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.
Governance
Empowered rural women demonstrate leadership skills
Providing an enabling environment transforms and empowers rural women. Building on their abilities, the women realize their potential to lead and become change makers
How rural India showed resilience, synergy during lockdown
Republic Day is an ideal occasion to celebrate rural India’s positive progress. VillageSquare recollects how communities used the lockdown productively, despite difficulties and loss of livelihoods.
Cash crop cotton loses lustre for Ganjam farmers
Lack of transportation and marketing facilities and exploitation by private money lenders have forced cotton growers to cultivate other crops despite cotton’s potential for good returns
Dairy cooperative leads to empowerment of women
Women who were confined to their homes became dairy farmers as SHG members, subsequently forming a self-reliant cooperative. It has resulted in empowering them socially and financially
Odisha fares poorly in women’s safety, despite government efforts
Statistics reveal rampant gender-based violence and inequality in Odisha. A concerted multi-stakeholder effort is needed to bring about change, as government initiatives are slow in bearing results
Tribes hope to revive degenerated agriculture through development plan
Development eluded two remote Irula tribal villages in Western Ghats. Through Tribal Sub-Plan being implemented, they hope to revive agriculture that once kept them self-sufficient
Kadar tribes face repeated displacement for hydel power projects
For more than a century, Kerala’s forest-dwelling tribes have been repeatedly evicted for power projects. Faced with another displacement, the tribes refuse to give up their rights
Mandatory Aadhar seeding impedes access to welfare schemes
Linking of Aadhar with ration cards and bank accounts, mandated to weed out fake beneficiaries of government entitlements, has left many without much-needed benefits during the lockdown
Treatment and awareness help women overcome anemia
Extensive testing, treating the affected, and awareness about food habits to change malnutrition status have brought down the prevalence of anemia and improved the health of women