Long before the arc lights, Muhammad Kutty Panaparambil Ismail stood in a Manjeri courtroom, arguing criminal cases for a living. Born on 7 September 1951 in Chandiroor, Alappuzha, and raised in neighbouring Kottayam, he studied for his LLB at Government Law College, Ernakulam, after an undergraduate degree at Maharaja's College. 

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For two years, he practised as a criminal lawyer, a disciplined, procedural world of evidence and cross-examination. Then, almost on impulse, he walked away from it, choosing instead the far less certain pull of cinema. He would later describe himself, with some irony, as an "accidental" lawyer who had wanted to act all along.

Where the name came from

The man audiences know is not, strictly, a stage name in the theatrical sense. Mammootty is a hypocorism, a shortened, affectionate form of Muhammad, the first part of his given name, Muhammad Kutty. 

In Kerala's Muslim households, such pet names are common, softer, more familiar versions of formal names used at home and among friends long before anyone becomes famous. 

Mammootty simply carried his childhood name onto the screen and let it become his professional identity, so that the actor and the boy from Chandiroor were, in name at least, never really separated. 

It is a detail that distinguishes him from many stars who adopt entirely invented screen personas: his name records where he came from rather than erasing it.

The switch to cinema brought no immediate stardom. While still a law student, Mammootty took an uncredited role in the 1971 film Anubhavangal Paalichakal, followed by years of small, forgettable parts. 

It took the discerning eyes of writer M T Vasudevan Nair and director K G George to recognise something sharper in him, an ability to observe and inhabit character rather than merely perform it. Directors I V Sasi and Joshy gave him his first true leading roles, in Thrishna and New Delhi, before he broke through fully as a police officer in 1980's Athirathram.

The role that changed everything

The performances that made him a serious actor, rather than simply a leading man, arrived at the end of that decade. In 1989's Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha, again scripted by M T Vasudevan Nair, he played the folk warrior Chandu Chekavar with a moral ambiguity Malayalam cinema had rarely allowed its heroes. 

A year later, in Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Mathilukal, he brought writer Vaikom Muhammad Basheer to the screen from behind prison walls. Together, these two performances won him his first National Film Award for Best Actor. 

A second followed in 1994 for Vidheyan and Ponthan Mada, and a third in 1999 for his portrayal of B R Ambedkar in Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, an unusual choice for a Malayalam star working largely outside his own language and industry.

A courtroom returns, decades later

For an actor who had spent two years inside an actual courtroom, it feels fitting that one of the defining performances of his later career returned him to one, this time on screen. 

In 2023's Kaathal – The Core, directed by Jeo Baby, Mammootty played Mathew Devassy, a retired bank employee contesting a local by-election whose wife files for divorce and, in doing so, reveals that he is gay. 

The film unfolds largely as a quiet legal and social reckoning, produced through his own company, Mammootty Kampany, and it was widely read as a deliberate dismantling of the commanding, masculine image he had spent decades constructing.

That willingness to undercut his own legend defined his final creative decade. In Puzhu, he played a casteist father whose rigidity offered audiences nothing to admire. In Rorschach, he anchored a psychologically disorienting thriller built on obsession and grief. 

Bramayugam cast him in folklore and horror as the sinister Kodumon Potti, while Kalamkaval gave him a serial killer with no narrative redemption on offer. Few actors past 70, working in an industry that typically rewards its veterans with comfortable, familiar parts, choose this repeatedly.

That refusal to settle found commercial validation too. Bheeshma Parvam, released in 2022, reconnected him with mass audiences through a restrained, authoritative performance and became one of the highest-grossing Malayalam films ever made, opening the door to the riskier work that followed. 

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam and Kannur Squad, both from 2023, continued this pattern of playing ordinary, even defeated men, alongside honorary doctorates from the University of Kerala, the University of Calicut and Mahatma Gandhi University.

Recognising five decades of artistic risk

The Government of India acknowledged this long arc on the eve of Republic Day 2026, naming Mammootty a recipient of the Padma Bhushan. He was formally conferred the award by President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan on 23 June 2026, twenty-eight years after his Padma Shri. 

For an artist who never gave up his childhood name, the honour closed a long loop: recognition for never treating stardom as a reason to stop taking risks, or to stop being, in some essential way, Muhammad Kutty from Chandiroor.

Sources

'Mammootty's Padma Bhushan honours a career built on constant reinvention': for Onmanorama, Published on January 25, 2026 

'Padma Awards 2026: Mammootty, Madhavan among film stars to receive civilian honours': by Somya Mehta, for Khaleej Times, Published on June 9, 2026

''Kaathal – The Core' review: This Mammootty-starrer is revolutionary in every sense': for The Week, Published on November 23, 2023

Plastic waste has become an everyday sight in many Indian cities. Rivers and ponds often carry discarded bottles, wrappers and other garbage, while public spaces slowly lose their charm under piles of litter. Cleaning up these places can seem like a task too big for any one person.

But in Uttar Pradesh's Rampur, a group of young volunteers proved that change can begin with just two people willing to get their hands dirty.

At the centre of this effort is 23-year-old Akash Yadav from Patwai village, whose determination has helped revive four Ganga ghats, remove over one tonne of plastic waste, and inspire an entire community to care for its surroundings.

When complaints didn't work, they picked up the waste themselves

After graduating from college, Akash was preparing for competitive exams. Yet every time he stepped outside, the garbage strewn across roads, ponds, and public places caught his attention. Even the sacred Ganga ghats had turned into dumping grounds.

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Wanting to do something about it, Akash teamed up with his friend Rohan Dev. They first raised the issue on social media and approached local authorities, hoping action would follow.

When nothing changed, the two friends decided to take matters into their own hands.

Armed with garbage bags, they began cleaning public spaces themselves, returning every weekend to collect waste from streets and water bodies.

Many people questioned their efforts.

"If the government couldn't do it, what difference will you make?" they were often asked.

But the friends kept showing up.

A two-person effort became a community movement

Their consistency soon caught people's attention. More young volunteers joined in, and with support from the Cleanup India Foundation, the initiative grew into the 15-member Cleanup Patwai team.

Over the past year, the group has revived four Ganga ghats, removed more than one tonne of plastic waste, restored ponds, cleaned parks, markets and other public spaces, and planted 1,000 trees across the region.

Perhaps the biggest transformation has been among the people themselves. Residents who once doubted the initiative now volunteer alongside the team, proving that positive action can encourage others to participate.

Today, Cleanup Patwai continues to organise regular cleanliness drives and is seeking support in the form of grabber tools, garbage bags, rubber gloves, and fishing nets to expand its work.

Akash's journey shows that solving environmental challenges sometimes starts with a few people deciding not to walk past a problem and giving others a reason to join them.

All images courtesy Akash Yadav

When schools disappeared, childhood disappeared with them. 📚❤️

In Jharkhand's mining belt, many children were forced to choose between education and survival. While countless families migrated in search of better opportunities, one engineer made a very different decision.

Nitesh Kumar came back.

Instead of building a career elsewhere, he invested his own savings, took loans, and created an 11,000 sq. ft. school to ensure children in his hometown wouldn't have to give up on their dreams.

Today, through Nav Gurukul, 200+ children—many of them first-generation learners—are receiving quality education in an environment built on hope, opportunity, and dignity. And all of it is made accessible for just ₹800 a month.

His story reminds us that real change doesn't always begin with policies—it often begins with one person who decides to return and make a difference.

💙 Would you like to see more affordable schools like this in every rural district of India?

❤️ Share this story to celebrate educators and changemakers transforming lives, one classroom at a time.

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In 2013 and 2014, Assam lost 27 rhinos to poaching each year.

Kaziranga National Park, which holds the world’s largest population of greater one-horned rhinoceroses, was at the heart of the battle. Organised poaching networks, difficult terrain and annual floods made protecting the animals an enormous challenge.

Less than a decade later, the numbers told a very different story.

In 2022, Assam recorded zero rhino poaching for the first time since 1977, making it the state’s first poaching-free year in 45 years.

The milestone emerged from years of work by forest officials, guards, police personnel and local communities. Among the officers helping strengthen and sustain this protection system is 1989-batch IFS officer Sandeep Kumar, who currently serves as Assam’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) and Head of Forest Force (HoFF).

From reacting to poachers to stopping them early

Between 2000 and 2021, at least 191 rhinos were poached across Assam. After peaking at 27 deaths each in 2013 and 2014, the number gradually fell to three in 2019, two in 2020 and two in 2021.

A key change came from treating poaching as an organised crime that required coordinated intelligence and enforcement.

In 2021, Assam constituted a Special Anti-Poaching Task Force, bringing forest and police personnel together to investigate poaching networks and improve the flow of information between agencies.

Over the years, Kaziranga’s protection system also expanded beyond foot patrols.

Drones, CCTV cameras, thermal imaging and electronic surveillance began supporting forest teams across vulnerable stretches of the park. Wireless communication improved coordination between camps, while intelligence networks helped officials monitor suspected poachers and identify threats before they reached the animals.

As Assam’s Chief Wildlife Warden from 2023 and later PCCF & HoFF, Kumar became part of the leadership responsible for strengthening this larger protection network.

Frontline forest staff received better equipment and training, while closer coordination between the Forest Department, police and other agencies helped authorities respond more quickly to suspected poaching attempts.

Protecting a hard-won gain

The 2022 milestone did not mean the threat had disappeared.

One rhino was poached in Assam in 2023, followed by two in 2024. Authorities intensified enforcement through measures including Operation Falcon, which targeted organised poaching gangs and helped foil multiple attempts.

In 2025, Assam once again recorded zero rhino poaching.

At Kaziranga, Field Director Dr Sonali Ghosh and hundreds of frontline personnel continue this work. Women forest guards, including members of the Van Durgas, patrol vulnerable areas and help gather intelligence from communities around the park.

Local residents and youth also form an important part of the protection network, sharing information about suspicious movement around villages bordering the reserve.

The gains extend beyond poaching numbers.

According to the 2022 census, Kaziranga’s rhino population stood at 2,613, up from 2,048 in 2009.

A little over a decade ago, Assam was losing as many as 27 rhinos to poachers in a single year. It has since recorded two zero-poaching years, in 2022 and 2025.

For Sandeep Kumar and the many officers, guards, police personnel and communities carrying this work forward, the transformation reflects what sustained conservation can achieve when intelligence, technology, enforcement and local participation work together.

Sources:

‘How Assam Achieved Zero Rhino Poaching in Kaziranga After Nearly 45 Years’: By Bhakti Kothari, Published on 11 June 2026

‘Sonali Ghosh: The keeper of Kaziranga’: by Pankti Mehta Kadakia, Published on 25 June 2026

‘Assam’s K9 sniffer dogs emerges as key force in Rhino protection efforts’: by The Assam Tribune, Published on 30 June 2026

"I touch my wife's feet because she's the Lakshmi of my home." ❤️

For Vikrant Massey, those words aren't a gesture—they're gratitude.

There was a time when Vikrant was one of television's highest-paid actors, reportedly earning ₹35 lakh a month. But he chose to walk away from comfort to pursue meaningful cinema.

The decision came at a cost.

Auditions replaced steady work. Savings disappeared. Even after delivering a memorable performance in Lootera, success didn't arrive overnight.

That's when Sheetal Thakur became his greatest strength.

The two met through a mutual friend and later worked together on Broken But Beautiful, where friendship gradually turned into love.

During one of the toughest phases of his career, when finances were tight, Sheetal quietly supported him for months, giving him pocket money and standing beside him through every rejection. She believed in his dreams long before the industry did.

Years later, films like Chhapaak, Haseen Dillruba, and 12th Fail established Vikrant as one of Bollywood's most respected actors.

On 14 February 2022, they got married. Today, they're raising their son Vardaan and living the life they once dreamed of together.

Their journey reminds us that success is rarely built by talent alone. Sometimes, it's built by someone who chooses to stay when everything else falls apart.

Who is the person who never gave up on you? Tag them in the comments. ❤️

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When Akhil Iyer and Shriya Narayan moved away from Bengaluru after their marriage, they found themselves missing a familiar comfort from home. It was not something elaborate, but a simple plate of hot, buttery Davangere-style dosa that reminded them of their childhood.

The couple searched across Mumbai for a dosa that matched the flavours they remembered, but nothing felt the same. Instead of giving up, they decided to bring that taste to the city themselves. The couple left their well-paying jobs and stepped into the food business, despite having no prior experience in the industry.

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They began with a small 12-seater cafe in Bandra, with a definite aim to serve authentic dosas that carried the same taste and warmth they had grown up with.

Building a taste that took them back home

Creating that perfect dosa was not an overnight process. The couple spent months working on the batter, trying different methods and refining the recipe. They experimented with chutneys, faced failures, and kept improving until they achieved the flavour they wanted. To stay true to the traditional preparation, they even sourced cast iron pans from Karnataka.

With limited money and every decision carefully planned, Akhil and Shriya built their cafe step by step. Their focus was simple. They did not want to add unnecessary variations or change the dish. They wanted to serve authentic Davangere-style benne dosa, crisp on the outside, soft inside, and finished with generous ghee.

