Back home in India, he set about shaping an answer—debunking air-borne philosophyand plumbing for grassroots activism. The result was ‘Swadhyaya’, a movementthat took upon itself to put a complete, symbiotic social model into practice. This July,Athavale—and the growing flock of Swadhyayis—got global recognition with theMagsaysay Award. For today, about 80,000 Indian villages practise his principles, and atleast 10 million people are acquainted with his key concepts—like ‘yogeshwarkrishi’, where two-thirds of a farmer’s produce goes towards the betterment ofthe rest of village.
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