A primary school teacher from Maharashtra won the Global Teacher Prize 2020 in recognition of his efforts to promote girls' education.
The 31-year-old Ranjitsingh Disale generously declared that he will split half of the prize money of USD 1 million with his top ten fellow finalists.
On the generosity of his behaviour, Disale told Stephen Fry, "I believe that if I share my prize money with nine teachers, I can scale up their work."
He added that he wanted his fellow finalists to "continue their work" and said, "we can reach out and lighten the lives of many students."
The primary school teacher from a village in Maharashtra made headlines in October when his named cropped up in the top 10 finalists for the USD one million annual Global Teacher Prize 2020, recognizing his efforts of promoting girls' education and triggering a quick-response (QR) coded textbook revolution in India.
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Disale arrived at the Zilla Parishad Primary School in Paritewadi village in Solapur district in 2009 when it was a dilapidated building, sandwiched between a cattle shed and a storeroom.
He took on the task of turning things around and ensuring that the textbooks were available in the local language for the pupils.
Disale not only translated the class textbooks into his pupils' mother tongue, but also embedded them with unique QR codes to give students access to audio poems, video lectures, stories and assignments.
The impact of his interventions has been that there are now no teenage marriages in the village and 100 per cent attendance of girls at the school.
(With inputs from PTI)