While sitting in my study room and having the luxury of being fascinated by...
Settling In And Attending A Visioning Exercise
Finding A Place To Live Last month brought with it some of the most...
Theatre Of The Oppressed: Rehearsing for Real Life
These are my reflections from five months of practicing Theatre of the...
Her: The Story Of A Beautiful Creation
The role of women in my life has been invaluable and transformative, shaping...
भुज की महिलाएं और कमला बेन की कहानी
भुज भारत के उत्तर-पश्चिम भाग में रहस्य की भूमि कच्छ जिले में स्थित हैं।...
Sickle Cell Anemia And A Day In The Life Of A Counsellor
On 8th August 2023, I accompanied Laxmi Patkar, a counsellor at Jan Swasthya...
Observations And Realities In Schools At Saharsa, Bihar
Bihar is one of the marginalised states in India in terms of education. It has...
The Story Of Thoriyari Village Pond
Thoriyari village pond is a place to visit, a great learning resource to...
‘Postnatal Care’ In Rural, Tribal Villages Of Southern Rajasthan
Ramila* is a 22 year old woman who lives in Hathiya Talai, a village in Gogunda block of Udaipur, Rajasthan. Ramila had high fever on the third day after her delivery. Her baby died on the second day. “There was no breast milk and the baby would just not open her...
Of Clay And Mirrors [A Visual Story]
When Argaben begins pinching and shaping the clay dough, she's not doing so to put on a show. Yet, when she breathes life into the otherwise lifeless lump of clay, shaping different patterns and designs, we all watch in awe. The freehand work from memory. The fluidity...
Resilience, As I Understood It
Resilience and perseverance - the two virtues almost always attributed to the poor. The glorification of their hardships and our awe for their ability to survive. Haven’t we started looking at them akin to cockroaches? They never die with a single stroke, it takes...
Education For Change
Imagine yourself as a child living in a small mud house in a green valley, with lush farms on rolling hills that extend until as far as you can see. Your family is engaged in agriculture, growing rice and corn. A good harvest ensures enough food for the next few...
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 large-scale production of synthetic materials began in the early 1950s. And why not, after all plastic is lightweight, flexible, relatively inexpensive, and durable, which also means that it...
Dialogue And Democracy: Understanding Theatre Of The Oppressed
Paulo Friere was a renowned Brazilian educator and philosopher. As a leading advocate of critical pedagogy that views teaching as a political act, indistinct from issues of social justice and democracy, predicated on fostering agency, empowering learners and...
What Being Restricted Taught Me About Empowerment
As I work with Shram Sarathi in Gogunda block of Udaipur, Rajasthan, if I have to talk about the most epic ways of local commute, I'll tell you this... The field areas, though accessible through public transport, still require one to navigate a few kilometres on foot,...
Is Environment A Labour Issue?
Early last month, I watched Seaspiracy, Kip Anderson's second project to shed light upon a new dimension of the human-made environmental crisis. It's a documentary film that takes the viewer into the literal and metaphorical depths of the crisis unfolding at the seas,...
Failing And Moving From Making Agriculture Work For Rural Youth
Born and brought up in Delhi, I had a fascination to get an exposure to the grassroots of India and see the rural realities in its raw form. To pursue this, I joined India Fellow, a social leadership program. As a part of that, I was placed with Shramik Bharti, an...
We Couldn’t Take Our Masks Off, We Couldn’t Drink Water
Picture from the archives of Setu Abhiyan - Urban team It is a cold December evening and the chilly wind is blowing the plastic shelter of the outside of the house, back and forth. Seated on the plastic rug fashioned from old 20kg cement bags, I make my notes under...
Those Who Fall Between The Cracks – Where Do They Go?
This lockdown was supposed to be different. Wasn’t everything planned to seem much more normal than last year? There are no heartbreaking images of migrants walking back hundreds of kilometres or those of workers stuck at inter-state bus terminals waiting to go back...
Ghost Towns Of Banswara, Rajasthan
Migration for work is etched into the identity of several districts that fall within the perimeter of Southern Rajasthan's tribal belt. Hundreds of private buses ply each day, carrying thousands across borders to cities like Ahmedabad, Surat and Mumbai. A range of...
What It Means To Work With A Community
We were in Sillet, an isolated village that has no electricity, no telecom signal and no water. We had heard that the people from this village had a problem with us - Swasthya Swaraj. It had something to do with a small facility that we were trying to set up in the...
Sorry Harry, But It’s Time We Talk About The Potters Of Khavda
In the Harry Potter universe, magic is the heart and soul of the wizarding culture. It sets the wizards and the witches apart from their Muggle neighbours. While Ismailbhai Kumbhar, may pass off as a Muggle, in this context, he doesn't need an Albus Dumbledore or a...