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
Adapting to market needs, weavers find financial success
In a remote village in Majuli island, women who have always woven their traditional garments, are using their weaving skills to make different products and earn more
Cash crop cotton loses lustre for Ganjam farmers
Lack of transportation and marketing facilities and exploitation by private money lenders have forced cotton growers to cultivate other crops despite cotton’s potential for good returns
Through multi-tier farming women minimize risks, maximize profits
Growing a minimum of three crops per season, women farmers overcome climate risks. Staggered harvest from multiple crops help then earn through the year and overcome market risks
Social entrepreneur improves rural livelihood opportunities
Quitting a lucrative job and taking up farming, engineer runs a farm-based enterprise, enabling women farmers to become rural entrepreneurs
Tribes hope to revive degenerated agriculture through development plan
Development eluded two remote Irula tribal villages in Western Ghats. Through Tribal Sub-Plan being implemented, they hope to revive agriculture that once kept them self-sufficient
Educated Dalits and Adivasis turn laborers during lockdown
With hard-earned and loan-funded professional and arts degrees, rural youth who lost their jobs during lockdown have taken up MGNREGS work in Bidar
Kadar tribes face repeated displacement for hydel power projects
For more than a century, Kerala’s forest-dwelling tribes have been repeatedly evicted for power projects. Faced with another displacement, the tribes refuse to give up their rights
Women weavers start successful eateries after job loss
When weaving became unsustainable, two enterprising women started selling idlis to patients and convalescents. Many women followed their footsteps, developing the area into a popular outsource hub
Farmers of Palghar protest against farm laws
In solidarity with protesting farmers in Delhi, men and women farmers of Maharashtra staged road blockades, demanding withdrawal of farm laws, and placed a charter of demands