India has one of the largest mandated corporate social responsibility frameworks in the world. Since 2014, companies above a certain size have been legally required to spend at least 2% of their average net profits on social causes from education and healthcare to environmental sustainability and skill development. In FY 2022-23 alone, eligible companies collectively…
The Letter She Read Three Times Ananya Singh from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, sat the Staff Selection Commission exam twice before clearing it. She spent 14 months after clearing the exam waiting for a posting. When she finally received her appointment letter at the 19th Rozgar Mela on May 23, 2026, she read it three times…
The Loom That Built an Economy Savitaben Patel has run a khadi weaving unit in Anand, Gujarat, for 21 years now. She employs 11 women from the surrounding neighbourhood. When she started, the unit’s annual turnover was under Rs. 8 lakhs. By FY 2025-26, it crossed Rs. 34 lakhs. There was no change in what…
India is preparing to count more than 1.4 billion people once again — but this time, the process itself is changing in major ways that could affect welfare delivery, policymaking, and democratic representation across the country. Why the census matters Every ten years, India undertakes one of the largest administrative exercises in the world. Census…
The Letter That Became a Parcel Ramesh Prasad has run a small handicraft business in Jaisalmer for eighteen years. He used to ship his stone carvings through private courier companies. These companies were expensive, unreliable at his remote pin code, and occasionally catastrophic for fragile goods. In 2023, he switched to India Post’s e-commerce parcel…
Picture the scene: a woman with a PhD in Nuclear Physics from the University of Madras, sitting in a modest room in Kanchipuram back in 2002, her mind turning over the problem of child labour. At first glance, the leap is almost surreal. You’ve got atomic particles on one side, rural kids out of school…
The Telecom Grave Nobody Expected to Open For most of the previous decade, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) was subject to a very specific kind of policy conversation. The public sector telecom company was losing money at a big scale, shedding subscribers in crores. BSNL was routinely described as irrelevant in a market dominated by…
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,…
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…
