The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) guarantees Indian citizens the ‘right to work’ for the purpose of ensuring livelihood security in rural areas. In this interview, VV-PACS Community Correspondent Tanju Devi describes how she challenged administration with her camera ensuring that Tinku Devi hailing from the twin villages of...
Katihar is a district of Bihar cradled by the Mahananda, Kosi & the most revered river of India, the Ganga. Mostly dependent on agriculture, the farmers of Katihar are inundated regularly by the very waters, which sustain them. In this interview, Reena speaks of the implications of living in flooded...
More than 300km from Raipur, the road that leads to Silphili village is anything but smooth – the drive is positively bone-rattling. The residents of this Chhattisgarh village are mostly small-time farmers; growing rice – people you’d least expect to be ‘smart’. Yet, Silphili, tucked away in Chhattisgarh’s border district...
India’s 28,000 wild elephants are cramped up in around 3% of its geographical area. A bare handful of areas have been declared protected areas known as elephant corridors. VV-PACS Community Correspondent Tanju Devi lives in Dumari, a small hamlet flanked by the forests in West Champaran, Bihar. This community has...
Reena joined the IndiaUnheard Community Correspondents’ team in Bihar in July 2013. She came in with a rich experience of working on issues in her community through the localJan Jagran Shakti Sanghatan (JJSS), an organization that mobilizes people to ask the government for better facilities. Since 2012, her work has...
As a tribal woman, Nitu Chakhia has spent far too many years of her life struggling for survival in the urban jungle of Bhubaneshwar. Several years of working with her people has convinced her that communities coming together ensures change. Odisha is a state that takes serious interest in its...
The Village Council Head, Sobitra Nagesh, from Chhattisgarh proudly declares his village is Open-Defection Free on camera. And one would believe him. But a short walk around the village Bansajhal and conversations with the residents exposes the lie that Sobitra blatantly said on camera. The most important objective of the Swachh Bharat...
Community Correspondent Dasarathi Behera shares how he got a working hand pump for 60 families: Makdiasahi is a tiny village in Deogarh, Odisha. The community comprises of about sixty families, most of whom earned their living by braiding & selling ropes made from material sourced from the ample forests of...
