-Livemint.com The production of ‘mahua’ is finally entering the formal economy as new initiatives seek to upscale this indigenous drink, selling it across the country and even the globe It is a cloudy morning in Nangur village in Bastar district, Chattisgarh. It is a settlement of a little over 400 families, considered fairly large in these parts. We make a bumpy journey down a narrow, unpaved road intermittently shaded by sargi (sal)...

-Livemint.com The capricious nature of groundwater has resulted in so much exploitation and overuse that we now have a consistent crisis. Presenting a roadmap for groundwater governance and information transparency using technology India is a groundwater civilization. Almost all Indians use groundwater, directly or indirectly, each day. This tradition goes back more than 2,000 years. India is criss-crossed with the most elegant wells that tap into the shallow aquifer. The oldest wells...

-Livemint.com Odisha is a front-runner in women’s land ownership, much of it owing to government policies from the 1980s. But has ownership led to empowerment? Surrounded by sun-drenched paddy fields interspersed with jackfruit and banana trees, Sanakusupadu is a hamlet in Odisha’s tribal-dominated district of Rayagada. Here, almost every married woman owns land. No matter how small the holding, land documents of the 62 households in this village bear the names of the...

-Livemint.com The tribal belt of south Bengal has become ground zero of a grim battle with an ever-increasing population of visiting elephants The elephants are here,” Jiten Singh declares without any show of emotion as we arrive at Tapoban (Madhyapara) village. About 65km from Kharagpur town, Tapoban is a tribal hamlet deep within the vast forested terrain known as Jangalmahal, in West Bengal. It is nearing dusk. Ordinarily, the village would be...

-The Hindu Business Line At an organic market in Odisha, middle-class consumers get to interact with the producers of their food and appreciate traditional knowledge systems One Sunday morning in January, I visited an organic produce market located amidst dense bougainvillea creepers and rows of trees, on the grounds of the six-decade-old Christian Hospital in Bissamcuttack, a town in western Odisha’s Rayagada district. In policy and public imagination, Odisha, particularly its western districts...