India produces graduates who ace exams but can’t solve problems from first principles. Adhirath Sethi explains why — and how one foundation has spent 25 years fixing it.
Speaking at an IKS event, Sethi traces Indian education across three eras: the gurukul system’s spirit of enquiry, the Lancastrian rote-learning model that replaced it, and Agastya Foundation’s grassroots attempt to restore what was lost. Founded in 1999 by former Atomic Energy Commission chief Dr. P.K. Iyengar and four others, Agastya’s core insight was simple but radical — intervene between ages 10 and 15 with hands-on, low-cost science experiments, peer-to-peer learning, and trained “ignators” who reward the journey of discovery over the right answer. The result: fear is separated from education, and curiosity is reignited.
Today Agastya operates across 23 states, reaching 5 million children and 250,000 teachers. Its work has also brought girls from the back to the front of classrooms, and within a single generation shifted children of farmers into secondary and tertiary sectors. Sethi closes with a provocation: India has evolved from producing good clerks to great CEOs — the next frontier is producing genuine innovators. Agastya, he argues, is laying that foundation.

About the Speaker:
Adhirath Sethi is a Bangalore-based entrepreneur, author, and trustee of Agastya International Foundation. He is an alumnus of The Rishi Valley School, Eton College, and the London School of Economics. He is the author of The Moving of Mountains: The Remarkable Story of the Agastya International Foundation, which chronicles Agastya’s journey to bring hands-on, experiential science education to millions of underprivileged children across India.