Shanta Toofani (1929-2011) was an unusual social worker, activist and educator. She completed her schooling at the age of 34, while running a household single-handedly and bringing up seven children. Having educated herself despite all odds, she was committed to educating others, with fierce love. For several decades this tiny woman stood tall, teaching children…
A recent NITI Aayog report reveals a painful reality inside India’s government schools: millions of children still study without electricity, proper toilets, or enough teachers. For many students, especially girls, school is no longer just a place of learning, but a daily struggle for dignity, safety, and the chance to stay. Every morning, millions of…
The Scale of the Shift India is in the midst of a demographic transition. Within the next five years, for the first time in human history, the number of Indian women aged 40 -55 years will exceed the number in peak childbearing age of 20-35 years. More adult women will be in a non-reproductive phase…
The First Name on the Document Laxmi Bai is the first person in her family to have a bank account in her own name. She is 41. Before the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana account was opened for her in 2016 at a banking correspondent’s stall in her village in Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh, money had…
The Farmer Who Stopped Growing Rice Govind Nair farmed rice on three acres in coastal Kerala for most of his working life. In 2022, following a government horticulture scheme, he converted one of those acres to coconut cultivation and intercropped it with cocoa. By 2025, the intercropped acre was generating nearly twice the income of…
The Temple That Nobody Photographed There is a 9th century temple in a village in Odisha that receives no tourist buses, no CISF security detail, and no World Heritage plaque. Its sanctum holds a damaged but intact icon. Its walls carry inscriptions that have not been fully transcribed. Twice in the past decade, local residents…
There is a particular kind of anger that does not consume the person who holds it. It sharpens them instead. Kailash Satyarthi has carried that anger ever since. It is the same year he walked away from a promising career as an electrical engineer. He surrendered a steady salary and decided his life belonged to…
The Mill That Lost Its Orders Rajiv Gupta runs a secondary steel processing unit in Raipur, Chhattisgarh. He has been in the business for nineteen years. In 2024-25, he lost two major contracts to a supplier offering steel at prices he simply could not match. The steel his competitor was offering came from China, and…
The River That Remembers Nothing The Brahmaputra does not follow instructions. It shifts its course seasonally, erodes its banks annually, and has consumed Majuli by roughly 1/3rd of its original area over the past century. The communities on its banks have adapted as best they can, building on stilts, relocating seasonally, and accepting a negotiation…
The Biscuit That Changed a Village Economy Urmila Devi runs a small food processing unit outside Varanasi. She makes millet-based snacks using a government-supported machine, sells them under a cooperative label, and earns three times what she made from raw grain. Before her unit was set up under the PM Formalisation of Micro Food Processing…
