He runs a club for farmers where they discuss new technologies in farming. He set up a self-help group for women. He writes for a magazine on the Sundarbans. He is a driving force in mangrove plantation along the banks.

Sukumar Paira, 70, has also been a schoolteacher for 38 years in a remote corner of Bengal — a world far removed from the life he once knew.

Paira arrived at Bali Dwip in Gosaba in 1977, on a three-month contract to teach English at Bijoynagar Adarsha Vidya Mandir, then a mud hut with about 131 students. He never left.

On Saturday, he was inducted into The Telegraph Education Foundation Hall of Fame at The Telegraph School Awards for Excellence 2025.

A packed Science City auditorium rose to its feet as Paira walked up to the dais to receive the honour from Uma Dasgupta and Partha Ghose, members of the awards and scholarships committee of The Telegraph Education Foundation.

Dressed in a crisp white dhuti-panjabi, Paira embodied the quintessential image of a Bengal schoolteacher. As applause filled the hall, he bowed with folded hands. He is the first person to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in seven years.

The last person to receive the honour was Jack Preger, a British doctor who came to the city in 1979 and set up Calcutta Rescue to “treat the sick and the injured where they lay — under bridges, on railway platforms and in drainage pipes”.

On Saturday, Paira recalled: “I had just taken admission to the MA English course at Kalyani University when an acquaintance told me he was setting up a school in the Sundarbans. I promised to teach for three months.”

“The idealism of youth held me back. I thought, if I’m going to teach, I should teach these poor people,” he said, his gentle demeanour unmistakable. He dropped out of his master’s programme but completed it a few years later.

When he arrived in Bali Dwip in 1977, there were no roads. People walked through mud paths to move across the island.

“The school had only 131 students in 1977. Today, there are around 1,700,” said Paira.

Bijoynagar Adarsha Vidya Mandir became a state-aided school in 1989. Paira officially retired in 2015, but he still goes to the school to teach.

Over the years, the committed schoolteacher grew into a community leader whose impact extended far beyond the classroom.

His years of teaching also informed the creation of Sundarban Bijoynagar Disha, a self-help group for women.

After Cyclone Aila devastated the Sundarbans in2009, Paira found it difficult to bring students — especially girls — back to school. Child marriage and domestic violence were widespread. He began counselling families and women.

“But I realised that it is very important for these women to earn something, to command respect, to have a voice in their families. That’s the thought behind setting up the group,” he said.

Women in the group stitch garments, process food, and pack pulses grown in their fields for sale.

“They will set up as tall at a fair in Calcutta’s Regent Estate between September 5 and 7,” Paira said after Saturday’s awards ceremony.

In 2015, he set up the Sundarban Bijoynagar Vivekananda Farmers’ Club, a forum where farmers gather to explore technologies to boost productivity.

His reflections on decades of experience appear in Sundarban Charcha, a magazine where he writes on school education, the threatened biodiversity, the fragile ecosystem, and the shrinking of the river Matla.