Their efforts soon started drawing attention. People came not just for the food but for the feeling it brought back. A meal that reminded many customers of family kitchens, hometowns, and old memories became the cafe’s identity.

Today, their cafe serves more than 800 dosas every day and has grown into a successful venture, reportedly generating Rs 1 crore in monthly revenue. Their journey received wider attention when Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma visited them. Anushka shared that the dosa brought back memories of her childhood.

For the duo, the success has always been about more than numbers. They started with a craving for something familiar and ended up creating a place where many others could find a taste of home.

What if one Apple computer could change the future of Indian cinema? 🎬✨

From a tiny garage in Mumbai with just one Apple computer, Namit Malhotra dared to dream beyond borders.

Instead of chasing opportunities in Hollywood, he focused on building world-class visual effects powered by Indian talent. That vision grew into DNEG, the globally acclaimed VFX studio behind some of cinema's biggest blockbusters, including Avatar, Dune, Interstellar, and The Odyssey.

Today, after contributing to films recognised with multiple Academy Awards for Visual Effects, Namit is setting his sights on an even bigger dream—bringing Ramayana to audiences around the world with cutting-edge storytelling and world-class visual effects.

His journey proves that global excellence doesn't have to be imported—it can be built right here in India.

💬 Do you think Ramayana could become the film that changes how the world sees Indian cinema?

❤️ Share this story with every movie lover and celebrate an Indian entrepreneur redefining global filmmaking.

#NamitMalhotra #Ramayana #IndianCinema #VFX #DNEG #Avatar #Dune #Interstellar #VisualEffects #IndianEntrepreneur #Hollywood #FilmMaking #PositiveNews #TheBetterIndia #Storytelling

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While the world watched the FIFA Final, something far bigger was happening in Prayagraj. One trophy vs 232,201 girls who discovered they could win - not just a match, but the belief that they mattered.

This was Toofaan Cup 2026 by Project Nanhi Kali.

A tournament where girls from villages, tribal communities, and cities in India discovered they could lead. Where families that once said no, now cheer the loudest. Where communities that once questioned, now celebrate.

Thousands of underprivileged girls play football through Project Nanhi Kali. 2,435 teams. 7 states. One powerful grassroots movement.

In partnership with @kcmahindraeducationtrustkc3309
@naandifoundation6595 @nanhikali

Watch the video. For this is what victory really looks like!

To know more about Project Nanhi Kali or support the initiative, visit www.nanhikali.org

Music Credits:

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Auto Clear Code: “Drag Race” licensed via Music Vine: VEWUMGHISFXBNJAO
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Title of Musical Work: A World Unknown
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Imagine checking the weather and seeing two different faces of India at once.

In one part, people are wading through flooded streets as rivers rise and homes take in water. In another, farmers are looking at dry fields and waiting for rain that still has not arrived.

This is already playing out during the same monsoon. Assam and Gujarat have seen intense rain and flooding, while parts of Andhra Pradesh have faced prolonged dry spells.

So how can one country have too much rain and too little rain at the same time?

The answer lies in how unevenly rain is falling across India. Some places are getting intense downpours, while others are seeing longer gaps without rain.

To understand why, The Better India spoke to Prof. Rajib Maity of IIT Kharagpur, an expert in hydrology, water resources and climate variability. We also referred to his latest research on changing rainfall patterns and hydroclimatic extremes in India to better understand the science behind this growing monsoon paradox.

Here's what he had to say about what this shift means for our farms, cities and water security.

Q1. How is it possible that one part of India is battling devastating floods while another is experiencing drought at the very same time? What is happening scientifically?

One of the biggest changes we're seeing today is that rainfall is no longer spread evenly across India. Instead, we're getting shorter bursts of very heavy rain in some places, while other regions are going through long dry spells at exactly the same time.

A warming climate has intensified what's known as the hydrological cycle. In simple terms, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. This is changing how much rain falls, where it falls, how intensely it falls and how long the gaps between rain spells last. 

As a result, we're seeing more hydroclimatic extremes, including floods, flash floods, droughts and flash droughts.

What's particularly striking is that wet and dry extremes are now happening simultaneously. For example, while many parts of peninsular India have recorded a significant increase in extreme rainfall events, studies also show that dry spells during the monsoon have become more frequent across the country. 

For farmers, these prolonged dry periods can quickly become a serious problem. They reduce moisture in the soil, put crops under stress and, when combined with rising temperatures, can dry the land out even faster. 

Research also shows that around 20% of India's land area has become increasingly dry, especially parts of the northeast, eastern and central India. At the same time, around 23% of the country has become wetter, including parts of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Ladakh and Jammu & Kashmir.

So the larger story is about how rain is being distributed. India may receive plenty of rain overall, but where it falls, how heavily it falls and how long the gaps between rain spells last are becoming increasingly important. 

Q2. Is climate change the only reason?

Climate change is a major driver, but several other forces also shape India’s rainfall.

Climate change has intensified the hydrological cycle, leading to more frequent and severe floods and droughts. Rising temperatures have also increased the amount of moisture the atmosphere can hold. That creates greater potential for intense rainfall.

But rainfall is also influenced by large weather systems, changes in wind and atmospheric circulation, urbanisation, land-use changes and local weather conditions.

These factors interact with one another, which is why rainfall can vary so sharply across different parts of the country.

Q3. Could you explain how the Indian monsoon actually works? Why doesn't rainfall spread evenly across the country?

India receives rainfall from two different monsoon systems.

The Southwest Monsoon, which runs from June to September, brings most of the country's annual rainfall. The Northeast Monsoon, from October to December, mainly affects the southeastern parts of peninsular India.

Even under normal conditions, rainfall has never been distributed evenly across the country because India's geography plays a huge role.

Peninsular India is surrounded by the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. The interaction between these water bodies, the monsoon winds and mountain ranges creates major regional differences in rainfall.

That's why the Western Ghats and the northeastern states receive some of the highest rainfall in the country, while northwestern India and areas on the other side of the Western Ghats receive much less rain because the mountains block much of the moisture carried by monsoon winds. These are known as rain-shadow regions. 

The research also points out that regions receiving lower rainfall tend to show much greater year-to-year variability.

So uneven rainfall has always been a feature of the Indian monsoon. What is changing is the intensity of these differences and the extremes that come with them. 

Q4. Why are extreme rainfall events becoming more common?

Extreme rainfall is becoming more common because several factors are acting together.

The biggest driver is a warming climate. As temperatures rise, the atmosphere can hold more moisture, increasing the chances of very heavy rainfall when conditions are favourable.

Along India's eastern coast, rainfall intensity has increased partly because of more frequent tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal, higher atmospheric moisture, stronger convective activity and the broader influence of global warming, which appears to be increasing rainfall intensity along the eastern coast at a faster rate.

Human activities are also contributing.

Take our cities. As trees, soil and open spaces are replaced by roads, buildings and concrete, urban areas become hotter. This extra heat can make the atmosphere more unstable and, under the right conditions, contribute to intense local rainfall.

Urban areas also produce more aerosols from vehicles and industries. These tiny particles in the air can influence how clouds form and, in turn, affect rainfall.

The research further suggests that changing rainfall seasonality and shifts in large-scale atmospheric circulation have altered regional precipitation patterns, contributing to more frequent and intense rainfall events across peninsular India.

In other words, several processes are coming together to increase the chances that when rain arrives, it can arrive very heavily and within a short period. 

Q5. How much influence do climate phenomena such as El Niño, La Niña, the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) have on why some regions receive excessive rain while others remain dry?

Think of these as large climate systems that influence where moisture travels, where clouds build up and when the Indian monsoon becomes stronger or weaker.

One of the most important is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which has a strong influence on rainfall across India. El Niño is often associated with a weaker Indian monsoon, while La Niña can favour stronger monsoon conditions, although their effects can vary from year to year.

The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is another major driver. Positive IOD events have contributed to increased rainfall in several parts of India, especially when they occur alongside ENSO.

Then there's the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), which affects both the timing and intensity of rainfall by influencing atmospheric convection over the Indian Ocean. Put simply, it is a large moving system of clouds and rainfall that travels through the tropics and can influence when parts of India experience particularly active or weak monsoon spells. 

The study also identifies the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) as important influences on India's rainfall variability.

These climate systems interact with one another and influence atmospheric circulation, moisture and monsoon behaviour. Depending on how they line up in a particular year, different parts of India can experience very different rainfall. 

Q6. Apart from global climate change, how much do local human activities such as urbanisation, deforestation, wetland destruction and changes in land use contribute to flooding and drought? 

Local human activities play a significant role and often make both floods and droughts worse.

Take urbanisation, for example. When vegetation and open ground are replaced by roads, buildings and concrete, less rain can soak into the soil. Instead, water runs quickly across these hard surfaces. If drainage systems cannot handle it, streets and neighbourhoods can flood. 

Urban areas also generate higher levels of aerosols from industries and vehicles. These particles act as cloud condensation nuclei, influencing cloud formation and altering rainfall patterns.

The research also highlights that changes in land use and land cover are major contributors to changing rainfall patterns and hydroclimatic extremes.

Vegetation loss creates another problem. Plants and healthy soils help hold moisture in the ground. When vegetation disappears and land becomes degraded, the soil can dry out faster and become more vulnerable during periods of low rainfall.

Wetlands and other natural ecosystems also help store water and slow its movement through the landscape. Losing them can leave an area more exposed to both flooding and water scarcity.

Q7. How accurate are India's current weather forecasting models at predicting localised extreme rainfall or prolonged dry spells? What improvements are still needed?

Weather forecasting has improved considerably over the years, but predicting highly localised extreme rainfall events is still a challenge.

Forecasters may be able to tell that a region is likely to receive heavy rain. Predicting exactly which neighbourhood, district or small river basin will receive the most intense downpour is much harder. 

That's because these events are influenced by many interacting factors, including large-scale climate drivers, atmospheric circulation, urbanisation and local convective processes. Capturing all of these accurately remains difficult.

The research also points out that better forecasting alone isn't enough.

A forecast can save lives only when the warning reaches people in time and authorities are able to act on it. 

Forecasts need to be integrated more effectively into disaster preparedness, infrastructure planning and water resource management. That way, communities can respond more quickly and prepare better for both floods and prolonged dry spells.

Q8. Are these simultaneous floods and droughts likely to become the new normal over the next few decades? Which regions of India are most vulnerable?

The research suggests that increasing climate variability is likely to continue, which means simultaneous floods and droughts could become more common not only in India but across the world.

Climate change is already increasing aridity across several regions in India too. The study identifies growing dryness across parts of northeast India, eastern India and central India. At the same time, wetter conditions have emerged in parts of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Ladakh, and Jammu & Kashmir.

But a region becoming ‘wetter’ over the long term does not mean it will receive steady rainfall throughout the monsoon. It may get an enormous amount of rain over a few days and then go through weeks with very little.

This is why India will increasingly need region-specific solutions. A place becoming drier will face very different challenges from one seeing heavier rainfall, even though both are experiencing the effects of a changing climate.

As warming intensifies the hydrological cycle, both extreme rainfall and prolonged dry spells are expected to remain major challenges in the coming decades.

The time has come for region-specific adaptation strategies that reflect how differently these changes are playing out across India. 

Q9. What should India do differently?

I think India now needs to shift from simply reacting to disasters to preparing for them well in advance.

Floods and droughts are becoming more frequent, and what's striking is that they're now happening at the same time in different parts of the country. That means cities, farms, reservoirs and other systems planned around historical rainfall patterns may struggle as the monsoon becomes more variable. 

There are a few key areas we need to focus on. Climate adaptation planning has to become a priority, alongside stronger disaster preparedness systems, better water-resource management and infrastructure that's designed to cope with more frequent extreme rainfall events.

India also needs to think much more carefully about how rainwater is stored and managed when a large share of the season’s rainfall may arrive within a few intense spells. 

The research also highlights the importance of protecting land from further degradation, improving vegetation cover, adopting more sustainable land-use practices, strengthening ecosystem resilience and integrating climate adaptation into long-term development planning.

Q10. If you could recommend three scientific priorities for policymakers, city planners and farmers to prepare for this new pattern of weather extremes, what would they be?

I would focus on three priorities.

First, improve climate monitoring and forecasting.

The better we understand how rainfall patterns are changing, the better we can prepare communities for floods and droughts before they happen.

Second, build climate-resilient planning and infrastructure.

Our cities, roads, drainage systems, reservoirs and other infrastructure need to be designed for a future where extreme weather events are becoming more common, rather than relying on past climate patterns.

Third, protect ecosystems and promote sustainable land management.

Healthy forests, wetlands, vegetation and soils play a crucial role in regulating water, reducing disaster risks and improving resilience. Protecting these natural systems should be seen as a core part of climate adaptation.

Q11. Many people think more rainfall automatically means more water. But your research suggests that isn't always true. Why does more rain not necessarily translate into better water security?

A place can receive an enormous amount of rain within a few days and still face a water shortage weeks later.

Water security depends on more than the total amount of rain. What matters is when it falls, where it falls, how intensely it comes down and how much of that water can actually be absorbed or stored.

