MANISH JAIN BUILDS “ALIVE-LIHOODS”

SUBJECT

Manish Jain

OCCUPATION

Un-educator

INTERVIEWER

Alex Jensen

PHOTOGRAPHER

Haroldo Castro

LOCATION

Udaipur, India

DATE

April, 2020

A radical pamphlet on education caught my eye in a library in Ladakh over 10 years ago. Outspoken critics of development and education? I had to meet them. This eventually led me to an institution called Shikshantar in Udaipur, Rajasthan, to meet the people behind the pamphlet and one of their founders, Manish Jain. A close collaboration and friendship between Manish and Local Futures quickly struck, and has lasted for many years, spanning films, forums and conferences together.

Manish is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems and cultural imaginations. He is one of the leading voices on the planet for “de-schooling” our lives. He has served for the past 21 years as Chief Beaver of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, based in Udaipur, and co-founded some of the most innovative educational experiments in the world, including the Swaraj University, India’s first university dedicated to regenerating local cultures, economies and ecologies.

Being physically located on opposite sides of the planet, my conversation with Manish had to take place digitally rather than face-to-face as we would have preferred it. In-person meetings are essential to the place-based relationships and conviviality we both espouse. Nevertheless, it was stimulating as ever to hear his perspectives and learn of the transformative work he has been slowly, patiently and persistently doing in his small corner of India, and across the world.

ALEX JENSEN : I’d like for you to begin by sharing a bit about your story, your context, what’s shaped you and the work you are doing now.

MANISH JAIN: Okay. I was born in India, and when I was three years old I was kidnapped by the American Dream and taken to the United States by my parents. They were captivated by it, and thought it would give me the most opportunities and most happiness in life. When I say American Dream, it was the dream of having more and more stuff, more conveniences, more comfort, more efficiency and more money obviously. So I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago trying to live the American Dream. As a person of Indian origin growing up there, I soon started to understand that I didn’t quite fit in. I realised very quickly that the more you acted like the white man and followed what he was doing, the better off you would be in this game. So I spent lots of hours in shopping malls eyeing the latest brands, playing video games and eating junk food in my childhood, while growing up ashamed of my Indian culture, language and family. There was something else going on in me in terms of questioning the education system. My parents had gone there for their graduate studies. Supposedly, this system was one of the best in the world. But as a child I started questioning many things like the idea of competition, bullying, peer pressure and labels such as “gifted child” and