Rural India is home of the original gig-economy worker. Enterprising villagers hop from tilling fields to tending shops, to door-to-door selling each day. Read the latest trends in micro-enterprises, rural start-ups and the shifting livelihoods of India’s villagers.
Livelihoods
Ills of eucalyptus drive Odisha tribals back to legacy crops
In southern Odisha farmers are switching from water-guzzling eucalyptus trees to diversified farming of traditional crops to boost soil fertility, crop yield, household income and dietary diversity.
To buy supplies, millet is money in Koraput’s barter system in Odisha
Women across tribal villages store mandia or finger millets in large containers and take out small portions throughout the year for soap, oil, vegetables, dried fish, tobacco and the like
Wakhoo: Journey from a sleepy village of timber traders to ‘Pencil Village’ of India
There’s a 90 percent chance that the pencil you’re writing with is made of slats processed in Wakhoo of south Kashmir – for it supplies more than 70% of wood to India’s pencil industry.
With nowhere to go, new year brings no cheer to landless Adivasis in Madhya Pradesh
Hundreds of Adivasis of Shukrawasa village in Madhya Pradesh stare at an uncertain future, risking eviction from the land they toil on but do not own.
Youth revive traditional black pottery of Manipur
In Nungbi Khullen of Manipur youth spin their wheels to revive the famed black pottery, selling their products across India and improving their village’s economy.
Rural women farmers plough their way to financial freedom
With a good push from self-help groups and NGOs, women who had never stepped out of their house without a man, are now earning a decent living and a lot of respect from farming.
Money blooms in India’s ‘flower village’ of Nikamwadi in Maharashtra
Farmers have almost abandoned water-thirsty sugarcane for more colourful, and profitable, crops – marigold and chrysanthemum – which fetch them around Rs 10 lakh a year.
How pearl farms bring money to a parched village in Maharashtra
While growing a crop is extremely difficult in drought-affected Marathwada, pearl cultivation becomes an alternative and viable source of income to farmers.
Manipur’s decreasing bamboo supply hurts artisans
Urbanization is claiming another ancient industry -- bamboo artisans – as sprawling construction means not only less bamboo cover but competing demands for it from scaffolding makers.