The research shows that rainfall is increasingly arriving in short-duration, high-intensity events instead of being spread evenly across the monsoon season. In fact, peninsular India has seen a significant increase in extreme rainfall events, particularly since 2001, while dry spells during the monsoon have also become more frequent.

When a huge amount of rain falls within a short period, much of it can rush into drains and rivers instead of slowly soaking into the soil and replenishing groundwater. Then, if several dry weeks follow, the same place that recently experienced flooding can begin facing water stress.

So, even if a region receives a large amount of rainfall over a few days, it may still go through long periods with very little rain for the rest of the season.

A region can therefore record ‘more rain’ overall and still struggle with flooded streets, stressed crops or water shortages.

That's why the timing, intensity and geographical distribution of rainfall have become just as important as the total amount of rain received.

This growing variability has major implications for agriculture, ecosystems, disaster preparedness and long-term water-resource planning.

India’s future water security will increasingly depend on how well we capture rain when it arrives, how effectively our landscapes can hold it and how prepared we are for the longer dry gaps that may follow.

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Every Bengalurean knows the cycle by heart.

The first heavy showers break the summer, the gulmohars turn green overnight, and for a week or two the city almost earns its old title of Garden City. Then the rain stops being a relief. Roads vanish under brown water, basements fill, and a scooter commute that should take twenty minutes takes ninety.

Six months later, those same apartment complexes that were pumping water out of their basements are paying in five figures a month to have it trucked back in. Borewells cough and go dry. The resident WhatsApp group fills up with polite, then less polite, requests to go easy on the overhead tank.

How does one city drown and go thirsty in the same calendar year?

The answer is almost annoyingly simple. Bengaluru does not have a rainfall problem. It has a rainwater problem — the water arrives, and the city has arranged itself, street by paved street, to get rid of it as fast as possible.

The rain isn't the issue. Where it goes is.

Bengaluru receives roughly 970 to 1,000 mm of rain a year — comparable to cities that never run short. The catch, as the people who study this point out, is that it falls on about 60 to 70 days and then has to last for 365.

A R Shivakumar has spent three decades on that gap. A scientist at the Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST) at the Indian Institute of Science, he is known around the city simply as Bengaluru's Rainman. As The Better India has reported, he has not paid a municipal water bill at his home since 1995 — the house, named Sourabha, runs almost entirely on rain he catches and stores himself.

When he was building it, Shivakumar did the arithmetic most of us never do. He pulled a hundred years of the city's rainfall records and found there was more than enough water even in the worst drought years; the problem was purely one of timing and storage. The gap between two good rains, he found, is seldom more than 90 to 100 days — so he built a set of rooftop tanks holding around 45,000 litres to ride out the dry stretch, positioned high enough that gravity did the work and no pump was needed.

His conclusion, from that earlier reporting, is the one worth pinning to the fridge: catch the rain wherever and whenever it falls, and if even half the city's homes were retrofitted with harvesting systems, Bengaluru might never face scarcity.

Instead, most of it runs off. As lakes, wetlands and open soil have been paved into roads, parking lots and slabs, rain that once soaked in now sheets across concrete and disappears down stormwater drains. By one widely cited estimate, the city lets around 23 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of rainwater run to waste every year — water that instead overwhelms drains built for far less, which is a large part of why the low-lying neighbourhoods flood. The city's own water board, the BWSSB, reckons that harvesting even half the rain that falls on Bengaluru would yield 10 to 15 TMC of additional supply.

Subhajit Mukherjee, a water conservationist known as the "Water Hero of India" who has guided more than 200 households across the country on harvesting rain through his RWH India Helpline, puts the problem in a single line: the rain that falls on your roof shouldn't end up on the road. Every rooftop, he argues, should become a source of water rather than a feeder for the nearest drain — a principle that holds whether you're in Mumbai, where he works, or Bengaluru, where the arithmetic is even starker.

Every monsoon, in other words, the city pours away several times what it will later beg for. And the first repair doesn't need a bulldozer. It can start on a balcony.

What the rain outside your window is actually worth

Before you spend a rupee, it helps to know what you're catching. Water experts use one rule of thumb, simple enough to run in your head: 1 mm of rain on 1 square metre of surface = 1 litre of water.

So work it out for a standard 2 BHK balcony, roughly 2 metres by 3 — an area of 6 square metres:

• A light 10 mm shower → 6 m² × 10 mm = 60 litres
• A moderate 20 mm shower → 6 m² × 20 mm = 120 litres
• A heavy 40 mm downpour → 6 m² × 40 mm = 240 litres

You won't catch every drop — wind, splash and evaporation take a share — but even at half efficiency, one good monsoon shower leaves you 60 to 120 litres in a drum. Across Bengaluru's 60-odd rainy days, that adds up to thousands of litres a year you'd otherwise have watched run down the drainpipe. Enough to keep a balcony garden alive through the dry months, wash the scooter many times over, or handle all your mopping and cleaning — none of it drawn from treated drinking water or a tanker.

That's the shift: the rain outside isn't a weather update, it's a delivery. Here's how to start receiving it.

What to buy right now: the Rs 1,200–2,000 balcony kit

You can't bolt a rooftop system onto a building you don't own — that's the housing society's job, and we'll get to it. But catching the rain on your balcony needs no permission and no plumber. This is the entire shopping list:

Total: roughly Rs 1,200 to Rs 2,000 — a one-time cost, and less than a single tanker load at the peak of a Bengaluru summer.

How to set it up and start using it

Once you have the kit, the whole thing takes an afternoon:

1. Fit the tap near the base of the drum, and stand the drum on the bricks or stand so a bucket slides under the tap.
2. Cover the mouth with the mesh or net, then close the lid over it. Water gets in; leaves, dust and mosquitoes don't.
3. Position it when rain is forecast — move the drum to the spot on your balcony that catches the most direct fall. You're not diverting anything through pipes; you're simply collecting what lands.
4. Use what you collect within a few days, before it sits and stagnates: for plants, mopping, cleaning the balcony, or washing the scooter or bicycle.

One rule is non-negotiable: untreated rainwater is not for drinking or cooking without proper filtration and disinfection. For everything else around the house, it's as good as what comes from the tap — and free.

The bigger question your drum will make you ask

Watch that drum fill during one heavy shower and the next thought arrives on its own: if my balcony catches this much, how much is landing on my building's roof — and where is all of it going?

This is where the real water is. And this is where Bengaluru has, on paper, already agreed with you.

Rainwater harvesting has been mandatory here since a 2009 amendment to the BWSSB Act — the legal push for which Shivakumar, as TBI's earlier coverage of his RWH work noted, helped shape. It applies to sites of 30 by 40 feet and above for new buildings, and 40 by 60 feet and above for existing ones, which is why most apartment complexes were required to have a system before they were ever approved.

The law even hands you the sizing formula. Required capacity works out to twenty litres for every square metre of roof, plus ten litres for every square metre of paved open ground — driveways, terraces and the like. For a typical 30×40 ft house, roughly 111 m² of roof and 46 m² of paving, that comes to about 2,680 litres of storage or recharge capacity. You don't have to hold all of it in a tank; you can send some to a sump and the rest down a recharge well into the groundwater.

The gap is enforcement. By reporting from the ground, only about one in five Bengaluru homes that should have a working system actually does. Plenty of societies installed something years ago to clear approvals and then let it silt up — clogged filters, pipes disconnected during a paint job, recharge pits never cleaned. The rule is met on the file and ignored on the roof.

Which means the useful thing you can do — even as a tenant — is ask. Walk the compound during the next shower and watch where the roof water actually goes: into a recharge well, or straight out the gate onto the road? Then take a handful of questions to your Resident Welfare Association. Do we have a rainwater harvesting system at all, and is it working today, not on the day the building was approved? When was it last cleaned? Does the water off our roof actually recharge our own borewell, or just vanish? How much did we spend on tanker water last summer? And — the one that tends to move a committee — what would it cost to simply repair whatever we already have?

That last question usually stings in the right direction, because fixing a dormant system almost always costs less than a single summer of tankers, paid over and over, year after year.

The other half: not just catching rain, but sinking it

Storing rain is only one side of it. The other is helping what you can't store get back into the ground — the aquifer everyone's borewell is quietly draining.

That's the case for recharge wells and soak pits: simple pits packed with gravel and stone that let rain percolate slowly into the soil instead of racing off as floodwater. Done at enough points across a neighbourhood, they do two jobs at once — they take the peak load off the drains that flood, and they push water down to the table that runs dry. Shivakumar's own garden pits raised the groundwater under his house dramatically within a year; the city version is the same idea, multiplied.

The build itself is modest. Through his Jal Tara Project, Mukherjee has volunteers dig pits of roughly three feet by three feet and four feet deep, then direct rooftop water into them to filter down slowly instead of sheeting onto the street. His ambition for a city is deliberately granular: ideally, he says, every hundred metres should have a soak pit — that, in his view, is how you stop rainwater turning into floodwater and recharge the ground instead. It's a Mumbai-tested model, but the physics travels, and there is nothing about Bengaluru's soil or slabs that would stop it working here.

There's a third lever too, and it's the one most within a household's reach: stop sealing the ground in the first place. Driveways, courtyards and gardens paved wall-to-wall in cement leave rain no way in. Swapping some of that hard surface for gravel, grass pavers or permeable blocks — or simply leaving a few patches of bare earth — lets water soak back where it fell. As Mukherjee puts it, the most important thing many of us can do is create more soil: remove the unnecessary concrete so the ground can absorb water again.

Bengaluru has the rain. It has the law. It even has the formula printed on a government website. What it mostly lacks is the habit — the collective decision that the water arriving free from the sky is worth keeping.

Perhaps the question the city needs isn't how to stop the flooding or where to find more water. Perhaps it's quieter than that: how much of today's rain will still be here next April?

That answer won't come from one balcony or one soak pit. It comes from enough people — in enough flats, on enough RWA calls — deciding the rain is too valuable to hand back to the drain.

Note: Untreated rainwater should not be consumed without proper filtration and disinfection. For guidance on rainwater harvesting systems and BWSSB compliance, residents can approach their local BWSSB sub-division office or the KSCST rainwater harvesting resources at IISc. A R Shivakumar's work and home system have been profiled by The Better India previously, including here and here. Readers who want to learn about soak pits, recharge and low-cost harvesting can reach Subhajit Mukherjee's RWH India Helpline at waterheroofindia@gmail.com.

Sources

The Better India: "Harvest Rain or Pay Higher Water Bill: DIY App by Bengaluru's Rainman Can Help!" (2019).

Deccan Herald: "Parched Bengaluru in no mood to harvest."

Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, official Rain Water Harvesting page.

Deccan Herald: "Experts suggest measures to tap into water from streets, open spaces."

BWSSB Amendment Act, 2009.

India Meteorological Department data, via Citizen Matters.

A classroom is where children spend some of the most important hours of their day. But learning becomes difficult when the space around them lacks basic facilities such as fans, proper seating, clean drinking water, and comfortable classrooms.

For students of Sarvodaya Inter College in Kishanpur town of Uttar Pradesh’s Fatehpur district, these were not just facilities on a checklist. They were everyday needs that affected their school experience.

During the peak of summer, many students faced uncomfortable classroom conditions. Several classrooms lacked adequate fans, while furniture and other basic arrangements also needed attention. Instead of continuing to wait for change, the students decided to raise their concerns themselves.

The young voices

The students of Sarvodaya Inter College belong to Generation Alpha, a term used for children born from around 2010 onwards. Growing up in a world where information travels quickly, these young learners found a way to bring attention to problems inside their own school.

Their demands were simple, which is better classroom facilities so that they could study in a more comfortable environment.

The students highlighted issues including the need for fans, proper furniture, drinking water facilities and improvements to the overall school infrastructure. Their concerns were about creating a better place to learn, not about seeking anything beyond the basic requirements of a school.

A different kind of protest

The students chose a peaceful way to make themselves heard. They gathered with posters and raised slogans highlighting the conditions of their classrooms. Images and videos from the demonstration soon spread online, bringing wider attention to their concerns.

Through their protest, the students emphasised the importance of a comfortable, supportive learning environment.

The protest also showed how young students today are more willing to participate in conversations about the spaces they use every day. Rather than accepting the situation silently, they approached the issue collectively and asked authorities to take action.

The change that followed

The demonstration caught the attention of education officials. The District Inspector of Schools (DIOS) responded to the students’ concerns and assured them that steps would be taken to improve facilities at the school.

Following the students’ efforts, arrangements were made for essential improvements, including fans and furniture. Officials also looked into other concerns raised by the students.

What began as a request from a group of schoolchildren became a reminder that students are not just learners inside classrooms. They are also people who experience these spaces every day and can contribute valuable ideas about how they should improve.

More than just fans

The story of Sarvodaya Inter College is not only about fans, benches or classroom repairs. It is about students recognising that a good education also depends on having a safe and comfortable place to learn.

Their effort was a reminder that every child deserves a classroom where learning is not made harder by the lack of basic facilities.

