Digitizing the public distribution system comes a cropper in Nuh

A group of village women in Nuh discusses the merits of digitizing the targeted public distribution system. (Photo by Debika Goswami)

An attempt to digitize transactions under the government’s targeted public distribution system in Haryana’s Nuh district was aborted primarily due to a failure of technical infrastructure and connectivity issues

Women continue to bear the burden of contraception

A patriarchal society in India ensures that married women are responsible for contraceptive use. (Photo by Pippa Ranger/Department for International Development)

A trend analysis of the latest National Family Health Survey shows that women are compelled to be responsible for keeping family sizes small even as contraceptive prevalence rate declines in many states

A king-sized guava that keeps farmers smiling

A happy VNR-Bihi grower’s family in Pitkeshwar village in Pune district of Maharashtra. (Photo by VNR Nursery)

The VNR-Bihi variety of guava, which often weighs more than half a kilo and has a long shelf life, is being adopted by farmers across the country in large numbers as it fetches handsome returns

Rural men must realize women need secluded bathing spaces

In many villages, an informally decided upon time is kept aside for women taking a bath in a group. (Photo by Adam Cohn)

Women taking a bath in the open is a common enough sight in the countryside, which needs to change. For that to happen, it is important to change the mindset of men and their insensitivity towards the issue

Opportunity cost of personal hygiene too high for rural women

Most rural women still bathe in the open but fetch water to their homes so that their daughters can bathe comfortably. (Photo by Daniel Bachhuber)

Women in India’s villages still have to pay a high cost in terms of mental and physical pain and financial loss because they are often compelled to neglect personal hygiene by bathing hurriedly in the open

Budget has prepared ground for states to usher in transformation

The 2017-18 budget has made notable allocations for agriculture and allied activities. (Photo by Kannan Muthuraman)

Finance Minster Arun Jaitley has paved way for making significant transformation of rural areas a reachable dream. It is now up to the states to get their acts together and not fritter away the substantial allocations for agriculture and rural development

Bariyarpur farmers paying heavy price for Gopalganj-Bettiah bridge

Residents of Bariyarpur village have borrowed money and settled on the southern side of the elevated road to escape the regular flooding. (Photo by Nidhi Jamwal)

Victims of ill-planned infrastructure development, villagers in this Paschim Champaran village are now forced to migrate because prime agricultural land has turned infertile. Flooding in parts of the village has increased as well, they say

Remote village in Karbi Anglong sets cleanliness benchmark

The paths of Shikdamakha village are dotted with bamboo baskets to collect waste. (Photo by Abdul Gani)

The young people of Shikdamakha in Assam didn’t wait for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan to set standards in sanitation, which has today resulted in the village being one of the cleanest in the entire country

Arsenic contamination in groundwater killing villagers in Ballia

Hand pumps that are known for their arsenic-laced water are still in use in Ekawana Rajpur village in Ballia district. (Photo by Tarun Kanti Bose)

High levels of arsenic in the water supply is afflicting many villages in eastern Uttar Pradesh but the government hasn’t been able to design and implement any program to contain the menace