I am a 22-year-old woman who has very recently entered the world of work. My...
जब किशोरियाँ सवाल पूछती हैं
हमेशा किसी भी कार्य की शुरुआत होती है एक सवाल से! किसी भी विचार में, बात में,...
A Community Engagement Program At A School In Bihar
In his book "Whose Reality Counts?", Robert Chambers highlights the...
Role Of Women In Indigenous Pastoral Community
In the last 6 months of working with the Van Gujjar community in Uttarakhand,...
Encouraging The Next Generation Of Girls and Women of Vadasar, Bhuj
The following is a conversation with Preeti ben, Sarpanch of Vadasar Gram...
What’s Happening With One Nation One Ration Card Scheme
The famed One Nation One Ration, implemented since 2019, has seen little success on ground. A glimpse of our field experiences in Kerala
Forming A Multi-Layer Kitchen Garden
Traditionally, vegetables have been cultivated in household gardens that vary...
Choices And Preferences Of Women In Bhuj
As a woman who has more social class privilege than a lot of other women, I...
Why Farmers Are Growing Cotton When Water Is Scarce
“I wish they'd had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would've been straightened out.” -Jimi Hendrix, 1970 YES, if the ‘whole lot of things’ were farmers wanting to form a band but a NO if it were racial conflicts and...
When Gender and Disability Discriminate Together
“What do you see yourself doing in 10 years from now?” This is one of the questions that I have asked repeatedly over the last two months, from disabled people I work with. I wonder if I have an answer to it but that's a story for another day. Each time, I ask this...
Vegetable Cultivation by Katkari Tribe in Rural Maharashtra
Ratna Tai* walked ahead, leading a coterie of her fellow villagers to the farming lands where they planned to grow Kareli (Bitter gourd). She walked briskly while we struggled to catch up with her pace, jumping over thickets and bushes, ducking wild branches and...
Victim Blaming – A Popular Culture In The Nation
“Bachchi ki samajhdaari ko bhi main thoda sa kehna chahti hun…saari bachiyon ko...ki already jab koi teen aadmi baithe hue hain uske andar…to aapko usme baithna nahi chahiye tha…I am saying this to protect the girls”, Kher was quoted as saying at the press conference....
Bail Pola: A Way of Celebrating Human-Animal Relationship
Nature is considered a reflection of truth in the holy book of Quran. Hindu scriptures also emphasize on divinity contained in the elements of nature - Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space. Religious books, the predominant source of values in any culture, recognize the...
What I Saw In Public Schools In Odisha
It was a bright day at a village in Odisha. At 9:30AM, I was going to facilitate a full day session about Malaria at the government high school which has a total strength of 160 students from 1st to 10th grades. The unique aspect of this school was that, on a typical...
Healthcare – A Privilege for HER?
Tribal women of Udaipur District, Rajasthan How do you react when a father-in-law says about his Bahu (daughter-in-law), “Aap mujhe isko bade asptaal le jane kyun bol rahe ho? Yeh mar gayi toh mai isko jala dunga, woh meri zimmedari hai.” (Why are you asking me to...
An Introduction To Katkari Tribes Of Maharashtra
Katkaris working at brick kilns As part of my assignment I’ve been working for scoping and initiating new livelihoods for the Katkari tribal community in Raigad under the aegis of my organization - Centre For Social Action, Mumbai. I joined CSA in August this year and...
The Times Of Non-Linearity
I don't think cat videos represent the funniest aspects of the internet. Let's be honest here. It has more to do with how seamlessly you can transition from Donald Trump to Donald Duck and watch two whole episodes of Uncle Scrooge before you ask yourself, "what am I...
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...
From Durga to ‘Hudur Durga’: The Other Side Of The Story
Durga puja – the name is more than sufficient to bring joy and thrill among Bengalis. Durga Puja is not only a festival in West Bengal but it is an integral part of life for the people living here. You can sense the enthusiasm, the charisma in the air and people...
The Nights Were Dark And Full of Terror – Odisha And Education
After spending month in Kalahandi, experiencing almost all sorts of adventure, I ask myself, “Could there be anything left to see?” I have seen death as well as new life coming into this world in front of my eyes. One week I was supposed to visit a village on the...
Mass Hysteria And Opinions – Story Of Kanpur Dehat
I am writing to tell you about an incident that shook me due to the incredulous nature of the story that got fabricated around it which still confounds me as to why that girl died. A number of conjectures it generated in order to piece together the character and the...
The Story Of The Black Angrez Of Rajasthan
I am sure all of you, after reading the title of this post are thinking: - Who are Black Angrez? Who can be the Black Angrez? It was just a usual day when I was leaving the school I work in, for a field visit and waiting for the jeep to come. 40 minutes had already...