Smart water management mitigates coastal salinity

Rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge through ponds and desilting of check dams have curtailed salinity ingress in coastal Gujarat, increasing freshwater availability

Better awareness improves maternal and child health

Awareness meetings that equip women with knowledge on health and nutrition during pregnancy and after childbirth is helping to tackle malnutrition in rural Singhbhum in Jharkhand

Digital tech in curriculum enriches participatory learning

By enabling teachers design applications and help students create artifacts, best practices in use of technological tools can facilitate contextualized learning and its application

Cattle farmers revive traditional herbal remedies

Farmers in Tamil Nadu are switching to traditional remedies for cattle because ethno-veterinary medicine made with locally available herbs are more effective in controlling diseases at minimal cost

Bhunjia women need better care after childbirth

Women of Odisha’s forest-dwelling tribes face a greater health risk because of their preference for childbirth at home. Counseling by health workers is now slowly helping new mothers get better postnatal care

Missing foot soldiers in the war on poverty

Unless the government improves the anemic delivery structure of rural health and education, the neglected and overworked frontline workers will not be able to fight underdevelopment adequately

Vasai volunteers recharge ponds to raise water table

Volunteers in the villages of Vasai-Virar have revived traditional water ponds that were originally dug for irrigation. It has resulted in recharged aquifers and increased water availability for farming

Kerala’s cash crops face the heat of climate change

Coffee and pepper farmers in Wayanad are suffering losses caused by a rise in local temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall in a district whose residents once boasted of its air-conditioned climate

Community bathrooms help women bathe in privacy

For most women in Bengal’s villages, a bath is a hurried dip in ponds while fully clothed to avoid the unwelcome male gaze. Community bathrooms enable them bathe in private and maintain better hygiene

Kerala volunteers improve life of mental health patients

A volunteer-driven community initiative offers professional diagnosis and free mental health treatment to patients from marginalized sections in rural Kerala, and helps them to return to normalcy

Bengal’s weavers revive muslin, spin success

The revival of muslin, a fine cotton cloth famous for centuries, has infused financial stability into the lives of traditional spinners and weavers of West Bengal who were struggling for survival earlier

More attention needed on community mobilizers

Rural development programs often take community mobilization for granted, and those who dedicate themselves to this difficult task are ignored or neglected. This needs to change

Cooking in iron kadhais combats anemia in Jharkhand

A women's collective movement of cooking in iron kadhais that helps in reducing the incidence of anemia in rural women is gathering pace in many parts of Jharkhand

Recurrent floods traumatize people in rural Kerala

Even as Kerala reels under yet another flood due to extreme rainfall, people in the tiny village of Upputhode in the Western Ghats are still traumatized from the loss they suffered in last year’s deluge

Farmers across India revive folk rice varieties

Cultivation of traditional rice varieties is becoming popular in Chhattisgarh, after a campaign to popularize indigenous paddy strains spreads from Kerala to Himachal Pradesh to West Bengal

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