MUMBAI, Nov. 30 -- City-based social activists Ramesh Haralkar and Subodh More will be recipients of the Satyashodhak Chetana Puraskar for 2025, for their work for over 40 years in promoting justice and change by helping people facing systemic socio-economic challenges. Haralkar, a municipal-sweeper-turned-educationist, will be feted for his decades-long work of running free primary and secondary-level classes in Mumbai for children of sweepers, while for More, the award recognises his work to uplift the socially backward. The award will be conferred on Haralkar and More on December 4. The annual award was first announced in 2013 by the Manohar Kadam Pragat Sanshodhan Kendra, Mumbai. The social organisation was founded in the memory of social activist, columnist and writer, the late Manohar Kadam, by people who worked towards various social causes in Mumbai and the Konkan region. The award is significant for More, he said, as he is being feted in the name of Kadam. More, who knew Kadam well, recalled participating in protests with him near Enron's site at Dabhol, a seaport town in Ratnagiri, in the late '90s, backing citizens' opposition. "At the time, there were talks (within their group) that he would be handed the editorship of the Marathi daily 'Dinank', so that the sitting editor could come and join the protests," said More. This however did not materialise. Just a few years afterwards, recalled More, Kadam was diagnosed with cancer that was at an advanced stage, and died in 2000, at the age of 48. More, himself a researcher whose social contributions is a compilation of his grandfather's memoirs as a Dalit communist, also held Kadam's "research and writing on caste and inequality, which are deeply dear to me," as a common meeting ground between them. More has a nuanced vantage point about social causes, said awards co-founder Pratima Joshi. "He works away from position and publicity, bringing together various progressive social organisations with their differing shades of ideologies," she said, referring to his past and family history. He is a third generation communist and Dalit activist; his grandfather R B More had worked closely with Dr B R Ambedkar, often advising him on important matters and among other things was a founding member of 'Bahishkrit Bharat', Ambedkar's newspaper, before joining the Community Party of India (M). Touching upon his communist and Dalit background, Joshi said he was "an able organiser who is accommodative of varied opinions" among progressive groups. "He follows up on specific cases and brings them to closure after the limelight and hand-wringing have ebbed away," she said, citing his efforts to secure justice after the police shootings of Dalit protestors in Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar, Mumbai, in 1997, and the Khairlanji caste killings in 2006. As ex-secretary of the Vidrohi cultural movement of artists, More's work is well known. He used public performances to call attention to social causes such as caste and inequalities. Haralkar called the award "invigorating". "It has made this septuagenarian feel like a sixteen-year old. The encouragement is essential especially today when people like us (Dalit and reformist) are being suppressed," he said. Haralkar, an Ambedkarite activist, said it was a welcome recognition of his work that is informed by the guidelines laid down by Dr Ambedkar. He added that it was people such as Manohar Kadam, after whom the award is named, who impressed upon him the importance of education as crucial to improve one's lot in life, to then leaving his job as a municipal sweeper and becoming a signboard painter, and later going on to open free classes in underprivileged neighbourhoods at Sion and Parel so that children of sweepers had better job prospects and chances at a better life. "These people (like Kadam) did not share my circumstances in life, yet they took me along with them. They showed a light to this man wandering in the dark," said Haralkar, who is presently writing his memoir in his ancestral village in Konkan. Joshi termed the awardees' work hectic and varied, "as if they had wheels at their heel". In order to celebrate the activist and writer Kadam, the award is given to a social activist annually, and a writer or researcher the next. As the award was not given last year due to certain internal constraints, there are two awardees this year. The cultural ethos of the award derives from Kadam's social work, Joshi said -- opposing a godman who claimed to have miraculous powers; his initiatives to support and benefit women ragpickers; his joining peace-making efforts after the 1992 Mumbai riots; to push for a university in Marathwada named after Dr Ambedkar and a bridge in Dadar named after Marathi poet Keshavsuta, a 19th century Marathi poet who wrote poems that espoused free thought and questioned tradition. Kadam was also a newspaper columnist with the now defunct Marathi daily 'Dinank'. He also wrote a biography of Narayan Lokhande, who had worked with social reformer Jyotirao Phule, but was largely forgotten despite his pioneering initiatives for workers' rights in the 19th century....