Sriniketan, West Bengal

Sriniketan is situated to the west of Shantiniketan near Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal state of India. The nucleus of Sriniketan was a landlord’s house, purchased by Rabindranath Tagore in 1912.

The place obtained its name in 1923, the year the institute for Rural Reconstruction was founded. At first experiments in farming and animal husbandry were carried out in Sriniketan along with health, nutrition and sanitary conditions.

The other institutions within Sriniketan include Siksha-Satra (a school founded in 1924), Lok Siksha Samsad (non-formal study centre founded in 1937), and Siksha-Charcha Bhavana (for village school teachers, founded in 1937) etc. Moreover Sriniketan was influential in spearheading the cooperative movement in India.