A fan may look like a small addition. A desk may appear like a simple piece of furniture. But for students who spend hours studying in those classrooms, these basics can make a meaningful difference.

The children of Kishanpur showed that sometimes, the first step towards improving a school begins with students themselves asking a humble question:

“Can our classrooms become better?”

And when they asked, people listened.

Every morning, milk finds its way into our lives without much thought. It’s poured into a steaming cup of chai, mixed into a child’s cereal, or used to make curd, paneer, and countless family recipes. It’s one of the few essentials we trust to be pure.

That’s why reports of widespread milk adulteration in Maharashtra were deeply concerning. Nearly 79 per cent of milk samples tested in the state reportedly failed purity tests, raising questions about the quality of a staple consumed by millions.

When IAS officer Tukaram Mundhe took charge as the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), he set out with a clear goal: stop synthetic milk, fake dairy products, and harmful chemicals from reaching people's homes.

A statewide drive for safer dairy

In just 30 days, the Maharashtra FDA launched an intensive crackdown that reached every corner of the dairy supply chain. From production units to neighbourhood shops, inspections were stepped up to identify those selling adulterated milk and dairy products.

The results were significant. Authorities conducted 360 raids, registered 235 FIRs, arrested 350 alleged adulterators, and sealed 274 illegal units operating across the state.

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The drive also demonstrated that no one would receive special treatment. Mumbai's well-known K. Rustom & Co. had its licence suspended after inspectors found serious quality and hygiene violations, reinforcing that food safety standards apply to every business alike.

25 transfers in 21 years

Known for his firm administrative style, Tukaram Mundhe has spent his career putting public interest first. In 21 years of service, he has been transferred 25 times, yet his approach to governance has remained unchanged.

His work against milk adulteration reflects the same commitment — strengthening enforcement, improving accountability, and ensuring regulations are more than just words on paper.

Every glass of milk matters

For most families, milk is an everyday essential, not something they should have to second-guess.

By taking on adulteration at such a large scale, IAS Tukaram Mundhe's efforts are helping restore confidence in a food that reaches millions of homes every day. It's an example of how determined public service can make everyday life a little safer—one glass of milk at a time.

"The hardest step is the one that leads you back to yourself." ❤️

Married at just 16, Rinki spent years enduring domestic abuse and dowry taunts. But one day, she made the bravest decision of her life—she walked away with her young son, determined to build a better future.

Starting over wasn't easy. Armed with little more than her stitching skills and unwavering determination, she slowly rebuilt her life from the ground up.

Today, Rinki has walked multiple fashion runways, transforming her story of survival into one of strength, confidence, and self-belief.

Her journey is a powerful reminder that your past does not define your future. No matter how difficult life becomes, it's never too late to choose yourself, reclaim your dreams, and begin again.

💙 What's one word that comes to mind after reading Rinki's story?

❤️ Share this story to inspire someone who needs hope today.

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How Rinki Rebuilt Her Life After Domestic Abuse
Single Mother Success Story | From Abuse to Fashion Model
Dowry Harassment Survivor Who Became a Runway Model
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Domestic Violence Survivor Story | Choosing Yourself Changed Everything

On the edge of a busy road near Bengaluru stands a banyan so vast it looks like an entire grove rather than a single tree.

Hundreds of kilometres away in West Bengal, another banyan has outlived its original trunk but continues to thrive through thousands of aerial roots.

In Telangana, towering banyans draw birds, bats and insects beneath their branches year after year.

And in Bihar, scientists have now confirmed that one banyan has stood for nearly 700 years, silently witnessing generations come and go.

Across India, these ancient giants are far more than landmarks.

Scientists classify mature banyans as keystone species — organisms that support entire ecosystems. Over its lifetime, a single banyan can feed, shelter and help sustain hundreds of birds, mammals, insects and other living creatures.

That idea has received fresh scientific support this year.

A recent study from Telangana's Kanha Shanti Vanam, along with the radiocarbon dating of Bihar's ancient Munger banyan, reinforces what ecologists have long known: protecting old banyan trees also protects the rich web of life that depends on them.

More than just shade

Earlier this month, scientists confirmed that a banyan tree in Bihar's Munger district is around 700 years old, making it the oldest accurately dated banyan (Ficus benghalensis) identified so far.

Unlike earlier estimates based on folklore or historical records, researchers used high-precision radiocarbon dating to determine its age.

The discovery is more than a milestone in tree science.

It shows how tropical trees can preserve centuries of ecological history while continuing to support wildlife across generations.

That role is visible in some of India's oldest banyans.

The Great Banyan, Kolkata

Perhaps nowhere is this more striking than the Great Banyan Tree inside the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden near Kolkata.

Spread across nearly 4.7 acres through more than 3,700 aerial roots, the tree no longer depends on the trunk from which it first grew. Although the original trunk died decades ago, the sprawling network continues to thrive, behaving less like a single tree and more like a living forest.

Its canopy shelters fruit bats, palm squirrels, barbets, bulbuls, parakeets, koels, mynas and countless insects.

Mosses, orchids, lichens and other epiphytes cover its branches, creating homes for spiders, reptiles and pollinators.

Every new aerial root expands this miniature ecosystem a little further.

Dodda Alada Mara, Bengaluru

Around 400 years old, Dodda Alada Mara near Bengaluru tells a similar story.

Its sprawling canopy attracts rose-ringed parakeets, white-cheeked barbets, jungle mynas, black drongos and Asian koels throughout the year.

As evening falls, Indian flying foxes arrive to feast on ripe figs before carrying their seeds across the landscape.

Palm squirrels, butterflies and honeybees occupy different parts of the tree at the same time, each relying on the same living structure in different ways.

What scientists found in Telangana

At Kanha Shanti Vanam near Hyderabad, researchers recently observed these ecological relationships up close.

Scientists Ananthaneni Sreenath and Rathinasabapathy Bhuvaragasamy studied six mature banyans growing among more than 1,000 restored plant species, including 26 native Ficus species.

Their study, published in the International Journal of Phytology Research (2026), found that when the banyans fruited between February and May, they became magnets for wildlife.

Common mynas, red-vented bulbuls, Asian koels, coppersmith barbets, golden orioles, rufous treepies, greater coucals, jungle crows and Indian grey hornbills all arrived to feed.

After sunset, Indian flying foxes took over, while three-striped palm squirrels fed during the day.

Unlike many forest trees that produce fruit for only a short period, different Ficus species fruit at different times of the year.

This creates a reliable food supply for wildlife throughout the seasons, helping maintain what ecologists call trophic continuity — the uninterrupted flow of energy through an ecosystem.

The researchers also made another important discovery.

Seeds recovered from bird and bat droppings germinated far more successfully than fruits that simply fell beneath the trees.

In other words, every bird, bat and squirrel feeding on the figs was also helping plant the next generation of forests.

Across quiet corners of the sanctuary, young banyan, peepal and Indian bat fig seedlings were already emerging naturally.

One tree, hundreds of lives

India is home to 115 recorded Ficus taxa, including 89 recognised species.

While many remain widespread, others, including Ficus beddomei, Ficus krishnae and Ficus anamalayana, are considered rare, vulnerable or data deficient.

Researchers say protecting this diversity also means safeguarding the ecological relationships built around these trees.

Across Gujarat, Kabirvad on the Narmada River supports riverine birds, fruit bats, macaques and countless insects.

In Andhra Pradesh, Thimmamma Marrimanu, whose canopy spreads across more than five acres, functions almost like a woodland, providing habitat for parrots, owls, reptiles, butterflies, bees and small mammals.

As India's oldest banyans continue to stand across cities, villages and forests, they remind us that conservation isn't always about planting new trees.

Sometimes, it begins with protecting the ancient ones that have quietly sustained life for centuries.

Sources:

‘Oldest accurately dated Banyan found in Munger, Bihar’: by Ministry of Science & Technology, Published on 3 July 2026

‘Bangalore Diaries: 400 Year Old Big Banyan Tree’: by Vinita Sanghi, Published on 23 March 2025

‘The keystone species: emphasizing the conservation of Ficus (Fig) species at Kanha Shanti Vanam, Hyderabad, Telangana, India’: by Dr Ananthaneni Sreenath, Bhuvaragasamay Rathinasabapathy, Published in January 2026

Some called her a burden.

Some even said, "Lock her inside."

But her mother chose something far more powerful—belief. ❤️

Diagnosed with autism at a time when awareness was limited, Ankita faced misunderstanding, stigma, seizures, and eventually lost her opportunity to continue formal schooling. Yet her story didn't end there.

With unwavering support from her family, she built a life filled with confidence and independence. Today, at 30, Ankita helps manage her home, stays active, and continues to prove that a diagnosis should never define a person's potential.

Her journey reminds us that the greatest barrier isn't autism—it's the stereotypes and judgments that society places on people who are different.

Every child deserves to be seen, supported, and celebrated for who they are.

💙 What's one thing you wish more people understood about autism?

❤️ Share this story to spread acceptance, empathy, and inclusion.

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Why Autism Acceptance Matters More Than Ever

On autumn mornings in Arunachal Pradesh's West Kameng district, families head into the forest carrying woven bamboo baskets. They are not looking for timber or firewood.

Instead, they are searching for a thorny shrub that has quietly shaped local food, medicine and trade for generations.

Known locally as Khagi, Erma, Shyein or Yarma, depending on the tribe and region, Zanthoxylum is a wild Himalayan spice whose tiny fruits release a sharp citrus aroma followed by a tingling numbness on the tongue.

Long before it found buyers beyond the mountains, it flavoured meat curries, chutneys and millet dishes in tribal homes. Its bark, fruits and seeds were also used in indigenous healing traditions.

Today, that same spice is helping protect more than 100 sq km of community-owned forests.

The transformation did not happen overnight.

Over the past few years, WWF India has been working with Indigenous communities and traditional village institutions to strengthen Community Conserved Areas (CCAs) across Arunachal Pradesh.

Community Conserved Areas are natural ecosystems such as forests, wetlands and grasslands that are voluntarily protected and managed by Indigenous and local communities. Their stewardship helps conserve habitats, wildlife and biodiversity while ensuring forests continue to support local livelihoods.

One of the strongest examples has emerged in the Mandala Phudung Khellong Community Conserved Area (CCA) in West Kameng district.

Here, villagers have linked the future of their forests with the future of Khagi.

By creating a community-led system to sustainably harvest, aggregate and market the spice, they have turned a native forest species into a source of income that rewards conservation rather than extraction.

Today, every kilogram of Khagi sold contributes towards forest patrols, biodiversity monitoring and community welfare, giving people a direct economic reason to keep thousands of hectares of forest standing.

A forest owned by its people

Arunachal Pradesh is unlike most states in India when it comes to forests.

Nearly 80% of its geographical area is under forest cover, while more than 60% of these forests are classified as Unclassed State Forests, remaining under the de facto custodianship of Indigenous communities and traditional institutions.

The state is also one of India's richest biodiversity landscapes. It is home to two global biodiversity hotspots, over a quarter of India's plant species, the country's highest mammalian diversity and more than 1,600 high-altitude lakes.

That community ownership makes local decisions especially important.

#DidYouKnow Zanthoxylum, locally known as Khagei or Zabrang, is an essential condiment in the Monpa area of Western Arunachal Pradesh. It is part of the local diet and used as chutney and pickle.

Read more about the partnership here: https://t.co/g8UGhkvUMM pic.twitter.com/U19AtBDUKs

— WWF-India (@WWFINDIA) March 21, 2020

Across Arunachal Pradesh, many villages have voluntarily established Community Conserved Areas, where Indigenous communities decide how forests should be used, which activities should be restricted and how benefits should be shared.

Unlike government-declared protected areas, these forests are governed through community consensus.

However, as communities gradually shift from subsistence livelihoods to cash-based economies, many traditional governance systems have weakened. Expanding roads and infrastructure have also fragmented fragile mountain habitats.

The CCA model offers a different path — one where economic opportunities strengthen conservation instead of replacing it.

The spice that was already there

Khagi did not arrive with a conservation project.

The shrub has always grown naturally across abandoned agricultural fields and adjoining forests around Mandala.

For generations, families harvested enough for their kitchens and sold the surplus in nearby markets.

Its history stretches back even further.

Communities in Kalaktang and Dirang once supplied the aromatic spice as tribute to the Tsona Dzong and Tawang Monastery. From there, it travelled across mountain passes such as Bumla into Tibet, becoming part of long-standing Himalayan trade routes.

Despite its cultural and commercial importance, however, the trade remained fragmented.

Families harvested individually, while traders from Tezpur, Guwahati and elsewhere purchased produce directly from villages, often offering different prices.

Only the outer husk had commercial demand. The seeds were usually discarded because there was no market for them.

The result was limited bargaining power, little value addition and no collective investment in the forests where the spice naturally grew.

Turning harvest into conservation

Things began to change in 2019.

Supported by WWF India under the Community Conserved Area framework, villagers organised themselves to collectively harvest, aggregate and market Khagi. The initiative also established direct market linkages with companies such as Dabur India, allowing communities to sell both the husk and the seeds instead of treating part of the harvest as waste.

The change went far beyond marketing.

