Systems change,” says Satyan Mishra, “is to leave all your prior certainties behind and just be with the community.” Twenty-five years ago, a government project pulled him out of a thriving computer business in Bhopal and into a village in Madhya Pradesh — and it felt, he says, like homecoming. What grew from that chance posting is Drishtee, a rural enterprise network that has since supported more than 15,000 entrepreneurs, most of them women. Its clearest symbol: a young artisan who once handed him her visiting card with “CEO” printed above her own brand name. The path there wasn’t smooth — a telemedicine project failed in his own childhood village, and years later a stress collapse sent him to Mount Kailash with his mother, where he felt, he says, “devoid of control but completely safe.” What he returned with is a simple, demanding question: when do communities stop being beneficiaries of someone else’s service, and become its stewards?