Kondagaon Teacher Vinayak Kohli Wins National Honour for Bastar-Rooted Geography Teaching
Vinayak Kohli, a social science teacher in Kondagaon, Chhattisgarh, has won the Geography category of India's Best Teachers' Awards 2026 for a teaching model built on Bastar's culture and environment.
A social science teacher in Chhattisgarh's Kondagaon district has won national recognition for a teaching model that draws on Bastar's landscape, craft traditions and community life to explain geography and social science.
Vinayak Kohli, who teaches at PM Shri Kendriya Vidyalaya Kondagaon, was named the public-school national winner in the Geography category of the India's Best Teachers' Awards 2026. He was chosen from more than 9,400 registrations spanning 32 states and Union Territories.
The awards are jointly organised by the Shiv Nadar Foundation and the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. The national finals were held from September 3 to 5, 2026, at Shiv Nadar University in the Delhi-NCR region, where each finalist gave a 10-minute live presentation followed by five minutes of questions. Kohli opened his presentation with the traditional Bharatanatyam Namaskaram.
At the heart of his approach is a social science laboratory that gives students of Classes 6 to 10 a permanent, hands-on space for models, charts and curriculum-linked projects. An adjoining museum corner holds a curated collection of Bastar's wooden carvings, terracotta art, Dhokra metalwork and Warli and tribal folk paintings, many of them made by students working with local artisans and lit by LED wiring the students installed themselves.
Kohli said the lab and museum function as working classrooms rather than showpieces. Students collect soil samples from the field, build maps, stage role-play and mock-parliament sessions, and take part in regular meditation sessions as part of competency-based teaching aligned with the National Education Policy 2020.
As in-charge of the school's Youth Parliament and Social Science Exhibition, he has also had students run their own council elections, first by paper ballot and later through a student-built EVM-style booth with indelible ink marking.
His selection followed a three-stage process. After clearing the national competition, he was invited to Delhi for the final round, where he presented his teaching model before Oxford professors and other experts. The presentation and evidence of its classroom impact secured him the Geography category win.
The Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan congratulated its teachers on social media platform X for their success at the awards.
The achievement has prompted the Kondagaon district administration to promote similar methods in other schools. Collector Nupur Rashi Panna has directed school principals to develop geography laboratories so that students can learn through experiments, observation and real-world examples.