Every August, as the harvesting season begins, families head into the forests to handpick ripe Khagi from shrubs growing across abandoned farmlands and adjoining forest patches.

Back home, the fruits are spread out under the sun to dry for several days before being sorted and sold.

Not every harvest reaches the market.

Many families keep aside a portion for their own kitchens, where Khagi has long been a staple ingredient. It is ground into chutneys with tomatoes, local onions, fermented soybean, chhurpi and chillies, adding its signature citrusy heat to rice, smoked meat and seasonal vegetables.

Today, that familiar seasonal ritual also contributes to protecting the forests that have sustained these communities for generations.

During the last two harvesting seasons, between 2024 and 2026, communities sold more than 10 metric tonnes of Zanthoxylum, benefiting over 200 households and generating a turnover of around Rs 39 lakh.

Around Rs 6 lakh was contributed to the Community Conserved Area Management Fund.

It is a cycle the community designed for itself.

"Our partnership with companies has made a significant difference by bringing a reliable market for Khagi right to our doorstep," says Phurpu, a member of the Mandala Phudung Khellong CCA Management Committee.

"Earlier, traders from Assam and other parts of the state offered different prices. Now, community members can sell their harvest within the village at a fair and uniform price through one transparent transaction."

The benefits, however, differ from one household to another.

Families in Mandala Phudung Khellong do not depend on Khagi alone. Most also cultivate kiwi, tomatoes, cabbage, beans and other seasonal crops, making the spice one part of a broader livelihood.

According to community members who spoke to The Better India, households that primarily depend on farming earn around Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 from Khagi during a harvesting season, while their annual farm income generally ranges between Rs 20,000 and Rs 30,000, depending on the scale of cultivation.

For families harvesting larger quantities, the returns are higher.

The additional income helps meet household expenses and purchase seeds and farm inputs for the next season.

Rather than replacing agriculture, Khagi has become an important supplementary source of income — one that also gives communities a direct stake in keeping their forests healthy.

Rules that came from the village

Income alone cannot conserve forests.

Alongside the new value chain, the community developed a management plan to protect biodiversity.

Working with the traditional Mangma institution and Panchayati Raj Institutions, the CCA Management Committee established rules restricting hunting, regulating resource use and prohibiting commercial extraction unless sustainable management practices had been approved.

Funds generated through Khagi marketing, together with technical and financial support from WWF India and the Forest Department, now support regular forest patrols and biodiversity monitoring.

For village elders, transparency has been just as important as income.

"For many years, every family sold Khagi on its own, and we never knew what price others were getting or where the produce finally went," says Pem Choijang, the Gaonburah (traditional village headman) of Mandala Phudung village.

"Different traders offered different prices, so there was little transparency and very little bargaining power. I have seen how things have changed over the years.

"We can now collectively market Khagi at a uniform price through a transparent process agreed upon by the Mangma and the CCA Management Committee.

"The income doesn't stop with individual households. It also supports forest protection, biodiversity monitoring and village welfare. That has changed the way people look at our forests. They are no longer just places where we collect resources — they are something we all share the responsibility to protect."

The system has also enabled communities to engage more actively in discussions around road alignments that minimise impacts on forests and wildlife habitats.

A forest worth keeping intact

The Mandala Phudung Khellong Community Conserved Area borders Bhutan's Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, creating an important transboundary conservation landscape.

Its forests provide habitat and movement corridors for species including the clouded leopard, Asian golden cat, marbled cat, Himalayan black bear, red panda, large Indian civet, Arunachal macaque, capped langur, goral and Himalayan serow. Pheasants have also been recorded within the landscape.

The forests are equally important for people.

Medicinal and economically valuable plants such as Swertia chirayita, Illicium griffithii, Rubia cordifolia, Paris polyphylla and Zanthoxylum continue to support traditional healthcare systems and local livelihoods.

We work to explore the potential of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) collected from the forests of Mandala Phudung Khellong CCA (MPKCCA) and establish market linkages. Six main NTFPs were identified as species & harvested for commercial purposes. pic.twitter.com/6CSYCwZKvJ

— WWF-India (@WWFINDIA) March 21, 2020

While formal impact studies are still underway, communities report more frequent sightings of wildlife, including red pandas, alongside visible forest recovery.

Just as important, conservation-linked livelihoods have strengthened local stewardship.

Income from sustainable harvesting is now reinvested into patrolling, biodiversity monitoring and implementing community rules.

 Instead of seeing forests only as land to be converted, communities increasingly see intact ecosystems as assets that continue generating livelihoods year after year.

A different conservation story

For decades, conservation has often been framed as a choice between protecting forests and supporting local livelihoods.

Mandala Phudung Khellong tells a completely different story.

The community did not introduce an exotic crop or replace forests with plantations. Instead, it built an economy around a species that already belonged to the landscape and had long been part of local culture.

That decision transformed Khagi from a household spice into a reason to keep forests standing.

This story is part of a content series by The Better India and WWF-India.

All pictures courtesy WWF-India

On 25 March 2010, in a hospital in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram, Sheeja gave birth to her daughter, Sandra.

Within hours, doctors delivered a diagnosis that would reshape the next sixteen years of her life. Sandra had microcephaly, a rare condition in which the brain does not develop sufficiently. Many children born with it do not survive.

Sandra did.

However, survival, Sheeja would learn, was only the beginning. What followed were years that blurred into one another, filled with hospital corridors, ICU rooms, ventilators, and the constant cycle of seizures that sometimes struck twenty times a day.

Medication was non-negotiable, expensive, and tireless. So was care. Somewhere within that cycle of urgency, Sheeja says she stopped recognising the life she had once imagined.

“It is a birth defect. We could not do anything, and we accepted it as fate. But it broke me,” she says simply, as if naming something that had taken years to understand.

At home, the strain intensified at first and then all at once. As medical bills mounted and caregiving became a full-time responsibility, her marriage collapsed. Her husband eventually left. But Sandra stayed, and so did the caregiving.

What Sheeja did not yet have words for was what she was beginning to see everywhere around her. There were other mothers, each carrying similar stories and each learning to disappear into them.

Early life before the diagnosis

Before Sandra’s birth, Sheeja’s life had followed a more ordinary pace. She studied in Thiruvananthapuram, attended Manchadi Government LP School and later St Xavier’s School in Peyad. She was drawn more to sports and social work than textbooks, and married during her degree course with the understanding that she would continue studying afterwards.

Sandra changed that trajectory completely.

The hospital became a second home. Days were framed in admissions and emergencies rather than hours or months. Over time, Sheeja completed her degree and teacher training, but formal employment remained out of reach.

She turned instead to tailoring and other work from home, supported at defining moments by her parents, Babu and Usha, who helped care for Sandra whenever they could.

That support, however, was not something she could assume others had.

“In government hospital wards, I began noticing a pattern that unsettled me more with each visit. Mothers were sitting alone beside children with disabilities. Some spoke of husbands who stopped coming after the diagnosis. Others had already been abandoned entirely,” she tells The Better India.

It was in these waiting rooms that Sheeja first met Vidya.

Slow disappearance of identity

Vidya had once been a mathematics teacher at a private school in Kerala’s Attingal. Her son, Aadi, is now nine years old and lives with cerebral palsy. The diagnosis did not just alter her family’s routine. It gradually ended her career.

“I kept thinking I would go back after a year,” she says. “Then the year became three, and then it became never.”

Work was replaced by caregiving. Her identity gradually narrowed to medical charts, therapy sessions, and hospital visits. When she eventually met Sheeja at a hospital, what struck her most was not sympathy, but recognition.

“People used to ask me what I did,” Vidya says. “Now they only ask what is wrong with my son. I became his condition instead of staying myself.”

It was a feeling Sheeja was beginning to recognise in herself as well.

Hospital corridors and the breaking point

The idea that would eventually become ‘Snehasandram Charitable Trust’ did not arrive as a plan. It accumulated, incident by incident, over years spent in hospitals.

There were moments Sheeja still returns to unwillingly. A couple she knew, overwhelmed by the prospect of lifelong care, attempted suicide along with their disabled child. The parents did not survive. The child did. Today, the child is being raised by the grandmother.

Another time, a mother she had met briefly handed her disabled child to Sheeja in a hospital corridor, said she would return shortly, and walked away. She went to the fifth floor and did not come back down.

“These are not isolated stories,” Sheeja says. “They are the ones you hear about. Most are never spoken of.”

What stayed with her most was grief and the absence of anyone consistently standing beside these mothers.

That absence became the foundation of Snehasandram.

Building trust for mothers alone

When she registered the Snehasandram Charitable Trust in August 2021, she made a decision that defined everything that followed — though its roots trace back further, to the years Sheeja spent moving between hospital wards. Membership would be open only to mothers raising children with disabilities.

She believed only they could genuinely understand one another without explanation.

The trust began with something deceptively humble. It began with work.

It started offering sewing machines, tailoring training, and livelihood support through activities such as goat and poultry rearing. The aim was not charity in the traditional sense, but stability.

“We never wanted them to depend on us. We wanted them to stand on their own again,” Sheeja says. 

Among the first to experience this shift was Shailey.

Shailey and the end of waiting

Shailey, 35, spends most mornings stitching blouse pieces in a small shared workspace supported by the trust. Her daughter has Down syndrome, and for years her life was defined by waiting. She waited outside special schools, waited for therapy sessions to end, and waited for a moment that belonged to her alone.

“I used to sit outside the school gate for four hours because there was nowhere else to go,” she says. “I could not leave her, and I could not work.”

The trust changed how she spent those hours. They became working hours. Slowly, she began earning enough to cover part of her daughter’s physiotherapy expenses.

“Last month, I paid for my daughter’s physiotherapy myself, without asking my father,” she explains.

Rini and the gradual form of abandonment

As the community grew, its response to crises grew with it. Members stepped in to arrange medicines when families ran out, source wheelchairs when mobility became urgent, and deliver diapers, food supplies, and other emergency essentials whenever they could. They held the network together not through formal structures, but through a shared sense of urgency.

It is within this growing web that Rini’s story sits. Her husband did not walk away overnight. He left gradually. First, by coming home late. Then, by taking a job in Kochi. Then, by sending money for a few months. Then by stopping contact altogether.

“He just faded away over time, and somehow that hurt more than if he had left,” she says.

Her son lives with autism, and like many women in the group, she came to Snehasandram after years of struggle rather than one dramatic collapse. What she found was a room full of women who already understood.

A growing community and an unfinished dream

Today, Snehasandram supports more than 200 mothers across Thiruvananthapuram and nearby regions, including families in the Kottoor tribal settlement.

The trust operates from a humble office in Pappanamcode, but much of its work happens in homes, hospitals and informal support networks.

One of its most unusual lifelines comes from donated newspapers and magazines, collected from households and sold as scrap, with the proceeds used for emergency support for mothers. Over time, individual donors and CSR funding have added to this ecosystem, though the need continues to outpace resources.

A 20-cent land donation in Thiruvananthapuram has now opened the possibility of a rehabilitation centre where children with disabilities can live alongside caregivers, allowing mothers to work without having to choose between earning an income and providing care.

The estimated cost, around Rs 40 lakh, remains out of reach for now, but the vision remains unchanged.

Sheeja Sandra and what survival looks like

Sheeja has since added her daughter’s name to her own. She is now Sheeja Sandra, a decision she describes as permanence rather than symbolism.

Looking at what has grown from hospital corridors into a network of more than 200 mothers, she does not speak in the language of achievement. She speaks instead of shared survival.

“We are mothers who have failed life’s test again and again,” she says. “But every time we manage to help one another stand, that is a small win.”

Outside her office, life continues in its uneven tempo, with calls from hospitals, requests for diapers, and urgent needs that cannot wait for planning. 

Inside, what holds it together is simpler: mothers who once sat alone in hospital corridors no longer have to do so.

Sheeja Sandra and what survival looks like

Sheeja has since added her daughter's name to her own. She is now Sheeja Sandra, a decision she describes as permanence rather than symbolism.

Looking at what has grown from hospital corridors into a network of more than 200 mothers, she does not speak in the language of achievement. She speaks instead of shared survival.

"We are mothers who have failed life's tests again and again," she says. "But every time we manage to help one another stand, that is a small win."

Outside her office, life continues in its uneven tempo, with calls from hospitals, requests for diapers, and urgent needs that cannot wait for planning.

Sandra, now sixteen, is a homeschooler studying under the Snehasandram Trust. While her seizures present themselves on the regular, she says she has support from all sides. “I don’t feel alone in this journey and neither does my mother. There are other women to support us and that’s what matters,” she said.

A typical day in Sandra’s life including classes, studies and lots of curiosity-driven research she conducts using books independently. “Books are non-judgmental and I find solace in them,” she explains.

For Sheeja, Sandra remains her pillar of strength — a constant reminder of how far she has come, not only in building a life for herself, but in creating one for the many other families who once had nowhere to turn. “I can’t believe we have come so far, but it is very fulfilling,” she says, before rushing back to the administrative work that keeps the trust running.

