Digantar started in a privately owned garden in Jaipur, Rajasthan with seven children and two teachers inspired and trained by David Horsburgh of Neel Bagh, Karnataka. David Horsburgh liked India and was a passionate educationalist, learned in Sanskrit and Pali, believed that India’s development was severely limited on account of the vast numbers of rural children who had no access to a good education. Mr. Horsburgh would say that the real brain drain in India was not the many experts who had left India to work overseas, but the thousands and thousands of children who had no educational opportunities. He started Neelbagh as an example and living testing ground of good education, a small free school in rural Karnataka to demonstrate the transformative potential of high-quality learning. To run a school exactly as per his vision of education and to serve the poorest of the poor, he financed his schools through textbooks he wrote for the Indian context. The children who attended Neelbagh would otherwise have spent their formative years helping their parents eke out a marginal farming livelihood. At Neelbagh, children learned not only the classic school subjects of Science, Maths, English, Sanskrit, Hindi, plus Kannada and Telegu, they also learned pottery, singing, gardening, sewing, carpentry, art, philosophy, and poetry. School life was a hub of activity, fun, enthusiasm, and continuous learning.