India is one of the ten fastest growing economies in the world. It is also poised to be the youngest nation in terms of its population by 2020. However, India also has the largest number of illiterates in the world, at 37 percent of the global total. In the past...
The village of Sarpharwa in the East Champaran district of Bihar is home to Video Volunteer correspondent Tanju Devi. The village’s access to the basic necessities and amenities are reached through a journey to the nearest town Dongri. However, Tanju Devi and her community suffer as the journey on this...
Sumi Hunni Purti, 62, was an independent old woman from the village of Patrade in the state of Jharkhand. The last surviving member of her family, Sumi had been proudly sustaining herself with the Rs. 200 old-age pension that she was entitled to under the National Old Age Pension Scheme....
The residents of Dumnabad village of Jharkhand were a confused lot when they received a monthly electricity bill, for they had had no electricity in their village for a few months. The newly installed 10-Kv transformer, under the centre’s rural electrification scheme Deendayal Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY),...
A remote tribal village of Chhattisgarh has never seen electricity. While government schemes such as Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY), worth $11 billion, have visions to provide continuous power supply to rural India, the Parevachapa village in Pandaria district of Chattisgarh, a village established 16 years ago, is...
Gangu Paharia, a resident of a remote Jharkhand village was desolate when wild elephants ravaged his home last year. The elephants had destroyed everything that was dear to him- his yearly ration, seeds meant to be sowed for agriculture and his house. However, the administration of his district in Sahebganj...
Talomuni Soren, a resident of Mandu district, Jharkhand has not received any widow pension fund under the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) since her husband died a decade ago. To make ends meet, she works in the coal mine in Jharkhand along with her teenage daughter. “She used to go...
About 400 tea gardens workers from of Dooars and Terai regions of West Bengal joined a 10-day rally organised by the Progressive Tea Workers Union (PTWU) on January 5, earlier this year. The 390-km rally started in the village of Kumargram Sankosh and ended in the city of Siliguri of...
