-DNA If we observe closely, the women entrepreneurs who run a variety of local small businesses are drivers of the local economy in many ways. Never ending stretches of backwaters and lush green coconut groves welcome you as you drive through the southern Indian state of Kerala. It is the only state in India where the sex ratio is of 1084 females per 1000 males. At 92%, Kerala has one of...

-The Hindu Business Line Nine years after a landmark law empowering local communities, thousands of forest villages across India struggle to regain their traditional rights over resources and livelihoods Sundar Singh Rabha always carries a certain file folder. He holds it against himself in a hot tin car as it jangles along forest roads towards village Shalkumar, in a northern corner of West Bengal. His phone rings without respite. Every few minutes,...

-Hindustan Times A migrant labourer not long ago, 37-year-old Sitaram Majhi is now a successful farmer. As Odisha’s agricultural fields starve for water due to drought conditions this year, Majhi never had a problem watering his crop in Kharamal village in Bargarh district’s parched Paikmal block, more than 500 km from Bhubaneswar. Equipped with chahala – a small traditional water harvesting structure – and a vermi-compost pit the three-acre farm, on which he...

-The Hindu Business Line Rejuvenated, clean and hygienic, they are a sustainable alternative to tube wells As 35-year-old Dharma Devi lowers her bucket into the ancient, stone well to draw drinking water for her family, she grumbles about the quality of the water body. “This one is closest to our fields, so we have to use it. But look at the overgrowth of plants around it and the filth that can fall...

-BBC National Highway 44 is a road with a deadly reputation. Hyderabad: It connects India's north and south and has been blamed for the deaths of an alarming number of south Indian tribal villagers who live alongside it. One such village is Peddakunta, belonging to the Mahbubnagar district of Telangana, and lying adjacent to the highway bypass. Tiny Peddakunta is easy to locate because of its reputation as the "village of highway widows". In the...