Rural India is home of the original gig-economy worker. Enterprising villagers hop from tilling fields to tending shops, to door-to-door selling each day. Read the latest trends in micro-enterprises, rural start-ups and the shifting livelihoods of India’s villagers.
Livelihoods
Singing genealogists of Karnataka sustain ancestral profession
The Helavas of Karnataka, who sing family genealogies from carefully maintained records, have practiced the tradition for centuries, and continue to do so despite fading relevance
Heavy snow hurts Kashmir’s apple farmers
Extreme weather events such as untimely snowfall and heavy floods have harmed the apple crop in Kashmir; one way to reduce losses is to properly implement a crop insurance scheme
Village health workers toil tirelessly despite low wages
Village health workers have emerged as the mainstay of the primary healthcare system in rural Maharashtra. Yet, they are paid tiny amounts, get no benefits and struggle with supply shortages
Participation key to empowering Juang tribes
Treating Juang tribes of Odisha as participants in the development process rather than as recipients of development largesse will help bringing them into the national mainstream
Food forests offer better profits to farmers
Mimicking forests, progressive farmers across India have started transforming farms into a layered cropping system that is climate resilient and more productive
Weaving a future, meter by meter
In the villages of Bodoland in Assam, where every Bodo home has a loom, Sama Brahma earns a modest income from weaving, and is trying to pass on this waning traditional skill to her daughters
Can data-driven social enterprises boost farmer incomes?
A collaboration between technological and value chain enterprises working directly with farmers could help make the farm to fork value chain more organized and efficient, thus increasing returns to cultivators
Monkeys damage cashew plantations, cause fever outbreak
Fear of monkeys has gripped cashew farmers and migrant workers in Goa, as the simians have turned cashew plantations into a feeding ground, destroying the crop and transmitting a virus through ticks
The unending saga of farm distress in India
Farmers in India will continue to suffer unless there is a fundamental change in the pro-urban policy bias of propping up unsustainably low food prices