Initially, the focus of the group was the education and training of women

who worked at unskilled jobs for a pittance and had no scope for improving their situation. ​How could they be helped to literacy, to skills, and to an awareness of their larger rights and opportunities?
We started a literacy and training centre in Banaras to address this issue. Most of the women who responded to our initiative were single mothers, separated, divorced, or widowed. Many of them brought their children along, and we started an after-school program for them.

This led to another round of research, which revealed a dismal level of teaching in all the schools that we observed in the city. 

Children were unhappy and not being taught in a way that would promise them a future.

​It seemed obvious that in “provincial” India, little good teaching was available, either of skills or of values.

Furthermore, the worst sufferers were always the economically impoverished families. The problems with schools were multiple and we had written about them extensively.

We decided to start a school of our own.
Yet another crucial component in our thinking was our long familiarity with artisans.

We found an antagonistic relationship between the arts and crafts, and education.

When artisans adopted formal education, there was a violent wrenching away from their hereditary occupations and lifestyles; which, though salutary as “freedom”, had negative results because of the poverty of their education.
The “educated” children of artisans typically ended up unemployed, or working as manual labourers, unskilled in any profession. The arts and crafts glorified as “Indian” were progressively on the way to being without producers, consumers, or patrons, except perhaps as rare global commodities.

How could artisans benefit from mainstream schooling and still have a profession?

​How could the arts continue as living, real products, without marginalizing their producers?

Dr. Som Majumdar formed NIRMAN, a society consisting of academics, professionals, artists, and concerned peoples, and with funding from the Ford Foundation, began the first project.

Dr. Som Majumdar

An economist and musician, he took the plunge of addressing the concerns that had arisen from his and others’ research experiences. 

Dr. Vibhuti Narain Singh

The Maharaja of Banaras was one of the earliest friends and supporters, and gave NIRMAN the building and land in Nagwa to begin work.

Dr. Nita Kumar

Our current director is a historian and anthropologist who has worked on artisans, gender, and education.