In the last couple of decades, India’s aim for industrial and infrastructure growth has led to its acquisition of more and more land, often by ignoring and sometimes bulldozing land rights of vulnerable communities. Some of these conflicts turn violent and violate human rights. However, there is no national database of land conflicts, and many…
Sixty-six-year-old Anarul Khan lives in a small village of Lauriya in one of Bihar’s most backward districts. The family lives in constant poverty in lack of any active income. One of the major sources of their income is pension that the elderly couple gets from the government. But the family living Below the Poverty Line…
Access to reliable support provides an extra lease of life to those who may be isolated or live on the fringes. Elderly, especially in rural India, hardly have any access to information due to lack of digital literacy making them prone to vulnerabilities. In his 60s, Uttarakhand’s Dhan Lal Pita could not even avail his…
A graduate from Warangal’s Kakatiya University, Damera Raju dreamt big. He put in hard work and efforts to crack competitive examinations with limited resources he had. “It was difficult to find access to competitive exams material but with support from DEF-IPLM programme, I was able to study hard,” he says. He appeared for various job…
DEF’s rural entrepreneurship-based smart village model Smartpur is growing with its extensive partnerships on ground across 100 locations in India. The project aims at bringing efficiency in daily lives under its six pillars—education, health, governance, finance, livelihood and edutainment. Under the health pillar, on April 3, a medical camp was held at Dharmarayudupeta, one of…
An Internet Saathi, Anuradha Gautam from Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa has made it a mission to empower women in her village. “I could not continue my studies immediately after I was married off in the first year of my graduation,” she says, adding she had to take a gap of a year before she was able…