She walks in oblivion

Society itself doesn't care to know about headloading

Big engagement with small power

Generating electricity to raise economic profile

Drought is in the mind

GOOD NEWS: There is more evidence to show that water harvesting can go a long way in dealing with drought and solving the water crisis, and even …

Political harvest

Report card: A scheme that can help solve the water crisis has become a tool to promote political interests of the ruling party Success level: Poor

Learning the mantra

Report card: The government realised its failures and learned from the civil society. Despite cases of corruption and some errors in planning, …

Now what?

Rolling on

Now what?

Rolling on

A natural secret

Policymakers don't need to go too far to eradicate poverty. The solution is as close as is a village well to a villager

Mandla Brimful of thirst

Average rainfall: 1,300 mm Irrigation: 2% of gross cropped area

Sarguja Losing battle

First district for tribal development Rampant deforestation Malnutrition and starvation deaths

Dungarpur A 'common' death

Once rich in forest and grazing land Now known as 20th century desert 68% population 'marginal and unemployed'

Phulbani Access to poverty

Sal forest worth: Rs 30,000 crore 85% population dependent on forest 65% people below poverty line

A hard rain’s falling

Sayantan Bera tells the story of a man and a state, paralysed inside the remote islands of Sundarbans

Hunger games – it’s the real India show

Tricks of diminishing returns

Clever calculations and the great wall of bureaucracy

Promoting integrated village planning

Self-sustaining rural communities could be India's answer to her disrupted ecosystem.

Job half done

25 per cent funds allocated to national rural employment scheme remain unspent

Millionaire mukhiyas

Money pumped in development schemes in Bihar is giving rise to a new breed of village heads, flush with money and flexing muscles

When villages plug in

A Consumer movement is catching on in Nepal.Communities are extending the grid to villages.This threatens to undo the effort put in small-scale …

Some nets and sunshine

Fishers in a Tamil Nadu village save cost and improve catch with solar panel-fitted boats

Scheme against jobs

Government is bent upon shrinking jobs for the poor by fundamentally changing the rural employment guarantee scheme against the advice of its …

The god of ecological things

Time to be different