Ramoji Excellence Award 2025: I Want A World Where Education Is Not Decided By Where A Child Is Born, Says Akash Tandon

Hyderabad: There are easier ways to spend your twenties than standing in the dust outside the WHO building at ITO in Delhi, staring at an entire informal settlement that the city pretends isn’t there. There are also easier ways to become a “change-maker” than walking into that settlement with a couple of friends, no plan, no funding, no NGO registration, and only a vague sense that you should be doing something. But then again, most people aren’t Akash Tandon.

In conversation with ETV Bharat's Kasmin Fernandes, he laughs easily... especially when describing moments that should have broken him. He talks about Pehchaan The Street School the way some people talk about their favourite bands: with gratitude, nostalgia, pride, and a kind of startled disbelief that something so meaningful grew out of so little.

“Honestly,” he tells us, “I was unprepared. I knew Delhi. Or I thought I did. But the first time I saw that slum near ITO… I didn’t know what to do with the feeling. It was too big. Too real.” Tandon describes the beginning of the thing that would eventually become his life’s project. “We didn’t have a plan. We just went. We talked to a handful of kids. Their parents joined. People from the lanes gathered around us. Suddenly it wasn’t just curiosity... it was expectation.”

The Birth of Pehchaan

The most interesting social interventions don’t usually start with strategy decks or vision statements. They start with a question nobody else is asking. For Tandon, that question was embarrassingly simple: Why aren’t these kids in school?

The answers he found were anything but simple. Some of the children had never held a pencil. Many had migrated from other states, hopping between cities as their parents looked for seasonal work. Some were expected to beg, sell knick-knacks, or mind younger siblings. School was not just inaccessible... it was unimaginable.

“So we just… started teaching,” Tandon says. “Right there. On the pavement.” He shrugs as though this isn’t the kind of impulsive decision that ends up affecting 5,000 children over the next decade. What Pehchaan became is now well documented: a volunteer-powered education movement with over 1,600 active students, 1,200 interns and volunteers, and more than 100 organisational partners. But when it started, it was just five volunteers and ten children in a single Delhi slum.

“No benches, no walls, no blackboard. We were happy if we had ten notebooks,” Tandon recalls. “But the kids… they were hungry to learn. That kept us going.”

What Makes Pehchaan Different

If you ask Tandon to describe the project in one sentence, he’ll resist. Because Pehchaan isn’t a “project”—it’s a worldview. It isn’t just about literacy. It isn’t about school uniforms or memorising multiplication tables. It is about what happens inside a child when the world stops overlooking them. “You can teach someone to write their name,” he says. “But it’s more important that they learn to believe in their name.” The curriculum follows that philosophy. Emotional intelligence. Confidence building. Digital literacy. Life skills. Basic hygiene. Social awareness. A sense of identity.

In a way, Pehchaan has always been less about subjects and more about dignity. That dignity is powered by volunteers—more than 10,000 of them have joined over the years, with 15,000 applications in 2024 alone. It sounds romantic until you realise what it actually takes to run an organisation with no guaranteed workforce.

“Volunteers come from every background imaginable,” Tandon says. “Students, young professionals, retired teachers, travellers from abroad. They bring notebooks, textbooks, skills, time… basically whatever they can. And they don’t get paid.”

“That’s the biggest challenge, by the way. When you run an organisation entirely on goodwill, you have to be okay with unpredictability. But I’ve learned that people are far more generous than we think.”

The Story That Explains Everything

If Pehchaan ever needed a mascot for possibility, it would be Deepak: one of the earliest students who joined in 2015. Tandon narrates his story with a warmth that makes it clear the boy changed him as much as he changed the organisation. Deepak started like many others: quiet, serious, eager. But he soon became the kid who stayed back to help clean the centre, organised supplies, managed the younger children, and insisted on returning everything to its proper place.

“He did all this without expecting anything,” Tandon recalls. “That’s what amazed us.” But life hit hard during COVID. Online classes meant nothing when you didn’t have a smartphone, data, or even stable electricity. Deepak’s learning almost stopped. Almost. Because the moment centres reopened, he returned.

In senior secondary, half in jest, he challenged Tandon: “If I score 75% in my Class 12 exams, you have to buy me a laptop.” Tandon laughs while telling the story. “I said yes. I hoped I’d lose.” Deepak scored 83%. Tandon says, “We bought him the laptop the same day. Honestly, I was proud to lose. Deepak is the first in his family to finish school. When he goes to college, his siblings will follow. His neighbourhood kids will follow. This is how you lift entire communities—one Deepak at a time.”

What Comes Next

Pehchaan is now a decade old. Thousands of students. Thousands of volunteers. And, perhaps more importantly, a template for how young Indians can rethink service. We ask him what’s next. His reply is characteristically practical. “We expand. Not because growth is exciting but because the need is enormous. And we mentor volunteers so that they become leaders. After all, the future belongs to them.”

He pauses, then adds: “I want a world where a child’s education is not decided by where they are born. It’s a big dream. But we already know how dreams become reality—five volunteers, ten kids, and a pavement in Delhi. That’s how it starts.”

There are profiles that celebrate achievement. And then there are profiles that remind you achievement can come from simply saying yes to a moment, even when you have no idea what you’re doing. Akash Tandon didn’t have a roadmap. He didn’t have a grand theory of social transformation. He had discomfort, curiosity, and the willingness to show up. Sometimes that’s enough to change the world. Or at least, enough to start.