While walking through various routes in Odisha, whether it be rural or urban...
What Does Consent And Privacy Mean To Those Who Bathe In The Open
About research ethics and its upkeep – ever elusive!
Family Planning And Contraceptives In Rural Rajasthan
After having a long discussion on the different types of contraceptive...
Failures : What You Learn When Things Don’t Go Your Way On Field
Third part of a 3-part series on learning from failures
Will The Women Artisans Please Stand Up?
How the weaving value chain has managed to define roles for men and women in the process, where the later are more often than not, subjugated.
COVID Vaccination Game – Generating Awareness And Creating A Safe Space!
Have you ever played a game and learnt something? I’m taking the jump and...
Failures : Integrity vs Accommodation
First of the 3 part series by our alumni on failures.
Ajrakh Block Printing : A Photo Story
The magical Yellow colour is derived from the dye preparation of turmeric and...
Two Different Worlds
My new assignment brings me to a village in Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh, named Chandpur Khurd. On you way from Noida to Agra, it is located off the Yamuna Expressway right where the milestone indicates distance to Mathura, 62 kilometres. As soon as you get out...
Camel Tales
The camel was dead, apparently it slipped off a narrow muddy path and went sliding down into a large ditch. As the rains pounded Surajgarh, the ditch got filled with water and the camel unable to drag itself out, drowned in this ditch. Dalu Gameti had allowed...
Wisdom Over Intelligence
Ladakh Before 1970 The story of education in Ladakh is intimately tied to the story of its people’s introduction to western concepts of progress and to the global marketplace. Prior to the 1970s, education in Ladakh largely took place in the village, in the fields,...
The Fellowship Epiphany
If you listen to the experience of a person who has just escaped death by drowning, this is what they will tell you – “At first you throw your hands and feet in all the directions frantically, only to realize that it’s not helping, slowly you notice the deluging...
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...
Sight-Seat
I live in Bhuj now. Not exactly, but I live in Mankua, a village on the outskirts of the city. I have started working with an alternate-learning school called Sinchan and have been provided an accommodation in the above mentioned village. The school name is not based...
Painting Hope Through Rogan Art
Craftsmanship is the spine of India’s non-farming rural economy. However, it continues to remain an unorganized sector with its market prospective unused. It isc ommon to hear about at least one master craftsman who is forced to give up his craft in exchange for a...
Two-Face : Harvey Dent In Rural India
My jaw dropped when our wallets were confiscated by our fellowship co-ordinator. We were told to survive on a paltry sum of Rs. 40! We had to find a village and return back using this nominal sum! My mind raced with thoughts and a slight sense of panic crept in....
Turning The Table
"दबाव बहुत है। हम तो कोशिश कर रहे हैं।", Nagma said. Nagma is a middle-aged health worker in the primary health centre (PHC) of Nichli Badi. She has been overseeing the PHC functions in absence of a doctor for the past one and a half month. A soft-spoken woman, she...
Learning Empathy
I walked into the village, excited about getting to see something new, enthusiastic about meeting new people from different walks of life, all set to explore how majority of our country's population lives. What I was faced with was a wandering naked three year old boy...
Letters To Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi : Part 4
The Mandi And Modern Supply Chains Dear Gandhi It’s been 150 years since you have returned from South Africa to propose your decentralized and localized economic models; and your nation is still obsessed with the same old imperialistic ideas of free trade and...