The Village That Was Declared a Model Kanchanpur is a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Hamirpur district where approximately 65% of residents are from Scheduled Caste communities. In 2022, it was selected as an Adarsh Gram under PM-AJAY. Unfortunately, this was a designation that should have brought converged government services, infrastructure upgrades, and livelihood investment. By…
The Spice She Grew. The Market She Never Reached. Meenakshi Pillai grows turmeric on two acres in Erode, Tamil Nadu. The same district produces nearly 60% of India’s turmeric. She sells through a local aggregator at Rs. 80-90 per kilogram. The same turmeric, value-added into curcumin capsules and marketed under a wellness brand in Germany,…
After COVID-19 gripped the world in 2020, health systems, governments and international institutions everywhere vowed we’d ‘never be unprepared again’. Yet, the pandemic’s wake revealed crumbling health systems, lax surveillance, misinformation issues, healthcare inequities – and it seems that many of these lessons have not yet been fully grasped in a handful of African nations…
How India’s 2026 Waste Rules are turning delivery apps into waste management giants. For the past few years, the convenience of 10-minute delivery has felt like magic. We tap a screen, and a brown paper bag or a plastic-wrapped bundle of groceries arrives at our door. But for companies like Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy Instamart,…
Imagine visiting a medical facility for a common urinary tract infection, an infection treatable for years, only to be informed that the antibiotic which are usually prescribed no longer work effectively. No dramatisation, no alarmist escalation, just a quiet clinical statement that the drug cannot help. This is not the stuff of futuristic dystopias, but…
India’s teenage motherhood crisis is not just about early pregnancy – it is about how poverty, anaemia, lack of nutrition, and early marriage combine to shape the lives of both young mothers and the children they raise. Using data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), the article shows that millions of adolescent girls in…
However, India’s dialogue on air pollution is far more developed than a decade ago. Air quality monitors display real-time PM2.5 figures on public websites. Cities release their respective plans on clean air action. People examine the pollution index before going out. However, amidst all this progress, there has been one particular aspect of the ongoing…
This story is about Gul Panag. The woman who decided that visibility, if used correctly, is not a privilege. It is a responsibility. There is a particular kind of public figures who uses attention the way most people use money carefully with intent, and never on themselves alone. Gul Panag has been that kind of…
There is a particular kind of ambition that builds for the field, the village lane, the farmer who has never once seen his soil analysed or his crop priced fairly. Shashank Kumar has carried that ambition since 2012. It is the same year he walked away from a career in management consulting. He gave up…
Every democracy has its steady hands and its showmen. Some folks make sure the government just Works; others are happy to grab the spotlight, dressing up the daily business with big words. But, once in a while, you meet a third kind someone who quietly bridges the gap between what’s written in law and what’s…
