting poverty. His Barefoot College trained more than 3 million people for jobs in the modern world.”AdvertisementThe 1,700 women solar engineers trained by Bunker in 96 countries became international icons as “solar mamas”. The young people from different parts of India trained by Bunker and the Barefoot College since 1974 have opened 20 barefoot colleges in 16 Indian states.you may likeI remember meeting Norti Bai, one of Bunker’s trainees, at a Bengaluru workshop. She wore a billowing Rajasthani skirt with ghunghat. She had learnt to use the computer to map water resources. Bunker had got her a computer keyboard with Devanagari characters, and she was adept enough to become a master trainer on locating water bodies. Norti Bai’s life story was one of the foundational human examples used by Bunker to showcase how traditional village wisdom, when paired with technical confidence, outmatches formal paper degrees. She later became a village sarpanch and successfully organised daily wage labour to fight for fair minimum wages.So impressed was my sister by Bunker’s work that she gave up her job at Safdarjung Hospital to work as a doctor at one of his Social Work Research Centres in Khori village, Pataudi.Bunker was awarded the Padma Shri in 1986, the Jamnalal Bajaj Award for Application of Science and Technology for Rural Development in 1985, and the Robert Hill Award for his contribution to and promotion of photovoltaics (solar energy) in 2009. He received several other forms of recognition, international and national, but his biggest award was the love and respect that he got from those he empowered.The writer is a senior journalist