It is a small, ordinary detail, but it is also the whole story in miniature: the mother-daughter duo for whom a diagnosis once emptied a room of possibility are now, in their own ways, part of the reason that room stays full for many others. Inside, what holds it together is simpler: mothers who once sat alone in hospital corridors no longer have to do so — and neither, anymore, is Sheeja.

What happens when rain can no longer find the path it has followed for centuries? In Bengaluru, it floods roads instead of filling lakes.

Every monsoon, cars stall in waterlogged streets, homes flood, and the city slows after a few hours of heavy rain. Yet several lakes remain dry.

For retired Army officer Captain Santosh Kumar, the contradiction demanded an answer. If the city received enough rain to flood entire neighbourhoods, why was that water failing to reach its lakes?

The answer lay beneath roads, buildings and decades of urban expansion, inside Bengaluru’s forgotten network of Raja Kaluves. These ancient channels carried rainwater from one lake to another, protecting the city from floods while replenishing its water bodies.

Using British-era maps from 1923, Captain Santosh began tracing the waterways Bengaluru had buried.

Why Bengaluru’s rain stopped reaching its lakes

Captain Santosh retired from the Army in 2008 and returned to Muthanallur in Anekal Taluk, on Bengaluru’s outskirts.

His search first revealed that water was being illegally extracted from lakes in Anekal for commercial tanker supply. The extraction explained only part of their decline.

Between 2017 and 2019, he documented lakes and stormwater drains across the taluk. A pattern emerged. The lakes were drying because the channels that fed them had been encroached upon, built over or buried beneath concrete.

For centuries, Bengaluru’s lakes had worked as an interconnected system. More than 500 years ago, under Kempe Gowda’s city planning, Raja Kaluves guided rainwater through the city’s natural valleys. Water moved from one lake to another, slowing runoff, recharging groundwater and reducing floods.

As those links disappeared, rainwater began collecting on roads and in neighbourhoods.

The century-old maps that revealed a lost network

Captain Santosh searched historical records and found detailed British-era maps prepared in 1923.

Guided by the maps, he walked through villages and neighbourhoods, comparing old waterways with today’s landscape. He traced forgotten channels and documented stretches blocked by construction and encroachment.

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While studying the link between Muthanallur Lake and Bidaraguppe Lake, he identified four historic Raja Kaluves. One had lost all visible signs of its original purpose and had become an encroached stretch of land.

Captain Santosh worked with local residents to gather evidence and secure approvals from the Minor Irrigation Department and the Deputy Commissioner of Bengaluru Urban district. Together, they restored nearly four kilometres of the channel, reconnecting it to Battalakere Lake, a key link in the chain.

The monsoon that put the restoration to the test

The next monsoon brought proof.

Neighbouring areas flooded again. Muthanallur escaped the flooding.

The revived Raja Kaluve carried rainwater along its original course, directing it into interconnected lakes instead of roads and homes.

The result strengthened Captain Santosh’s belief that Bengaluru could recover much of its resilience by restoring the system it had inherited.

He expanded the effort across Anekal Taluk, helping revive 14 ancient lakes. Many are believed to be nearly 1,000 years old, with several dating to the reign of Rajaraja Chola I.

What a city can learn from its water

Bengaluru has an estimated 800 kilometres of stormwater drains, many altered by rapid urbanisation. Roads and buildings have expanded across natural drainage paths, leaving rainwater with fewer routes to move safely.

Speaking to The Indian Express in 2022, Captain Santosh said, “In natural settings, rainwater either gets soaked into the soil or makes its way to rain streams, lakes and rivers. If these are maintained efficiently, we will never face floods and calamities.”

His work points to a simple truth: a city’s resilience can begin by remembering the pathways its water once knew.

Sources:

‘Bengaluru: Restore connectivity between lakes to prevent flooding, says activist’: by Aksheev Thakur, Published on 21 September 2022

‘One-Man Army's Resolve Against the Devastating Flood in Bangalore’: by Keerthana Kantharaj

When Assam's devastating floods displaced over 6 lakh people, most watched the disaster unfold. Samay Gogoi chose to act. 🌊❤️

A former delivery partner, Samay now spends his days navigating floodwaters to deliver food, drinking water, medicines, and hope to families stranded in remote villages. He also rescues abandoned animals left behind during the floods. 🐄🐕💙

Through Project Golden Assam, he has already helped rebuild 62 homes, while continuing relief work using his own savings and earnings—proving that real change begins with one person who refuses to look away.

He may not wear a government badge, but every day, he's serving Assam with courage, compassion, and unwavering dedication.

Would you have done the same?

❤️ Share this story to salute a true hero of Assam.

#AssamFloods #AssamFloodRelief #SamayGogoi #ProjectGoldenAssam #FloodRescue #Assam #RealHero #Humanity #InspiringIndia #PositiveNews #TheBetterIndia #DisasterRelief #CommunityHeroes #Hope #ChangeMakers

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By 10 on a slightly warm Kolkata morning, the city was already in full flow. 

Tea stalls buzzed with regulars, buses groaned through traffic, and amid that familiar bustle, Ram Gopal Kothari had carved out some time to speak with The Better India. At 44, he runs Epic Assurance Services LLP, a business he built from scratch, but even today, his life feels ruled more by discipline than comfort. 

When he answered the phone, there was no rush in his voice. Just a calm that comes from having lived through far more uncertainty than most people ever see.

Kothari recently became the first Indian to complete a marathon at the Geographic North Pole, running 42.2 kilometres across floating ice at 90 degrees North. But when our conversation began, he was not talking about the marathon. He was talking about persistence. “I do not believe in giving up on anything I do. The moment you give up, everything ends there. But if you take one more step, something always changes,” he says.

It did not sound like a line prepared for an interview. It sounded like something shaped over years, in moments when things were falling apart, and there was no audience, no reassurance, only the next step left to take.

Because long before he stood on floating ice at the Geographic North Pole, he had already lived through years when even basic stability disappeared more than once. Rebuilding from zero was never a one-time effort. It became something he had to do, again and again, in different phases of his life.

Burrabazar mornings, where nothing felt unusual at the time

Born in 1981, he grew up in Burrabazar, Kolkata, in a modest home with an asbestos roof and shared facilities. It was a densely packed neighbourhood where daily life spilled into the streets, where children played outside because there was no space inside, and where routines were decided more by circumstance than planning. 

He does not recall it as a difficult childhood in the way outsiders might imagine it. For him, it was simply the world he knew.

“We never thought we were struggling; it was just normal life for us, and everyone around us lived the same way, so nothing ever felt unusual,” he tells The Better India.

His father worked in a small clothing shop, earning enough to keep the household going, while his mother ensured that education was never compromised. At the centre of it all was his grandmother. 

“My grandmother was the emotional anchor of our family. She always taught us to be kind, to stay patient, and to believe in something bigger than whatever hardship we were facing at that moment,” he says.

Those lessons found their way into everyday routines. He would wake up at 3 am to study before school, not because anyone celebrated the habit, but because it was simply what was expected. While the rest of the city was still asleep, he sat with his books, revising lessons before the day began.

Among the children he grew up with, he was eventually the only one to complete graduation. 

At the time, it did not feel like a defining moment. It became meaningful only years later, when he looked back and realised how many small, ordinary decisions had led him there.

A college experience that could have gone either way

He completed his graduation from Bhawanipur Education Society College in Kolkata, where he found himself among students from very different financial backgrounds. The transition was manageable at first, but after his first year, the college increased its fees, placing unexpected pressure on his family.

“My mother suggested I should consider shifting to another college,” he says. “It was becoming difficult for us at that point.”

But leaving did not feel like the only option.

Instead, he kept returning to the college administration, explaining his situation as honestly as he could. There was no elaborate plan, only the hope that someone would listen.

“I just kept telling them I cannot manage this fee. That was all I could say,” he explains.

It took several conversations over a few weeks, but the college eventually reduced his fees to an amount his family could manage, allowing him to continue his education.

Looking back, it was not a dramatic turning point. There was no celebration or grand moment of relief. Yet it became one of the earliest reminders that persistence, even in the smallest of battles, could quietly change the course of his life.

The first job and learning how the world actually works

Soon after completing his graduation in 2002, he stepped into his first job in the home loan sector, a world that immediately felt different from anything he had known before. The role demanded higher expectations, required stringent routines, and tied outcomes directly to performance. His early assignments involved distributing pamphlets at airports and metro stations, a task that tested not just patience but also comfort levels.

“I remember standing in those places thinking someone I knew might walk past,” he says. “It felt uncomfortable in the beginning, not because of the work itself, but because of perception.”

However, he stayed. Till March 2008, he worked consistently, learning the basics of sales, client interaction, and the discipline required to survive in a target-driven environment. Over time, he became more stable in his role. He got married and became a father, and life briefly took on a predictable shape that felt like it might continue.

Then came the 2008 global financial crisis, and that stability disappeared almost overnight.

When everything collapsed in layers 

The recession hit the financial sector hard, particularly loan-related businesses. Work slowed down, targets became harder to achieve, and eventually Ram lost his job.

“There were days when I did not know how to manage even basic expenses. It felt like everything around me was uncertain,” he says.

He joined HDFC Standard Life in July, trying to rebuild without delay, but that phase did not last long. Within months, he moved out and took what he describes as a difficult but necessary risk, starting a small clothing manufacturing business using a loan of four lakh rupees.

By May 2009, the business had failed. Around that time, Cyclone Aila struck West Bengal, bringing incessant rain and strong winds that tore through the city. In the asbestos-roof space where he had set up his small operation, water seeped in, soaking the fabrics he had invested in and leaving them unusable. What little he had managed to build began slipping away in a matter of hours. But even beyond the damage caused by the storm, he knew the foundation itself was fragile. “The cyclone made things worse,” he says softly, “but the truth is, I was already struggling to keep the business alive.”

“I had borrowed money, but there was no consistent income. Everything started collapsing together, one part after another,” he says.

A phase where even survival felt uncertain

A relative later helped him enter the general insurance industry, and for a short period, things improved. He worked long hours, rebuilt contacts, and started regaining confidence. But in May 2012, he was suddenly removed from the job.

That moment became the lowest point of his life.

He does not describe the following incident lightly. One day, overwhelmed by pressure and exhaustion, he went to a metro station with the intention of ending his life. There was no dramatic buildup, only a sense of having reached a point where continuing felt impossible.

At that exact moment, his phone rang. It was his wife, Shipra Kothari.

“I did not know where he was,” she says. “But I could sense something was wrong.”

What she said was not dressed up as long reassurance, but it was enough to express her support and change his decision at that moment. “I told him we will face everything together. We will survive this,” she says.

He remembers that moment as a pause that changed direction.

“That call brought me back,” he adds. “It did not solve anything immediately, but it stopped what was happening inside me, and gave me a lot of hope.”

After that, there was no recovery in the traditional sense. He began again from scratch. No office, no stable income, and no financial cushion. He worked from cyber cafes, preparing insurance quotations manually, and then travelled across neighbourhoods on foot to meet clients directly.

“I used to walk for hours because I could not afford transport,” he says.

On 22 May 2012, he formally established Epic Assurance Services LLP. It began as a small operation but celebrated the beginning of a long phase of rebuilding. “It was not big at all, but it was stable, and that mattered more than anything else,” he explains.

When travel began to redefine his sense of limits

As the business grew, he began travelling internationally. A trip to Dubai in 2013 changed his perspective on what life could look like beyond work. Travel became less about leisure and more about exposure to extremes of geography, climate, and human experience.

Over the years, he has travelled to 79 countries and seven continents, and that journey is continuing, led by a growing list of expeditions that include Antarctica, Greenland, Yakutia, and climbs such as Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Elbrus, each one adding a new layer to how he understands grit and life itself.

“I started enjoying doing things I had never done before,” he says. “It kept me inquisitive.”

Running enters life without planning

In 2018, a conversation about the Tata Mumbai Marathon led him to take part in it, and he decided to try it for the first time. He had no formal preparation for it and no athletic background.

“I was not fit at all, but I still went ahead and ran,” he says.

That single event introduced him to long-distance running. After that, he continued participating in them without training or professional guidance.

He explains, “I never trained like an athlete. I just kept running when I could, taking part in half marathons in Kolkata and other cities along the way. For me, it was more about learning from experience rather than formal training.”

The long attempt to reach the North Pole

After visiting Antarctica, he set his sights on the North Pole. What began as an ambitious idea eventually led him to pursue a marathon at the top of the world. He registered for the event twice — in 2024 and again for the Spring Marathon in 2025, held at 89 degrees North — but both editions were cancelled due to logistical challenges and unpredictable Arctic conditions.

Finally, in July 2025, he travelled through Svalbard as part of an icebreaker expedition.

On 13 July 2025, he stood at the Geographic North Pole. The marathon was conducted on floating ice, in repeated loops around a marked circuit, because a continuous route is impossible in that environment. The conditions were unlike anything he had experienced before, even compared to Antarctica or Greenland. The ice itself was unstable, shifting underfoot, and there was no fixed ground beneath.

The race began at 8:45 am local time after a short delay caused by weather checks. The temperature hovered around minus eight degrees Celsius, but the real challenge was not just cold; it was the combination of wind, moisture, and unstable ice layers that constantly changed under the runners’ feet.

