The Bristol Conversations – Manish Jain

In another life, Manish Jain was educated at Harvard, became an investment banker with Morgan-Stanley, and worked with the UN. Since then, he has been on a journey of unlearning, deschooling and decolonizing, returning home to India to learn from his illiterate village grandmother. Manish is the founder-coordinator of Shikshantar Andolan, which has been significant in shaping the larger unschooling movement in South Asia. He's the co-founder of Swaraj University, Udaipur as a Learning City, the Indian Multiversities Alliance, the Ecoversities Network and more.

In this conversation, Manish and Helena Norberg-Hodge bounce of each other in a radical questioning of concepts like progress, freedom, wealth, empowerment and knowledge. Manish shares his personal story of disillusionment with the dominant system, sketching the profound worldview shift he had to undergo in order to come back to life, love, and local wisdom.