The world’s credentialed engineers said it was technically impossible. You cannot teach an illiterate person to install, maintain, and repair solar-powered lighting systems. Certainly not in six months. Certainly not in a language they do not speak, or through diagrams they have never seen. Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy had heard this argument before. He had spent…
India has the world’s largest youth population, with nearly two-thirds of us under 35. We repeat that statistic often, and we usually stop there. The other half of it is that India is ageing faster than at any point in its history. Indians above sixty numbered 14.9 crore in 2022 and will reach ≈ 35…
Nasscom Foundation and IBM have partnered to equip 87,000 young people from underserved communities across India with digital, domain and employability skills. Through IBM SkillsBuild, the initiative focuses on connecting digital learning with real employment opportunities.
Kantabai was a welder in Mhaswad, Maharashtra. She wanted to open a savings account. Every bank she approached turned her away. Only because she didn’t have documents, or a husband’s signature, address proof, or a transaction history that a city-designed banking system recognised as valid. Her story reached Chetna Gala Sinha, a social activist then…
He had exactly 67 pieces of cloth when Anshu Gupta left his journalism career in 1999, and started Goonj with his wife Meenakshi in a single room in Delhi. Urban India discards enormous amounts of usable material that rural India desperately needs. Rerouting those materials seemed like charity; hence, Gupta believed it would strip recipients…
More than 89,000 sewer and septic tank workers have been formally validated under India’s principal sanitation-worker welfare scheme since 2023, and official profiling data indicate that over 90 per cent of those identified belong to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, or Other Backwards Class communities — underscoring sanitation work’s long-documented association with caste in India. Against…
The Union government now has a combined outlay of Rs 11,639 crore committed to the Vibrant Villages Programme (VVP), its flagship scheme for developing villages along India’s international land border, according to a Press Information Bureau feature released this month. The Ministry of Home Affairs, which frames border residents as the eyes and ears of…
India’s tiger population has increased significantly, from 2,967 in 2018 to 3,682 in 2022. But beyond the success of tiger recovery lies a harder question: can India protect wildlife while ensuring dignified livelihoods for communities living around tiger landscapes?
Puducherry has received three fisheries infrastructure projects worth ₹36.49 crore under PMMSY, including upgrades to Nallavadu Fish Landing Centre and Thengaithittu Fishing Harbour, along with a seaweed innovation centre in Karaikal.
Development work in India often moves in cycles of enthusiasm: a project launches with fanfare, runs for three to five years, and quietly winds down when the grant ends. Sambandh, a non-profit based in Bhubaneswar, has taken the opposite approach since it began in 1992, treating community development in Odisha as a multi-decade commitment rather…
