Jayprakash Narayan

Narayan was born on 11 October 1902 at Sitab Diara, then in Chhapra district of the Bengal Presidency and now in Ballia district, Uttar Pradesh. He studied in the United States, at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Iowa, Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin, where he took a master's degree in sociology.

Returning to India in 1929, Narayan joined the Indian National Congress and became general secretary of the Congress Socialist Party. He was imprisoned during the Quit India movement of 1942 and served as president of the All India Railwaymen's Federation from 1947 to 1953. After independence he moved away from party politics towards the Sarvodaya movement and social work.

In 1969 he became founding chairman of the Tagore Society for Rural Development, which he established with Pannalal Dasgupta. The society, one of the older and larger civil society organisations in eastern India, works in more than 1,500 villages across West Bengal and Jharkhand through projects at Rangabelia, Sagar, Hingalganj, Bolpur, Tapan, Rajnagar-Khoirasol, Patamda and Maheshpur, and was later led by Dasgupta and then by the Padma Shri recipient Tushar Kanjilal.

From 1974 Narayan led a movement in Bihar against corruption and misgovernment, calling for 'sampoorna kranti' or total revolution. He was detained during the Emergency declared in 1975, and after its lifting his coalition of opposition parties formed the Janata Party, which won the 1977 general election and formed India's first non-Congress national government.

Narayan received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 1965. He died at Patna on 8 October 1979. In 1999 he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour.[2][3][4]