Two Indians have been declared the winners of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award. Bharat Vatwani and Sonam Wangchuk are among six individuals who were declared winners of the award; Magsaysay Awards are regarded as the Asian version of the Nobel Prize.

Bharat Vatwani was recognised for “his tremendous courage and healing compassion in embracing India’s mentally-afflicted destitute. Based in Mumbai he started an informal operation of bringing mentally-ill street persons to their private clinic for treatment and established Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation in 1988.

Wangchuk was recognised for “his uniquely systematic, collaborative and community-driven reform of learning systems in remote northern India. Wangchuk was a 19-year-old engineering student at the National Institute of Technology in Srinagar, when he went into tutoring to finance his schooling and help woefully unprepared students pass the national college matriculation exams.