He started strongly, managing the first set of loops with controlled pace, but as the hours passed and sunlight began reflecting off the Arctic surface, the ice began to soften. Water started pooling in certain sections, turning parts of the circuit into slush. Every step required adjustment, as the surface beneath him alternated between hard ice and soft, sinking patches.

“My shoes were filled with icy water, and at one point I could feel my feet going numb before sudden sharp pain set in as the cold shifted,” he says.

By the 26th kilometre, conditions had changed considerably. 

The track near the cruise support area had become unstable, and runners were forced to carefully avoid sections where the ice was thinning. Some participants slipped, others slowed down substantially, and the overall pace dropped.

He remembers that phase in detail, not as exhaustion alone, but as constant adjustment. Every loop felt slightly different from the previous one. There were moments where he had to stop briefly just to regain balance as the surface beneath him cracked or shifted unexpectedly.

By the 42nd loop, exhaustion was no longer the main issue. It was pain from repeated cramps, combined with the mental strain of continuing in conditions that kept changing without warning.

“I thought I might not finish, and there was a moment when stopping felt reasonable,” he admits. But he continued, moving forward with each loop, without thinking about the distance remaining.

“I told myself I had already come too far to stop,” he says. He completed the marathon after 50 loops, finishing in approximately 8 hours.

What remains after everything 

With that, Ram Gopal Kothari became the first Indian to complete a marathon at the Geographic 90 degrees North Pole. But he does not describe it as a final achievement, rather as one moment in a much longer sequence of events moulded by his tendency to push through.

“When I finished, I felt I had taken India there with me,” he says.

For Shipra Kothari, the journey is not defined by one day. “This is not just one achievement; it is everything he has been through and everything we have seen together,” she says. What remains is a life where stopping was always an option, but never the final decision.

All pictures courtesy Ram Gopal Kothari.

Over 6.5 lakh people have been affected by the devastating floods in Assam. Homes have disappeared underwater, crops have been destroyed, and thousands of families are spending their nights without a safe place to sleep. 💔

Yet, in the middle of this tragedy, ordinary people have become extraordinary heroes. Fishermen turned their boats into rescue vessels. Young villagers carried milk, medicines, and food through waist-deep water. The Indian Army, NDRF, SDRF, Assam Police, BSF, Fire & Emergency Services, and countless volunteers have been working around the clock to save lives.

Now it's our turn to help. The Better India, DonateKart, and ASHA are raising ₹5 lakh to provide emergency tents for 40 flood-affected families. Every contribution can help a family find safety, dignity, and hope again.

If you can, please donate. If you can't, share this story. Together, let's remind Assam that they are not alone. ❤️

#AssamFloods #FloodRelief #TheBetterIndia #Donate #IndiaCares #DisasterRelief #HumanityFirst #ReliefFund #StandWithAssam #Hope

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For decades, India's small farmers have faced a difficult cycle of declining soil fertility, rising input costs, unpredictable weather, and shrinking profits. Yet beneath their feet lies one of the world's biggest untapped climate solutions: healthy soil.

Recognising this opportunity, three entrepreneurs launched Varaha in 2022, a climate-tech company that helps farmers adopt practices that improve soil health while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In return, farmers can earn an additional income through carbon credits. Companies such as Google and Microsoft purchase these credits to offset their emissions, and a share of that revenue goes directly to the farmers.

Today, more than two lakh farmers across India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Côte d'Ivoire are part of this model. More than one lakh of them participate through Varaha's flagship regenerative agriculture and afforestation programmes alone. From the very first year, they gain an additional source of income while gradually restoring the health of their land.

The idea was born from a gap in climate finance

Long before Varaha was incorporated in 2022, its founders kept running into the same problem. Farmers were being encouraged to adopt sustainable farming practices, but there was very little financial support to make the transition worthwhile.

Ankita Garg had spent years working at Bayer and Monsanto, where she witnessed the stark contrast between well-resourced farms in developed countries and India's smallholder farmers, many of whom were struggling with shrinking profits and increasingly unpredictable weather.

At the same time, Madhur Jain was working with Precision Development (PxD), helping scale digital advisory services to millions of farmers across India. Vishal Kuchanur brought the technological expertise needed to build solutions that could work across vast and fragmented agricultural landscapes.

Together, they realised that India's farmers were sitting on an untapped opportunity.

Healthy soil naturally absorbs and stores carbon from the atmosphere, helping slow climate change. Yet India's nearly 150 million smallholder farmers remained largely excluded from the financial benefits linked to these environmental gains. Their landholdings were small and scattered, monitoring was expensive, and there was no system that could bring millions of farmers into the carbon economy.

"So we built a model where regenerative practices generate carbon credits, that credit income makes adoption worthwhile from year one, and improving soil fertility steadily lifts yields over a five-year arc," says Madhur Jain, CEO and co-founder of Varaha.

That idea became the foundation of Varaha.

The company's name is inspired by the Varaha avatar of Lord Vishnu, who, according to Hindu mythology, rescued the Earth from the cosmic ocean and restored it. For the founders, the name reflects their mission of helping farmers restore degraded land while improving their livelihoods.

Throughout 2021, the founders immersed themselves in understanding carbon markets and learning what would encourage farming communities to adopt sustainable practices. After months of research, Ankita and her co-founders formally incorporated Varaha in Gurugram, Haryana, in March 2022.

Within months, the startup had begun working with farmers across multiple states, building a model that linked healthier soils with better incomes.

How it actually works on the ground

Varaha's work begins with people.

Field teams, NGOs, and local partners visit villages to explain the programme face-to-face to build trust. They walk farmers through what changes they would need to make, how the process works, and what they could earn in return.

Once a farmer signs up, their land is mapped, and key details such as crop type and existing farming practices are recorded using Vann, Varaha's mobile application. Designed for rural conditions, the app works even in areas with patchy internet connectivity.

The next step is a soil assessment.

This helps Varaha understand what each plot of land needs. Depending on the condition of the soil, farmers may be encouraged to adopt practices such as reduced tillage, biochar application, agroforestry, or enhanced rock weathering.

Based on these recommendations, Varaha provides the support needed to help farmers make the transition. This could include supplying saplings for tree planting, biochar for soil application, or machinery required for reduced tillage.

"For a farmer, the practice itself isn't complicated — it's often a small tweak to what they already do. What was missing was someone to guide them through it and make the switch worth their while," says Ankita Garg, COO and co-founder of Varaha.

The work does not stop once the new practices are adopted.

Throughout the growing season, satellites capture repeated images of every enrolled farm. These images are analysed using artificial intelligence (AI) to verify whether the recommended practices are actually being followed.

"Our zero-trust dMRV stack replaces periodic, manual audits with continuous AI and satellite verification," explains Vishal Kuchanur, CTO and co-founder of Varaha.

"Instead of someone visiting a farm once a year, we're watching it almost every day, which makes the whole process far more reliable."

Once the farming practices have been verified, scientific models estimate how much carbon has been removed from or prevented from entering the atmosphere. These estimates combine real soil samples with machine learning, eliminating the need to physically test every individual plot.

The results are then independently audited against internationally recognised standards. Once verified, carbon credits are issued through global registries such as Verra, Gold Standard, and Puro.earth.

"The science has to hold up to global scrutiny because these credits are used by some of the world's largest companies," says Madhur Jain.

"But the model only works if it also holds up for the farmer and if the money genuinely reaches them."

Once the credits are sold, a share of the revenue is paid to the participating farmers. Payments are typically made from the first year itself. NGOs and field teams that helped implement the programme also receive a share for their work on the ground.

What does this mean for farmers?

For farmers, the benefits are both immediate and long-term.

In the short term, carbon-credit payments create an additional source of income. Over time, the farming practices themselves improve soil health, making farmland more fertile, productive, and resilient.

"Carbon credit income gives farmers a second revenue stream from year one, independent of the harvest, making the shift to regenerative practices viable without waiting for yields to recover," says Madhur Jain.

For many smallholder farmers, whose earnings often depend on a single harvest, this additional income can help reduce the financial risks of adopting new farming methods.

The bigger transformation, however, happens beneath the surface.

Practices such as reduced tillage, biochar application, agroforestry, and enhanced rock weathering gradually improve the soil's health. As organic carbon builds up, the soil retains more moisture, supports greater microbial activity, and becomes more fertile.

Over time, healthier soil can reduce dependence on chemical fertilisers and improve crop productivity, making farms more resilient to changing weather conditions.

In other words, farmers are not only earning money for contributing to climate action—they are also investing in the long-term health and productivity of their land.

If the model could benefit both farmers and the environment, the next question was whether it could work at scale.

Could it succeed across hundreds of thousands of farmers, spread across different regions, crops, and farming systems?

From a pilot project to a global climate platform

When Varaha was incorporated in 2022, the founders were testing a simple idea: could smallholder farmers improve their soil, reduce emissions, and earn an additional source of income at the same time?

The early projects focused on answering that question.

The team needed to know whether farmers would be willing to adopt new practices, whether the science would stand up to rigorous verification, and whether the carbon credits generated could meet international standards.

As the first projects delivered results, Varaha began to expand.

What started with regenerative agriculture soon grew to include agroforestry, biochar, and enhanced rock weathering. Each programme was designed to improve soil health while delivering measurable climate benefits.

The model's success in India also paved the way for expansion overseas.

Today, Varaha works not only across India but also in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Côte d'Ivoire, partnering with farming communities that face many of the same challenges, including soil degradation, climate uncertainty, and unstable farm incomes.

For Madhur Jain, one of the company's biggest milestones has been seeing multiple climate solutions move beyond experimentation to commercial scale.

"Today, much of our portfolio is operating at commercial scale. Our afforestation projects across India, Nepal, and Bangladesh are fully deployed, while our enhanced rock weathering programme in Madhya Pradesh is also running at scale. Regenerative agriculture is expanding across the Indo-Gangetic Plains, and biochar has recently reached commercial scale as well. That gives us confidence that these solutions can deliver benefits for both farmers and the climate across very different geographies."

The company's growth is reflected in its numbers.

Its flagship regenerative agriculture programme across the Indo-Gangetic Plains has already onboarded more than 10,000 farmers, with a target of reaching over 70,000 farmers across 800,000 hectares.

Its biochar initiatives have also moved beyond the pilot stage, with the first Puro.earth carbon credits issued in late 2024.

Across its 20-plus active projects, Varaha says it has:

• Sequestered more than 2 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent.

• Brought more than 1.1 million acres under regenerative agriculture, afforestation, biochar, or enhanced rock weathering.

• Generated over 2,600 jobs.

• Conserved more than 2.4 million litres of water through precision sustainable practices.

• Prevented the burning of 5.4 tonnes of agricultural waste.

To support this expansion, the company has raised more than $50 million. It has also secured a $30 million commitment from climate investor Mirova to scale its Kheti regenerative agriculture programme.

The company has also received several national and international recognitions for its work.

Among them are:

• Featured on TIME 100 Climate 2024 list as one of the world's leading climate businesses

• Listed on Forbes Asia 100 to Watch 2024.

• Ranked #2 in Asia Pacific Most Innovative Companies 2026 by FastCompany

• Winner of the IndiaAI Innovation Challenge (Agriculture category), hosted by India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, for building AI and remote-sensing expertise for agriculture.

• Recognition as one of the XPRIZE Carbon Removal Top 100 Teams for its work on scalable carbon removal solutions.

• Named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer for its climate technology innovations.

• Partnerships and carbon-removal purchase agreements with global companies, including Google and Microsoft.

These recognitions have helped strengthen confidence in the model among investors, partners, and farming communities.

What's next for Varaha?

Despite reaching more than two lakh farmers across five countries, the founders believe they are only getting started.

"Our ambition is to remove a billion tonnes of carbon by 2030. But for us, that number is really a reflection of something bigger — how many farmers we can support in making their land healthier and more productive," says Madhur Jain.

The company plans to expand its programmes across more geographies and farming systems while making it easier for smallholder farmers to participate in climate-positive agriculture.

According to Vishal Kuchanur, technology will be central to that effort.

"The challenge is not proving that these practices work. The challenge is scaling them across millions of farms in a way that remains credible, transparent, and affordable. That's where technology becomes essential."

For Varaha, the goal extends beyond carbon markets.

At its heart, the model is about helping farmers restore the health of their soil while creating a more resilient source of income. If that can be achieved at scale, the benefits could reach far beyond individual farms—strengthening rural livelihoods while contributing to the fight against climate change.

At just 16, Kapil Bhaskar built Nee Yosi, a platform that’s helped over 1.2 lakh people make more informed voting decisions.
Every candidate’s education, assets, criminal records and public affidavits - once buried in lengthy legal documents, are now available in one simple platform. Watch how one teenager from Chennai is making elections easier to understand, one voter at a time.
Loved the video? Stay tuned for more in #ForceForGoodHeroes, an extraordinary series on India’s unsung heroes that will inspire you to believe in the power of change.
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For more than a century, Cyananthus hookeri existed only in herbarium sheets and botanical records.

