In 2008, the Piramal Foundation started a 23-month fully residential program, primarily to develop contemporary leadership competencies in the youth of India. The endeavour was to foster generations of young Indians who would build cultures, not just products. Beyond harvesting outcomes, they would cultivate people and be role models beyond work. Practical idealists, gritty poets, social hermits, gentle rebels, action heroes… we wanted them all because the 21st century world needs them all. That today is the Gandhi Fellowship Program – an opportunity for the conscientious and committed young people to familiarize themselves with the country’s most pressing problems – and come out leaders at the other end.

The program selects the best from among the inspired and inventive young people from India’s top universities and puts them through a 4-semester grassroots immersion curriculum. Through a unique pedagogy of action-reflection-sharing, they acquire the skills of critical thinking, patience, humility, empathy, enterprise and most importantly, reflection.

What started with 11 Fellows in one state is today a Fellowship of 3000 plus Alumni across the world working in spaces as diverse as the development sector, corporates, governments and social enterprises.