Impact Stories

The year 2010 marked the first panchayat elections for Jharkhand. Though villages now had Panchayats, but the pace at which they worked was very slow. Lack of institutional capacity, coupled with insufficient devolution of funds, restricted the effective functioning of the panchayats.

Women in Bandih village, were allowed to defecate only at dawn and after dusk. The nearest bushy area where they could get some respite from the onlookers’ intrusive eyes and pervasive remarks was three kilometers away from their huts.

Three months of back-breaking work under the scorching sun and lashing rains, on a piece of four acres of upland to grow paddy. With that effort, at the end of each monsoon, Basanti’s reward would be roughly 35 quintals of paddy. Her 0.4 acre homestead would help her grow maize, worth Rs. 6,000.

According to National Family Health Survey more than 68% of the women in Bastar are anaemic. Most women belong to the Gond tribes, followed closely by the Halba and Dhurua tribes.

“Mera beta chala gya hai, tu bhi apne ghar ja. Ye zameen mai apni beti ke naam kar dungi” said her mother-in-law after Ramesh’s death. But […]

“If you want to stay here, you need to take care of Maa. She is ill and needs care and medication. You will have to manage […]

Rising early, heading to the bushes to answer nature’s call, cooking, husband’s farm, working in others’ farm as labourer, MGNREGA job-site, ration shop, village well, forest, […]

I live in the Jamudiha village in the Keonjhar district of Odisha. My village is an archetypical representation of deprivation in this area: rocky landscape, little cultivable land, rain-fed agriculture, high distress migration and desperate labour work in the mines. I am from the Bhuyan tribe, which means ‘children of the soil’. Some believe that our ancestors sprang out of ‘Mother Earth’ miraculously and thus the name.