Stories

What self-reliance looks like, village by village.

Real episodes from the communities our partners walk with, from a Himalayan glacier in Ladakh to a millet field in Karnataka. Each is drawn from our partners' own reports and field notes, and each names its source.

Forests

Chaupal · Chhattisgarh

262 village councils, 88,096 hectares of forest

In Surguja district, Chaupal helped 262 Gram Sabhas claim their legal rights over the forests they have always lived with. All 262 received them. Among the Pahadi Korwa, one of India's most vulnerable tribal groups, Chaupal mapped the land of 1,873 households; 1,480 have received individual titles. "It is much more than just the document of land ownership," Chaupal writes. "It's a journey of regaining self-respect."

Surguja district, Chhattisgarh

Water

Leh Nutrition Project · Ladakh

A glacier built by hand

In 2022, LNP worked with the semi-nomadic villages of Tsaga and Mudh in Changthang to build cascade artificial glaciers, stone walls that freeze winter streams so the water melts into the fields in spring. In Mudh, older structures had been swept away by the flash floods of 2010. When Tsaga's first watering fell short, village youth insisted on a say, and four of them were elected to the water committee.

2022 · Changthang, Ladakh

Health

PRO RURAL · Nagaland

"The first time a doctor and nurse have come"

In Peren district, families once carried the sick on bamboo stretchers for more than six hours to reach a health centre, only to find no doctor there. In August 2024 PRO RURAL's mobile health team set out for eight villages of Nsong Circle. The doctor saw an average of 107 patients a day; 323 in all were screened and treated. Villagers said it was the first time in their village's history that a doctor and nurse had come.

2024 · Peren district, Nagaland

Children

Samarpan · Jharkhand

From the mica mines to the classroom

Samarpan began as a campaign by a group of young people in Koderma to free children working in the district's illegal mica mines and bring them into school. The work has grown into crèches, libraries, scholarships and village children's forums. In 2022-23 alone, more than 1,250 children were enrolled in school, and more than 3,300 people were linked to the social entitlements due to them.

2022-23 · Koderma, Jharkhand

Nutrition

Vikas Samvad · Madhya Pradesh

Krishna's garden

Krishna Mavasi of Jhiriya Ghat, Satna, had two malnourished daughters. After a women's group meeting she planted a backyard vegetable garden, and her daughters grew healthy. During the 2020 lockdown she gave away 700 kg of vegetables to all 60 families in her village and 150 more nearby. "If I can help people by giving vegetables and eradicate curse of malnutrition," she said, "I don't need money."

2020 · Satna district, Madhya Pradesh

Seeds

VAAGDHARA · Rajasthan

"Our seed, our right"

At 60 seed festivals across the tribal belt in 2025, 9,454 people gathered to exchange 122 traditional seed varieties, and eight nearly extinct seeds were identified and brought back. Across VAAGDHARA's programme villages, 74% of farming families now sow only their own generational seed. The placard this farmer holds reads "Apna beej, apna adhikaar": our seed, our right.

2025 · Banswara and the tribal belt

Millets

Sahaja Samrudha · Karnataka

A women's mill brings millets home

In Teertha village, Dharwad, the Bibi Fatima women's self-help group runs a millet processing unit set up in 2022. Farmers from almost 15 villages now bring their grain there. Before, millet farmers sold their entire harvest; with a processing unit in the taluk, more millet is now eaten at home. The unit also buys from farmers in bulk and sells processed millets to towns and cities.

2022-23 · Dharwad district, Karnataka

Voice

VAAGDHARA · Rajasthan

"I didn't know I had the right to speak."

In Mangela Pada, during a special Gram Sabha, a 13-year-old girl raised the lack of a toilet for girls at her school. She was supported by her children's council and a member of a women's group. The issue was officially recorded, and three months later the Panchayat approved the toilet under the village development plan. Other children saw that the Gram Sabha is a place where their voices can be heard too. As one member of the children's council put it: "I didn't know I had the right to speak. Now I know I have the power to change."

2024-25 · Mangela Pada, Banswara

Livelihood

Samarpan · Jharkhand

Millet against drought

Recurring drought in Koderma pushes families to migrate. With Samarpan, women's groups in Jainagar block took up madua (finger millet), a hardy, low-input grain. 150 women became first-generation millet entrepreneurs, making flour, sattu, laddoos and nutrient powder, and raised their annual incomes from ₹25,000 to between ₹30,000 and ₹37,500.

2024-25 · Jainagar block, Koderma

Food

Chaupal · Chhattisgarh

One courtyard, then 84

Fulaso Bai, who has a family of eight, joined a women's group supported by Chaupal and planted a garden in her courtyard. "Within two to three months, vegetables from her own garden started reaching the kitchen." Her neighbours came to learn how. Today, 84 households in Amdi village have their own kitchen gardens.

Amdi village, Surguja

Childhood

Vikas Samvad · Madhya Pradesh

110 villages keep a promise

On 18 January 2018, Saharia families in 15 villages of Pohri block vowed not to marry their children before the legal age. A year later, residents of all 110 Saharia-dominated villages in the area said they had kept the vow. "My parents told me last year that they would like me to continue my studies and not plan my marriage anytime soon," said Sapna, a class 9 student.

2018-19 · Pohri block, Shivpuri

Cooperation

PRO RURAL · Nagaland

The chilli farmers of Nsong

For years, farmers around Nsong grew the famous Naga King Chilli but had no proper market for it. PRO RURAL helped them form their own cooperative. It began with 93 members and has grown to 172 shareholders, fully running since 2024, with a value-addition unit for chilli and spices opened nearby that October.

2024-25 · Peren district, Nagaland

Land

Sahaja Samrudha · Karnataka

An acre of their own

In Mattigatti village, a group of landless women labourers, the Sri Vinayaka Stree Shakti Sangh, leased an acre and farmed it together. They harvested eight bags of groundnuts and foxtail millet for their own homes. "We had sufficient grains and vegetables at home," they said, "while others in the village were seeking government support."

2021-22 · Kundagol taluk, Dharwad

Memory