I have been working for 18 months with Innovators In Health (IIH). The...
The Lack Of Access To Education For Children Of Migrant Workers In Kerala
11-year-old Habil* is engaged in an intense mobile game. Gunshots echo in his...
How Caste Continues To Take A Center Stage In Panna, Madhya Pradesh
A year and a half ago when I boarded a train to Panna, I was sharing a berth...
Center For Entrepreneurship Development, Gujarat
The Center for Entrepreneurship Development (CED), Gujarat is a government-run...
Reflecting Through Rituals And Relationships
Living and working in Maheshwar feels like building a small world of my own....
Visual Arts As A Way To Connect Children To The Library
I have a feeling that my relationship with art has been changing since joining...
A Brief Introduction To Crafts – From Kachchh, Gujarat
The floor, the once-blue drums, tables and chairs; are all covered in a...
आदिवासी समाज में महुआ के पेड़ का महत्व
बस्तर के आदिवासी समाज के लिए महुआ का पेड़ विशेष महत्व रखता है। महुआ के मौसम...
Learning Without Reading: A Day With Enterprising Rural Women
"Anokhi" - A unique initiative by Shram Sarathi, in collaboration with STEP Academy (Skill Training, Employ-ability & Placement), supported by Aajeevika Bureau. It's designed to equip women entrepreneurs with tools and skills they may need to thrive in their...
The Land Settlement Collision at Swasthya Swaraj
One of the greatest hurdles to overcome while working in a tribal predominant area is to secure a land for running day-to-day operations. According to Forest Rights Act 2006, forest land cannot be sold to anyone. In case there are villages that are completely occupied...
Radio Has a Special Place in the Heart of Rural India
“It has been 11 years but I still remember the day when my 12th grade results were to come. I was eagerly waiting since morning. Those days, we didn't have internet. Radio was the only medium. My father was a keen radio listener and I recall how he sat throughout the...
Why Doctors Don’t Want To Work In Rural Areas
When I was doing my medical house surgeon-ship in Mangalore a few years ago, Karnataka government was planning to implement compulsory rural service for house surgeons in the state. This news was not taken in a positive light by the doctors which eventually led to...
An Unforgettable Visit To The ANC And Under-Five Camp
Ante-natal Women & Under Five Children’s Clinic (ANC camp) is a medical camp organized by Swasthya Swaraj. It is an important program activity that happens every month in different clusters. To give you a background, Swasthya Swaraj has 2 major clinic centers -...
Unheard Stories of Salwa Judum Movement
A session on Natural Disasters was going on in my class, located inside a Porta Cabin in Sukma, Chhattisgarh. After a brief explanation, I asked everyone to write what they understood along with a few examples. Next day, students were ready with their stories. They...
A Sweet And Sour Encounter
It was a hot and humid day, in a Rajasthani Village I visited a few months ago, my first time in this part of the country. Rainy season was beginning and the petrichor reminding me of the full-blown monsoon I had left back home in Mumbai. I was accompanied by two...
We Are In A Crisis We Don’t Acknowledge
I was sitting on an uber comfortable Barcalounger with gigantic headphone over my ears. An ethereal voice was asking me to close my eyes, relax, think of something that makes me happy and form a picture of said happiness in my mind. Next thing I knew, I was being...
How Santhal Tribe Celebrates: A Video Blog
Purulia has been a drought-prone district of West Bengal, India, with a semi-arid landscape. It has a rich cultural heritage, with a fusion of Bengali tradition and a touch of the tribal essence in it. People here celebrate a variety of local festivals with lots of...
A Postcard Of Hope For Better Future
As I sat down to have a cup of tea this morning, I heard my home calling me. There was a new post, and even in my mid 30s, I was as excited to receive it as I was at 7. Anne kept yelling since I had betrayed our old tradition of having breakfast together. We did it to...
My Learning From A Genius : Stephen Hawking
On 14th March 2018 when we woke up, the world collectively experienced a huge loss. We read about the death of Stephen Hawking, the globally renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist known for his work on general relativity and quantum gravity, in the context of...
Friday Phenomenon In Schools : Eggs & Bananas
I believe that every problem in the universe has a cause and one or more solution(s). Before getting on to the Friday phenomenon as mentioned in the headline, I'd like to talk about the mid-day meal (MDM) program in schools. Interestingly, the history of Pondicherry...
Underlying Causes Of The TB Epidemic In India
In the recent End TB Summit held in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a campaign to eradicate tuberculosis (TB) from India by 2025, five years ahead of its globally set-deadline. Now, one might think that given 7 years we have in hand and support from...
Relevance of Affordable Private Schools for Education
In last few months, I have been interacting a lot with my community that surrounds Swarachna school in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh. Of varied things I got to know about them, a common link in all villages is that nobody wants to send their children to a government school....