India trashes 100 million tires a year. She turns them into playgrounds.

A bright sun beats down in Mullipallam, a village some 250 miles from the southern Indian city of Bengaluru. Half a dozen teachers have gathered in a government-run primary school at the heart of the village, past winding dirt roads, a dried riverbed, grazing goats, and vast scrubland.

“It’s been a tough year,” admits principal KS Kanthamani. The blackboard behind her still is full of vivid drawings, but the room is bare and silent. During India’s lockdown last spring, students were “utterly isolated,” she says, since few have internet access here. Driven by poverty, some parents encouraged their children to take on odd jobs in packaging industries that dot the neighborhood.

Just when dropouts seemed inevitable,