
To give the (unseen) woman farmer a land of her own
The mahila kisaans of Bundelkhand are visible everywhere in the fields, but rarely seen in official policy. Khabar Lahariya imagines a world which places women farmers at the centre of agriculture policy rather than at the peripheries.

Voices of Rural India: A new initiative allows rural communities to tell their own stories and monetise them
By monetarily compensating its contributors, Voices of Rural India is creating an alternate revenue stream for those engaged in tourism, who have been deprived of a livelihood because of the lockdown.

As migrant workers prepare to leave megacities, fixing gaps in PDS and DBT will be key to preventing large scale unrest back home
The shramik trains can take a few thousand of migrant workers back to their home towns. For the rest, whose numbers will still be considerable, their main problem, as lockdown continues, will be hunger, not the virus, and a further deepening of existing social and income inequalities.

From Sholay to TVF's Panchayat, how the face of rural India has transformed in Hindi entertainment
TVF's Panchayat redeems the depiction of rural India by breaking out of the template perpetuated by the 1975 classic Sholay.

India has expanded food security net, made strides in education and sanitation but gender equality, health need more attention
In rural India, 36.52 percent population was getting a safe piped water supply in 2017 and it has increased to 40.50 percent in December 2019.

A battle for rights: Why a nagar panchayat in Chhattisgarh fought to reclaim its legal status as a village
Vishrampuri in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh became one of the villages to be declared a nagar panchayat in 2009. But this move took away the residents' rights under the housing welfare scheme and they were no longer entitled to benefits under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Decline in rural sales hits FMCG in 2019; revival likely by second half of 2020 but sector unlikely to achieve double-digit growth
To overcome, FMCG makers have introduced low unit price packs in multiple categories to make their products affordable and have also introduced multiple promotions and offers.

Digital India should be leveraged to transform rural areas: IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad
Digital India initiative should be leveraged to transform rural India and create avenues for those in smaller towns and cities, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Monday

Unsafe in border districts, sexually harassed and discriminated elsewhere, status of Indian women remain dismal, claims RSS report
According to a report on the status of Indian women, published by an NGO associated with the RSS, there’s a glaring disparity in wages between male and female workers in India with the unemployment rate higher among women between 18 and 30 years

Indian economy struggles to expand with rising unemployment rates, stagnant wages, poor female participation in labour force
The unemployment rate of both male and female in urban areas in unambiguously higher than those in the countryside.

Narendra Modi backs rural India to achieve target of $5 tn economy; Chhattisgarh's Chitloor has been exemplary with use of solar power in fields
A nondescript village in Chhattisgarh, Chitloor has been following the path laid out by Modi for ‘annadatas’ since 2016. Nearly 2,000 tribal villagers residing in the Bakavand tehsil of the 'Maoist-hotbed' Bastar district have been using solar power in their fields.

Nirmala Sitharaman presents Union Budget 2019 in Parliament; FM met with President Ram Nath Kovind before her speech
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents the Union Budget 2019-20 in the Lok Sabha at Parliament, in New Delhi today.

Improved business practices only way to make rural populace switch to less polluting cook stoves: Study
These stoves contribute to climate change through carbon emissions, deforestation and toxic air pollution, which contributes to poor health among users

Travels through the Hindi belt: For farm workers in Bihar's Darbhanga, seasonal migration to Punjab only hope of livelihood
Thousands of villagers from Bihar’s Darbhanga district migrate around March-end to work as labourers in Punjab’s wheat fields, where they toil away for over a month.

The walk for water
The household consumer brand Nilkamal has launched the innovative “Water Wheel” in partnership with an American firm, Wello.

Invisible Women, Visible Work: P Sainath's photos document the labour and lives of Indian rural women
The exhibition, documenting the ‘astonishing labour that poor women put in every day of their lives and the gigantic – yet unacknowledged – contribution they make to national economy’ was first inaugurated in the winter of 2002 at a conference of All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) in Visakhapatnam.

Unemployment biggest problem facing India, claims Nitin Gadkari; says government needs to create more opportunities
Union Minister Nitin Gadkari stressed on the need to think about how to create employment opportunities in rural and urban areas of India, saying unemployment is the biggest of the major problems facing the country

Clean drinking water, proper healthcare, access to good roadways and electricity still a concern in rural India, says report
Rural India remains 'unlit' and without clean drinking water, proper healthcare, access to good roadways

Primary health centres across India fall short by 24-38% of medical personnel, reveals CAG report
There is a 24%-38% shortfall in the availability of medical personnel at primary health centres, sub centres, and community health centres in 28 states/union territories of India, according to the latest audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India.

Over 43,000 villages lack mobile services: Taking stock of wireless connectivity across India in six charts
Telecom minister Manoj Sinha says that the top Indian states that lack mobile connectivity include those affected by left wing extremism (LWE).