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Jan 1, 2025 | 
villagesquare.in | Devashish Biswal
With a warm, ready smile and a big heart, Vimala Rathiya has been teaching young children in the local community anganwadi centre since 2011. But now she is educating her entire community on a different set of fundamentals. For years Rathiya, and most families of her village – Rampur – in the Kartala block of the Korba district of Chhattisgarh, relied on farming standard crops like paddy, driven by the government’s minimum support price (MSP).
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
villagesquare.in | Devashish Biswal
Science and technology interventions are one of the major driving forces for India’s development, and this is true of the rural economy as well. And a great example of how the digital medium can bridge divides is marketmirchi.com, an online initiative that has enabled more than 30,000 entrepreneurs, FPOs and self-help groups across India to successfully buy and sell artisanal and agricultural products using their computer or mobile phone.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
villagesquare.in | Devashish Biswal |Kiranjit Kaur Jhunir
To achieve the sustainable development goals, it is essential to have a community that is happy and healthy. This is also true for rural India, a sector governed by 2,55,000 panchayats that look after six lakh villages accounting for 68 percent of India’s population. The panchayat raj (local self-government) institutions thus play a pivotal role in ensuring that the developmental goals, including health, are met in the long term.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
villagesquare.in | Devashish Biswal
Preetismita Bhoi, a 15-year-old girl from Dhenkanal has been the talk of the town since May this year when she scripted the world record by lifting a weight of 76 kg in the 40-kg clean and jerk category in the World Youth Championships organised by International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) at Lima in Peru. Her foray into sports however began as a sprinter. Bhoi recounts her journey in her own words.
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Sep 14, 2024 | 
villagesquare.in | Devashish Biswal
While it’s a feat for India – an amazing 29 medals at the recently concluded 2024 Paralympics in Paris – the bigger feather in the cap is the number of rural athletes who competed to return with the highest-ever medal tally for our country. There has been an outpouring of love and admiration for our champions, whose stories will inspire many others to pursue sports and bring glory to the nation.
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Sep 13, 2024 | 
villagesquare.in | Devashish Biswal |Sudip Maiti |Aatreyee Dhar
In rural India, where access to clean and sustainable water storage is a perennial challenge, a groundbreaking innovation is underway. Imagine a water tank that not only stores life-sustaining water but is also designed using natural fibres like coconut, banana and flax – materials that are easily available and environmentally sustainable. Now this isn’t a far-fetched dream, but a reality, thanks to an innovative approach developed by Jalvardhini, an NGO, and RuTAG IIT-Bombay.
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Sep 12, 2024 | 
villagesquare.in | Devashish Biswal |Sudip Maiti
India, with its deep-rooted traditions, religious principles, and laws, has long upheld the belief that caring for ageing parents is a child’s responsibility. However, in a country known for revering its elders, a hidden crisis has surfaced: a growing number of older people are being left to fend for themselves as their children move to distant lands for work. Take, for instance, Chandanki village in Mehsana district of Gujarat.
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Sep 12, 2024 | 
villagesquare.in | Devashish Biswal |Sudip Maiti |Aatreyee Dhar |Shreekant Sahoo
Late afternoon, the shadows from the trees are long and the wind is cool. The men and women have put away the tools of their trade, and head to the village square. This is Bastar in Chhattisgarh — a land of simple tribespeople and years of Maoist insurgency that has kept the region’s growth vertices supine. The event is about to begin. Pilmani Baghel, a 29-year-old master trainer, draws faces of both a man and a woman on a chart.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
villagesquare.in | Aatreyee Dhar |Shreekant Sahoo |Devashish Biswal |Atray Karmahe
The monsoon is being blamed for causing a bit of a ruckus in Mirem, a quiet village of the Adi tribe on the banks of the Remi river in East Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. As clouds gather over the foothills of the eastern Himalayas and rain begins to fall, the community’s most precious possession becomes its most vulnerable.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
villagesquare.in | Shreekant Sahoo |Devashish Biswal |Atray Karmahe |Saurav Kumar
A busker creates a captivating show of traditional Sambalpuri music from Odisha’s hinterland at a village square, drawing the attention of locals and passersby. Three of his four sons join him in the performance. As Golak Paik’s skilled hands drum out intricate rhythms on the dholak, his youngest son adds a twist to their show with yoga-style calisthenics. At the end of the act, drenched in sweat and out of breath, Paik and his sons gather the coins and notes and head home.
