Sasia story

Sasia is the name Madanjeet Singh has coined for South Asia's common currency in the hope that, like the Euro, it will become the anchor of economic stability and regional cooperation. The Sasia story recounts his life-long search for common cultural, educational and economic denominators to foster and strengthen cooperative initiatives through out South Asia.

This is the riveting and poignant story of a young man's activism and fervour, inspired by the ecular and democratic ideals of Jawaharlal Nehru, and of the trauma that he suffered in the aftermath of partition and the gruesome fratricidal conflict between India and Pakistan.

The story also tells how his teenage experiences of people's grinding poverty were so charged with emotion that, to help the marginalized rural communities, he sold his own home in a glamourous New Delhi locality and established Sumitra Foundation (SF) in 1995, named after his mother who held the firm conviction that without education and family planning alleviation of poverty is impossible.

Then out of the blue came a windfall: the stocks of the Art Technology Group (ATG), an American software company created by his son, Jeet, soared and Madanjeet Singh sold his equity. The funds gener ated helped him to establish South Asia Foundation in the year 2000, a voluntary, non-profit, non-political and secular youth movement to benefit disadvantaged South Asian communities. It promotes regional cooperation between Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, through educational pro grammes and person-to-person cultural and economic interaction.

Madanjeet Singh ardently believes that no country can "shine" without taking all its people along, including the poorer farmers living on less than one dollar a day, who comprise the majority in rural South Asia. At the same time, in today's fast-moving and ultra-competitive world, regional cooperation is indispensable and no country can safeguard its security and economic well-being unilaterally. The objectives of SF and SAF are two sides of the same coin, the theme of the Sasia Story.