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
How to develop divisible technology for the rural poor
There is a need to develop easily divisible technologies that do not need heavy investment, after taking into consideration social customs and cultural practices of rural users
Custard apple ushers in affluence to Maharashtra farmers
Farmers in Pimpari Dumala in Maharashtra have prospered so much by growing custard apples that they have spurned land acquisition offers to expand industrial estates
Digital push boosts incomes for Sundarbans’ organic farmers
A digital platform has helped women farmers living in the northern fringes of Sundarbans in West Bengal to sell organically grown indigenous rice and other produce directly to customers, helping them to book higher profits
Social entrepreneur sets Naga tribes on path of progress
In an underdeveloped part of Jalukie Valley in Nagaland, the church-based Rongmei Baptist Association has gone beyond call of faith to help tribal communities uplift themselves through development interventions
Bihar farmers taste success with sweet strawberries
Farmers in an Aurangabad village prone to drought and Maoist insurgency have defied scientific opinion, and cultivated strawberries successfully, boosting the local economy
Kashmir’s vegetable farmers reap rich dividends
Bringing more land under vegetable cultivation and using technology, farmers in Kashmir have made fresh produce available for the state in winter and for other states in summer
There’s more to horticulture than tomatoes, onions and potatoes
While the priority given to tomato, onion and potato (TOP) farmers by the Prime Minister is a welcome move, special attention must be given to smallholder vegetable growers, since horticulture provides a nutrition and income buffer to the rural poor
Purulia’s nachaniyas still dance to escape destitution
Exploited by their so-called masters, the folk dancers of rural Bengal have no option but to keep dancing and entertaining to escape poverty and destitution, shunned by society and with no help from the government
Rainwater harvesting is the best way forward for irrigation
As intensive agriculture spreads across India, there is an urgent need to encourage rainwater harvesting to irrigate multiple crops instead of the current unsustainable practice of groundwater extraction