Free residential schools and colleges, founded by Sathya Sai Baba, combined academic excellence with character building and churned out young scholars with perfect head-heart-hand harmony. Remarkably, within a decade of his passing in 2011, his students and devotees have created a chain of campuses, including a private university, offering Gurukulam style, value-based education, from Class VI to PhD, for the children of rural India. Notably, these institutions charge no fees at all.
In 2011, two devotees, B.N. Narasimhamurthy and Madhusudan Naidu, felt the urge to start a ‘Sathya Sai School’ for the rural poor in Kalaburagi district of Karnataka. Narasimhamurthy had served as warden in Baba’s institutions for four decades. He had been a follower of Madiyala Narayana Bhat, a Gandhian visionary, and had met Baba through him. Madiyala Bhat had created an organisation named Loka Seva Vrinda, dedicated to serving rural India through value-based education. Its selfless teachers were called thiaga jeevis. After Madiyala Bhat’s untimely demise in 1977, Baba took under his wings the thiaga jeevis and the two schools started by Madiyala Bhat, in rural Karnataka, in the hamlets of Alike and Muddenahalli.
As Narasimhamurthy felt inspired by Baba to pursue Madiyala Bhat's dream, he found an eager associate in Naidu, a double gold medallist from Baba’s B-school who was barely 30 years old. For Naidu, the idea of providing free quality education for the poor seemed the best way to pay his debt of gratitude to Baba, with whom he was in constant communion. In a leap of faith the duo announced, in 2011, that an ideal and grand Sathya Sai school would be opened the very next year in a poor part of Kalaburagi.
Most people thought they were being rather unrealistic. But, 26 campuses and one university later, today the Sri Sathya Sai Loka Seva Gurukulam offers free residential education of high quality in locations across three states, to thousands of students. Notably, nine campuses are for girls, including the latest one being built in Kolar, Karnataka.
Baba had brought quality education within the reach of lower middle class children by abolishing tuition fees. His students have gone a step further. The ‘Each One Educate One Foundation’ (e1e1), made up of Sai alumni, seeks out the most destitute of rural children and gives them not only free education, but also free board, lodging and clothes, as well as meets all travel expenses. This project is called ‘Each One Embrace One’. The lofty aim is to have one such campus in every district in India, with 50 per cent of the children from the most marginalised sections. A fledgling ‘Education For All Foundation’ helps fund the construction of buildings on these campuses.
It is touching to see the grooming of these children, some of whom had never seen a tooth brush at home. Playing a pivotal role, the teachers give them individual coaching with great love to help them catch up with other students. The curriculum’s primary focus is on character building. There is also focus on music, drama, Sanskrit, sports, service activities and academic excellence. For greater flexibility, all campuses have recently switched to the syllabus of the National Institute of Open Schooling.
For totally free higher education, a residential university was started at the Kalaburagi campus in 2018, under the name Sri Sathya Sai University for Human Excellence. Today, graduates and postgraduates from this institution are poised to carry the baton from the thiaga jeevis.
The university’s curriculum is designed to create youth leaders. Besides academic lessons, the students are taught Indian spirituality and put through a self-development programme based on transformative human psychology, which top corporates have been using to train their management cadres. The training imparts soft skills and life skills to help the graduates manage residential campuses, hospitals and human development centres in later life. During the undergrad days, for instance, they also learn cooking, driving, gardening, carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and maintenance, computers, grooming and etiquette, event management, public speaking, yoga, meditation and healthy living, safety and environmental awareness, laundry and waste management, and even cowshed management.
This adventurous educational experiment has been a runaway success. Batch after batch of noble, able and enthusiastic graduates are emerging. They are heart-led, ready to put society over self, and dedicate their lives to nation building rather than personal goals. Importantly, nearly all the young men and women who have graduated have opted to serve in the mission. Graduation is followed by two years of internship at the campuses. After internship, they can return to university for postgraduate studies; again for free.
Women empowerment gets pride of place at the university. As rural parents tend to push daughters into matrimony soon after their graduation, the university offers girl students a stipend during internship and post-graduation. This has turned out to be a game-changer. The stipend being an incentive, rural parents are now willing to allow their daughters to go for higher studies and postpone marriage. As Baba had said, only education of women can improve society. There is ample medical research that shows that health indices of a community are dependent on the education levels of mothers. Though female literacy in India stands at 64 per cent, the shocking truth is that less than 15 per cent of Indian females get primary education and hardly 1 per cent get a college education. The rural residential campuses for girls, with qualified and dedicated women staff, help prevent rampant social evils such as trafficking, child labour and exploitation.
When Covid-19 struck and schools closed, the Gurukulam came up with a Sri Sathya Sai Lokaseva Gurukulam app, with video lessons in all subjects from Class VI to X, offering free access to the general public as well. Highly popular, the app has more than 26 lakh subscribers.
Naidu also started an Annapoorna nutrition project for children in government schools. Many poor children in India go to school only for the free mid-day meal. How can any learning happen on an empty stomach? Nudged by Naidu, a bunch of IT professionals started the Breakfast Seva programme serving fresh, tasty and nutritious food for 50 children in a government school near Bengaluru in 2012. Today over five lakh children in government schools across 19 states and three Union territories get a healthy breakfast including a micronutrient and protein supplement named, Sai Sure. After the introduction of breakfast, the students have shown significant improvement in health and academic scores.
A health mission started by Naidu has led to the establishment of three child heart care hospitals in Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Maharashtra. More than 18,000 children with congenital heart diseases have had their hearts mended through surgeries and cath interventions, totally free of cost, since 2012. Besides this gift of a fresh lease of life, these children are also offered admission in the Gurukulam schools when they are old enough.
Medical education is another focus. The hospital in Sathya Sai Grama, Muddenahalli, will soon be a medical college offering MBBS and postgraduate medical courses totally free of cost. Rural students will get preference in admission here.
In all projects, the focus is on cooperation between Sarkar (government), Samaj (society) and Sanstha (institutions). During Guru Purnima in 2019, Naidu was recognised as a self realised master, and is now known as Sadguru Sri Madhusudan Sai. He says that it is not him but selfless love that gets things done. The university chancellor Narasimhamurthy, who is a Thiaga Jeevi, adds: "If man can replace the love of power with the power of love, all things are possible.”
