SRIJAN (Social Reformation of Inmates of Jail and Aid to Needy)

SRIJAN is a Prisoner’s Rehabilitation Central Jail, Tihar, New Delhi, India.  The aim is to impart vocational training and create a self sustenance structure for life after the prisoners’ release.  The focus is to integrate them into the main stream of society after their release so that they are not forced to go back to crime again.  Profits earned are used for expansion of the project and are also the deposited into the accounts of the working inmates, to be given to them on their release from prison.

It is started with paper bag project and now the product range has diversified to include Lamp Shade, Office stationery, folders, gift boxes, photo frames, paper bins, gift wrapping paper etc.

The Srijan Team participates in premium exhibition and has gone on to procure corporate orders for multinationals.


Project Co-coordinator

Co-coordinator

TIHAR JAIL – AN ART OF LIVING EYE VIEW

TIHAR jail evokes the impression of a fortress converted to house the dreaded and the notorious; the terrorist and the serial killer.

One of the largest jails in the world and the largest jail in South-East ASIA – housing more than 11000 inmates at last count. The total movement of prisoners in any one year is around one lakh - in all the ten jails under its umbrella.

Art Of Living initiated the prison smart programme with the blessings of Guruji in the year 1999. The teachers who took the initial plunge in TIHAR were Prayag Parekh, Akhilesh Chabra, Manju Goel, Vanika Gupta etc. To name a few. They were all welcomed by Mr. Ajay Agarwal the then DG (prisons) and he extended his wholehearted support to see the programme succeed. In fact the total jail system got a real facelift during his tenure. To be very honest when you go inside the jail the popular misconception, thanks to the bollywood potrayal, is totally changed. The jail looks more like a very well maintained and large farm house than a horror house as wrongly projected by bollywood. The good work as initiated by the likes of Kiran Bedi and then Ajay Agarwal, has not only been carried forward but improved upon by the team of B.K.Gupta DG (prisons); C.R.Garg DIG (prisons), Sunil Gupta law officer and other jail officials.

The original group of teachers as mentioned above was gradually replaced by teachers like Rajeev Dhall, Gajraj Singh, Anil Verma, Pradeep Sangwan etc. All these teachers alongwith the dedicated volunteers continuously raised the bar higher and higher. Today a dedicated band of about 15 basic course teachers like Jeet Kaur, Dr.Raj, Dr.Jain, Ritu Alagh, Praveen Srivastava, Pawan Sharma, Manju Singh, Ajay Sukhija, Avinash, Dushwant etc and about 20 volunteers like Aniruddha, Vijay, Ritu Chopra, Vivek, Sandip Roy, Dr.Veena, Nitin, Madhu Rai, Jagdish and Shashi etc make up the core team. The various programmes and projects at Tihar are taken care of by the coordinating team of Vanika Gupta, Rajeev Dhall and Ashish Ray.

Today art of living not only conducts the basic course but also successfully conducted advance courses, YLTP and Sri Sri Yoga on a regular basis at all the ten jails, under Tihar umbrella. The advance courses were conducted by teachers like Meghal Thakker, Gaurav Verma and Jayanti Dutta. YLTP courses introduced only in 2008 at Tihar were conducted by Prayag Parekh. Sri Sri Yoga was taken up by Meghal Thakker, Suresh Sharma and Dr.J.P.Jain.


Art Of Living (AOL) is now extending it’s reach by tying up basic course programmes for trainee asst. Superintendents and head warders. In fact it has been proposed that AOL basic course may be made part of the training module of the future trainees. CRPF, ITBP, Tamilnadu Special Police who are guarding the jail premises at various locations within the jail are also to be made a part of the AOL family soon. A number of jawans and officers of these forces have actually expressed their desire to arrange courses for them. However paucity of teachers and also volunteers is preventing us from taking up all these simultaneously. Till date more than 35000 inmates and more than 250 staffs have taken part in these programmes of AOL.

The year wise break up of courses undertaken and number of participants for the last 5 years are as under:-

SL.NO.	YEAR	INMATES	STAFF
1	2003	7591	61
2	2004	6391	68
3	2005	1455	75
4	2006	2082	75
5	2007	4231	30

In the year 2007 we conducted 3 advance courses, 8 sri sri yoga courses and 27 basic courses (including 1 at prison head quarters).

In the year 2008 till june end the number of courses conducted and number of participants are as follows:   

SL.NO.	Course	No. of Courses	Inmates
1	BASIC	30	1600
2	ADVANCED	1	40
3	YLTP	2	75
4	SRI SRI YOGA	5	400

Apart from taking up courses the focus was always on rehabilitation by giving the inmates a basic training on a set of skills and making them get absorbed in the mainstream once they are released.

SRIJAN (Social Reformation of Inmates of Jail and Aid to Needy) was started on these premises. It was also a way to channelise the hidden talents of the inmates and directing those suitably into productive areas.

