Governance

What is good governance? How well can a person or a community access help or push for a needed change? How often are they heard? Village Square shines a light on the people and schemes making the biggest impact or providing the most unique solutions.

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Land rights on pastures empower deprived communities

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Giving land rights to landless and nomadic people in Maharashtra on degraded pastures have provided these marginalized communities with a reasonable livelihood

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Local livelihoods curb exploitative labor trafficking

To stop poor villagers from becoming bonded migrant labor, the Odisha government needs to strengthen latest steps to cut out middlemen and boost the rural jobs guarantee program with higher wages

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Child panchayats spur village leaders to improve services

Knowing their rights to life and social protection, school students in child panchayats have compelled rural administrators to provide basic amenities necessary for the development of their villages

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Farmer producer companies: let a thousand balloons float

While farmer producer companies mushroom across the country because of government’s financial incentives, problems in input delivery and sale of produce persist, making their long-term sustenance difficult

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Cattle trade dwindles at Sonepur Mela

Enforcement of laws related to cattle trade has affected the famed Sonepur cattle fair, with cattle numbers decreasing steadily at the fair and sale dwindling by the year

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India needs poverty fighters to boost rural incomes

Ending endemic economic poverty in the central and eastern parts of rural India needs more numbers of trained foot soldiers to deal with the complex realities on the ground

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Stigmatized Lodha tribe starts new life trajectory

Education and sports have helped the Lodhas, a particularly vulnerable tribal community that was forced to lead an excluded life because they were stigmatized as thieves, to increasingly join the mainstream

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Families along Brahmaputra lose land to river erosion

Having lost homesteads and farmlands to river erosion, Assam’s farmers living in makeshift camps seek government intervention, even as state administration tries to rework a rehabilitation scheme announced in 2015