UN-LEARNING THE ARCHITECTURE OF COMPLIANCE 

About the Guest 

Manish Jain is  an unEducationist, systems philosopher, and a leading global advocate for reimagining learning beyond the confines of institutional schooling.

His work focuses on decolonizing knowledge and dismantling standardized educational systems. Operating at the intersection of gift-culture economics and localized wisdom, he examines how centralized schooling enforces uniformity and compliance, and how communities can instead nurture diverse, place-based cultural imaginations.

As the co-founder of Shikshantar Andolan, a grassroots movement dedicated to challenging the monopoly of factory schooling, and Swaraj University, India’s first self-designed people’s university, he has helped build environments where learners navigate their own unique paths entirely outside of traditional credentialing and competitive hierarchies. He also co-initiated the global Ecoversities Alliance, a network dedicated to transforming higher education and supporting ecosystems of systemic un-learning across the world.

Rather than seeking to simply reform broken systems, his practice is deeply rooted in ancient wisdom traditions and non-coercive partnerships. In our dialogue, he brings this critical lens to explore how the embedded hierarchies of modern education shape student behavior, and what it takes to reclaim true human agency and intellectual sovereignty from structures designed to manage them.

Connect & Explore:

LinkedIn | Website | Ecoversities