The rehabilitation work which started with the paper bags project  at C.J 1 and subsequently shifted to C.J 4 now has a range of more than 50 products including diaries, photo frames, lamp shades, jewellery box, scrap book, album etc all made from hand made papers. These products are highly valued at all the exhibitions we put up at corporates. We have in a very small way exported to countries like U.K, Austria, Singapore, and Dubai.

From jail no 4 at Tihar where we have our hand made paper products work shop we have moved on to jail no. 3 with same product range and to jail no 2 with stitching of non woven bags. In jail no 2 we have also started a project of spinning and weaving of clothes from charkha and hand operated looms – right now we are getting the inmates trained in the operation of these and once the traning period is over to set up a production unit inside. This project is being conducted with the active participation of an NGO Rachnatmak Seva Sangathan.

We are in the process of upgrading the facilities at the hand made paper factory at C.J 2 so that we may source hand made papers from this factory for our own requirement at C.J 4 and C.J 3. The difficult task of bringing the hand made paper products to the world view are being very ably handled by Sandip Roy, Tara, Sunder, Shravan etc. Our endeavour at Noida which was started with released inmates producing hand made paper products has 10 of them working at present.

We have moved on to Greater Noida setting up Gaushala and natural and chemical free farming. Our idea of setting up a ‘half way house’ for the inmates as a part of sri sri gram project is also under active consideration. Our volunteers who are putting in their efforts in this direction are Sampad Mukherjee, Ritu Mishra, and Piyush Choubey etc.

 it is however unfortunate that we are yet to take of with our very own – hardly any support we get from AOL devotees on SRIJAN products. Ostensibly because the prices are high but how is it our products are lapped up by eager customers whenever we set up our stalls in corporates? And we feel, and rightly so, that quality always comes at a price. It is also a matter of concern that we are mostly not recognised as part of Art Of Living family by our devotees. Hopefully this write up would change these perceptions.

We are looking for large and regular corporate orders to keep our workers busy all the year round and have a regular and planned cash flow so that all our activities are sustained – any takers? We would be happy to tie up with corporates and readers are welcome to contact us at akray1@rediffmail.com and vanikag@hotmail.com  for large corporate orders.


We are now entering the area of legal aid and counseling for the inmates and also looking for partners who may assist in trauma counseling and pre release counseling & placement assistance.

We stood shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world on 17th september 2007 inside Tihar when the entire jail stood up to take the pledge in the evening at 6 pm at the daily prayer time. About 12000 inmates and staff joined together and took this historic pledge.

Gurujis birthday was celebrated in jail number 4 with excellent satsang by Saraswatiji and Nitin Dawar and subsequently a Langar for all the persons who were present at the Satsang. The entire thing was very ably organised by our volunteers Vijay Agarwal and Aniruddha.

Saksham was another endeavour by AOL at C.J 5 to make the inmates self reliant by giving them training in different areas including dramatics and such other ways of self expression. They were also given legal aid and consultation by lawyers on our panel. This was also another success story as far as AOL and Tihar is concerned.

UDISHA -    art of living at tihar is not only dedicated towards rehabilitation but also to the holistic development of an individual. So it is involved in bringing out the experiences, views and opinions of the inmates.  Their experiences are valuable and prove as a learning process particularly for other inmates. A play "UDISHA - a new dawn", scripted, directed and staged by the inmates of C.J 5  depicting - life in jail, their daily activities, their fateful reasons to be at jail, fears of confinements, words of support , means to overcome sorrows and ways to come out of depression and anxiety. The impact of Guruji's teachings and the gift of Sudershan Kriya were beautifully presented through various impressive sequences. The play was widely appreciated for the competent performance, excellent script and stage craft. Looking to the success of the reformative activities brought in by art of living the jail authorities gave the task of transforming 354 juvenile offenders, between the age group of 18 to 22. Art of living took up this programme by introducing vocational training, personality development courses along with prison smart and yoga. National institute of fashion technology    extended its hands by becoming a partner in this project and introduced stitching, cutting, embroidery, weaving, tie and dye work etc.
Subsequently a presentation work was done; 'bazar anarkali' a comedy with a message for youth, was staged; group yoga was performed and bhajans were sung by the inmates. 'Hemant Utsav' – a winter carnival was organised on a pleasant, sunny december day with colourful festivities, cheer and joy - rejuvenating the spirit of each inmate, aol volunteers and jail authorities. We intend repeating this experiment in other jails.

We are sure that with the blessings of guruji we would scale newer heights and open newer frontiers in future.

All the inmates have time and again expressed their heartfelt desire to meet guruji in person. It would be in fitness of things if Guruji may carve some time out of his extremely busy schedule to make a long overdue visit to Tihar to bless his innumerable devotees inside the jail.

JAI GURUDEV.