Ekal is a story of the people who dreamt, who accepted it with strong belief and the people who played the role of executioners.

The story of Ekal is embedded deep in the history formatting different layers. New intellectuals endowed with social dream unleashed the first layer. Late Dr. Rakesh Popli (Indian Nuclear Physicist), Dr. Rajneesh Arora, Dr. Mahesh Sharma from IIT and Mr. Ashok Bhagat from BHU visited Bishunpur in Gumla district (presently in Jharkhand) in the year 1983 and conducted a situational analysis of these tribal areas. Their study identified Education, Health Care, Poverty and Skill Development as the key issues to be addressed to develop the tribal areas. Dr. Rakesh Popli and Dr. Rajneesh Arora did some initial work on education models for the rural and tribal communication, which laid the foundation of experiment of Single Teacher Schools.