Having spent a major part of my fellowship in Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh, it...
Bridging The Digital Gap In Rural India
Financial inclusion, in today's day and age is not what it was a decade or two...
Resilience, As I Understood It
Resilience and perseverance - the two virtues almost always attributed to the...
Education For Change
Imagine yourself as a child living in a small mud house in a green valley,...
Totes Amaze: How This NGO In Kutch Is Fighting Plastic With Plastic
Nine billion tons - that's the amount of plastic we have created since the...
Dialogue And Democracy: Understanding Theatre Of The Oppressed
Paulo Friere was a renowned Brazilian educator and philosopher. As a leading...
What Being Restricted Taught Me About Empowerment
As I work with Shram Sarathi in Gogunda block of Udaipur, Rajasthan, if I have...
Is Environment A Labour Issue?
Early last month, I watched Seaspiracy, Kip Anderson's second project to shed...
Living In The Dark With Pedophilia
There was this one video of a man sodomizing a doll in a shopping mall surfacing for quite a sometime on social media. It was no surprise that people were going gaga over him. "Men can’t even leave dolls alone now" "Even dolls are not safe" With a preconceived and...
Poverty : My 1st Lesson In The Social Sector
How long has it been since you had your last meal? 17 hours for me, out of which 13 went by sleeping in an air-conditioned compartment of a train. My head is aching and I’m sipping water slowly but here’s why I’m tolerating hunger: Can’t leave the luggage unattended...
Of Disturbing Instances, Gender Disparities And Taking Charge
It was just another day in one of the villages of South Madhya Pradesh. A colleague and I were passing through the half-broken muddy roads, to reach our destination. As part of our project, the agenda was to talk to women collectively and motivate them to save a...
Freedom Of Expression – The Oxymoron
The idea of “Freedom of Expression” sounds so much like an oxymoron to me these days. Two contrasting ideas nestled together so beautifully. Apparently the term freedom and expression do hardly ever go together. At least in the current context of our society. The...
Deconstructing Dating Amidst A Deity
It’s been a month since I’ve started working in the rural areas of Bihar and my new buddies here are very eager to set me up on a date with their friends. “Dishooja Ji, meri ek dost hai. Baayis saal ki ho gayi hai, aur shadi ki umr bhi hai. Dilli ke bank mein naukri...
स्केल कैसे होगा?
स्केल कैसे करेंगे? इस विषय में उचित सवाल है कि क्या तरीका पहले चल रहे TB प्रोग्राम जैसा होगा या अनुभव वाले साथी जाके नया वार्ड शुरू करें या कुछ और? दो वार्डों में पायलट की समाप्ति के बाद संस्था के कार्य के दायरे को बढ़ाना स्वाभाविक मोड़ है। साथ ही, हमने ट्रस्ट को जो...
Humanising Users Of Healthcare
A paid internship right out of the college—even though underpaid and compulsory and obligatory—is a perfect opportunity to assimilate the four and a half years of knowledge and finally rub one’s hands clean enough to be granted a chance to suture that open wound. That...
What Drives Us To Action?
I implemented a newly designed financial literacy game with the community. The details of which will be shared in a later blog. This game is followed by a debriefing session on how you need to protect, grow and diversify wealth. I take a deep breath and launch:...
Our Design Is Designing Us Back
“Just as you grow into the world, the world grows into you. Not only do you occupy a certain place, but that place in turn occupies you … It’s culture shapes the way we see the world, its language which informs the way you think, its custom structures you as social...
This Is Water
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other...
The Mandalas Of Ladakh
There is nothing permanent except change. Ladakh is one of the few places humans have made habitable by their presence. In a land of chilling winds, scorching sun and blinding snow, an oasis of tall trees and sparkling streams is a testimony to this monumental...
Letters To Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi : Part 3
Dear Gandhi Have you heard about the three bricklayers? Before I tell you their story, let me give you the context on why I am writing about these buggers to you. I guess you might have experienced the thing that I am sharing while you were leading these humans’...
Consistency Of Jams And Projects
Consistency of a jam is nothing but a measure of its fluidity. Right consistency yields the utmost satisfaction to the palate. Two raw materials are responsible for the consistency, namely pectin and sugar. Pectin is more known of the two contributors. Ask people...