Then, on a windswept alpine slope near Chuna Valley in Arunachal Pradesh's Tawang district, a cluster of delicate purple-blue flowers changed that.

Scientists from the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) have rediscovered Cyananthus hookeri, a rare Himalayan flowering plant that had not been recorded in India since 1867. The discovery marks the species' first confirmed record in the country in 158 years and its first-ever documented presence in Arunachal Pradesh.

The findings have been published in the international conservation journal Oryx.

A flower lost to India's records

Cyananthus hookeri belongs to the Campanulaceae, or bellflower, family and is known for its delicate, bell-shaped purple-blue blooms.

The species was first collected in India by renowned British botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker during his expedition to Sikkim in 1867.

After that, it disappeared from India's scientific records.

Although the species continued to be reported from Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet and China, there was no confirmed evidence that it still survived within India's borders.

That changed during a field survey by BSI researchers Sudhansu Sekhar Dash, Subhajit Lahiri and Monalisa Das.

While surveying high-altitude meadows near Mago village in Tawang district, the team found the species growing on alpine grassy and rocky slopes at an elevation of around 3,600 metres above sea level.

The discovery not only confirms the plant's return to India's botanical records but also extends its known distribution to Arunachal Pradesh for the first time.

Why this discovery matters

The rediscovery is important not because the species was thought to be extinct globally, but because it had remained undocumented in India for nearly 160 years.

Botanical records help scientists understand where species occur, how biodiversity is changing and which habitats need protection.

When a plant goes unrecorded for decades, it becomes difficult to determine whether it still survives in the wild, whether its habitat remains healthy or whether conservation measures are needed.

🌿 BSI scientists Dr. Sudhansu Sekhar Dash, Dr. Subhajit Lahiri, and Mrs. Monalisa Das have rediscovered the rare alpine species Cyananthus hookeri C.B. Clarke after an extraordinary gap of 158 years from Chuna Valley, Tawang District, Arunachal Pradesh.

This is the first… pic.twitter.com/j3W2fWUm9f

— Botanical Survey of India (@bsi_moefcc) July 5, 2026

Finding Cyananthus hookeri again strengthens our understanding of Himalayan plant diversity and highlights the Eastern Himalayas as one of the world's richest biodiversity hotspots.

It also shows that many remote, high-altitude habitats still hold surprises. Because these landscapes are difficult to access, species can survive unnoticed for decades before being scientifically documented again.

A hopeful discovery

The researchers found only a small population of mature plants at the site, suggesting the species remains vulnerable.

They say long-term monitoring will be important to understand the health of the population and protect its fragile alpine habitat.

The team has also recommended further botanical surveys across the remote Himalayas, noting that other species missing from India's scientific records may still be waiting to be rediscovered.

After 158 years, this tiny purple flower is a reminder that India's mountains continue to hold remarkable natural treasures—and that there is still much left to discover and protect.

Source:

‘Lost for 158 years: A rare Himalayan alpine flower, missing since 1867, found in Arunachal’: by Sheetal Kumari, Published on 10 July 2026

When Sufiya Sufi first laced up her running shoes, she could manage only a three-kilometre run. She had no way of knowing that the small beginning would eventually lead her across the length of India, into the Guinness World Records, and towards a life far removed from the aviation career she had built over the previous decade.

After spending 10 years in a secure job, she chose to leave the profession behind and devote herself to endurance running. It was a decision that would redefine her ambitions.

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In 2019, she ran from Kashmir to Kanyakumari in 87 days, setting a Guinness World Record. Rather than letting that achievement stand on its own, she returned determined to better her own time.

Running from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, she covered 4,167 km in 68 days and 23 hours, breaking her own Guinness World Record. The feat also marked her sixth Guinness World Record, adding another chapter to a journey that has been influenced by persistence as much as endurance.

The road did not end in Kashmir

Finishing the Kanyakumari to Kashmir route was only one part of her mission. From Kashmir, she continued towards Karakoram, dedicating the journey to the brave soldiers of the Indian Armed Forces.

The route pushed her through intense heat, incessant rain, heavy traffic, and sharp mountain roads. There were days when pain and exhaustion became constant companions, but she stayed on course, covering one stretch after another until she reached her destination.

From a runner who once struggled through three kilometres to someone who has crossed India multiple times on foot, Sufiya’s journey has been defined by a willingness to return to the start and ask whether she could do better than before.

Her latest run is another answer to that question, proving that for her, the only benchmark worth chasing is the one she set herself yesterday.

"The tiger is a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage and that when he is exterminated — as exterminated he will be unless public opinion rallies to his support — India will be the poorer, having lost the finest of her fauna." — Jim Corbett

Long before camera traps, GPS collars and scientific monitoring, Jim Corbett issued a warning that still rings true today: if India loses its tigers, it loses a part of itself.

Every tiger roaming India's forests today is part of a conservation story that has taken decades to build.

Over the last 50 years, the country has pulled the species back from the brink through Project Tiger, the Wildlife (Protection) Act, stronger laws, scientific monitoring and the dedication of thousands of forest guards, researchers and local communities.

But today's challenge is very different.

Saving tigers is no longer only about increasing their numbers. It is about protecting the forests they call home in a country where highways, railways, expanding towns and human aspirations increasingly overlap with wildlife habitats.

This International Tiger Day, The Better India chose to move beyond census figures and policy reports to ask a more personal question:

If India's leading tiger conservationists could write one letter to a young person dreaming of protecting wildlife, what would they say?

Their answers draw on decades spent patrolling forests, working alongside local communities, combating poaching and shaping conservation efforts across the country.

Together, they remind us that saving tigers has always been about protecting people, forests and the future they share.

Dr Anish Andheria: 'Don't become an armchair conservationist'

For Dr Anish Andheria, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT), India's tiger story cannot be secured by awareness campaigns alone. Awareness, he says, only matters when it leads to action.

Speaking to The Better India, Andheria says that while conservation education has existed for years, the challenges in India's forests today demand a more informed and engaged generation. "Awareness by itself will not translate into anything unless it is put to use," he says. "Forests continue to be diverted in the name of development, defence and infrastructure. If there is hope, it lies with today's children." 

He believes young people have a greater opportunity than ever to shape conservation conversations, but warns them against relying on shortcuts. While social media has become an important tool for spreading awareness, he cautions against creating wildlife content without first understanding the science behind it.

"Wildlife is not a subject where you can depend on AI or simply generate information," he says. 

More importantly, Andheria believes conservation cannot happen from behind a screen.

"There is no point being an armchair conservationist," he says. "There is no shortcut to tiger conservation, or wildlife conservation for that matter."

Instead, he encourages young people to step outdoors. Join nature clubs. Walk through neighbourhood forests, wetlands or beaches. Observe local biodiversity before dreaming of distant tiger reserves. 

Andheria is equally clear that wildlife tourism, when done responsibly, can become an important gateway into conservation, but only if people change the way they approach it.

"I would always encourage children to visit national parks because tourism helps people connect with nature," he says. "But the narrative around tiger tourism has to change. People often think they're going only to see a tiger. Instead, they should learn about the entire ecosystem, the forests, the prey species, wildlife corridors, rivers and the communities living around these landscapes."

For him, that broader understanding is essential because the biggest threats facing tigers today go well beyond the animal itself.

"Young people entering conservation must understand issues like forest fragmentation, habitat degradation, poaching, illegal wildlife trade, and the impact these have on people living around forests," he says. "You cannot save tigers without protecting the landscapes they depend on."

"Children should grow up confident enough to tell policymakers that our natural wealth cannot keep paying the price for everything else," he says. "Our water security, our economy and our future all depend on healthy ecosystems. Ecology and economy are deeply connected."

His message to every young conservationist: "We have borrowed this planet from our children. When they, in turn, pass it on to the next generation, may they be proud to leave behind a world better than the one they inherited”.

Jose Louies: 'Fight for conservation, not the glory of it'

For Jose Louies, CEO of the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), understanding India's conservation journey begins with understanding its history. Jose is also the Chief of Enforcement and leads the division that handled wildlife trade control and litigation.

"If I could return to 1947," he says, "I would want India to see tigers not as enemies of people but as part of our national heritage and people and there would be no reward for killing/hunting tigers."

Even after Independence, colonial attitudes towards wildlife continued to influence public thinking. Hunting remained socially celebrated, and policies often rewarded the killing of predators. Tigers were viewed as trophies or threats instead of an essential part of healthy ecosystems.

Louies believes that mindset delayed India's conservation efforts before the country finally changed course.

His own journey into tiger conservation began years later while travelling through tiger reserves with his mentor, the late Ashok Kumar.

"There I learnt early that tiger poachers regularly infiltrate protected landscapes to kill the most enigmatic animals our forests hold," he recalls. "Tigers continue to be hunted for their body parts to supply domestic and international markets."

Those experiences shaped the direction of his career.

Despite India's remarkable recovery in tiger numbers, Louies believes one uncomfortable truth often goes unnoticed.

"Tiger poaching is far from over," he tells The Better India. "While you are reading this piece, a tiger poacher is active somewhere in the country, stalking a tiger or perhaps having already made the kill."

For him, rising tiger numbers tell only one side of the story.

The other unfolds far away from safari routes, where forest guards spend long days patrolling difficult terrain with limited resources, often risking their lives to protect wildlife.

Looking ahead, Louies believes one of India's biggest priorities should be protecting the corridors that connect tiger reserves.

These natural pathways allow tigers to move safely between forests, maintain healthy genetic diversity and reduce both conflict and poaching risks.

His advice to young conservationists is simple but honest.

"Fight for realistic conservation results, not the glory of conservation," he says. "This is not comfortable work. The rewards come through blood, sweat and hard work."

And if a teenager wrote to him asking how they could help save tigers?: "There’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders as there’s still a lot of work to be done. Educate yourself as much as you can about our wildlife and the conservation threats and successes that we have had. Whichever line of work you choose as your grow up, there’s always something you can contribute to ensure that India becomes a country where humans and wildlife coexist."

Dr Rathin Barman: 'Know the animal before you try to save it'

Some lessons stay with you forever. For Dr Rathin Barman, Director and Chief, Strategy and Liaison (North East), Wildlife Trust of India, one evening in Kaziranga National Park completely changed the way he looked at tigers.

An ageing rhinoceros had been killed. Deep inside the forest, a tiger was feeding on the carcass.

"As dusk settled, I couldn't understand what I was seeing," he recalls. "The tiger was so deeply inside the rhino's body that it appeared to be some strange half-rhino, half-tiger creature."

Then his eyes adjusted. "There he was," says Barman. "Completely absorbed in his meal. He had no idea we were only a few feet away."

There was no panic. No urgency.

"He ate with the confidence of a true king who knew he ruled the forest."

The team quietly stepped back, leaving the tiger undisturbed.

"That day my admiration became profound respect," he says.

Years later, that moment continues to shape his approach to conservation.

"The future of tigers is simple," he says. "Protect more forests. Set aside more land exclusively for wildlife."

He believes India's conservation efforts must resist becoming driven by commercial interests.

"Mass tourism and the relentless pursuit of tiger sightings must be regulated," he tells The Better india. "Wildlife conservation should never become merely a business."

Instead, he calls for greater investment in tiger landscapes, stronger habitat protection and deeper involvement of communities living around forests.

"We need to engage those who understand the culture and heartbeat of the locality."

Barman also wants young conservationists to confront an uncomfortable chapter of India's past. "The so-called elite once killed tigers for fun," he says. "They proudly posed beside dead animals."

Remembering that history, he believes, makes India's conservation success even more meaningful.

But the challenges are far from over. "The reality is less glorious than what documentaries show," he says. "Tigers today are under pressure from unregulated tourism and relentless development. Forests are shrinking. Habitats are becoming fragmented."

His advice to young conservationists is both practical and uncompromising.

"Fight for the rights of free animals," he says. "Be prepared to face failures in the system. Stand against people who work only for personal wealth instead of ecological wealth."

And before trying to save tigers?

"Know the animal first," he says. "Understand its behaviour and ecological needs. Then make that curiosity infectious."

Yash Magan Shethia: 'Every success carries a new responsibility'

Yash Magan Shethia, Director, Wildlife Landscapes at WWF-India, writes his letter as though he is speaking directly to every young reader.

He begins with a milestone.

In 2010, at the Tiger Summit in St Petersburg, all 13 tiger-range countries committed to doubling the global wild tiger population by 2022.

India achieved that goal, recording an estimated 3,682 wild tigers in its 2022 assessment. But, Shethia reminds us, the country's conservation journey began much earlier.

Around the time of Independence, naturalists estimated that India had nearly 40,000 tigers. As the newly independent nation focused on development, wildlife conservation received far less attention. Hunting continued, and organised shikar remained popular, he tells The Better India.

Tiger numbers declined sharply.

The turning point came with the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, followed by the launch of Project Tiger in 1973. In the years that followed, stronger institutions, better scientific monitoring and improved reserve management helped reverse the decline.

Today, however, India's challenge has changed.

Some reserves, including Tadoba and Pilibhit, support thriving tiger populations, while other suitable landscapes continue to have very few tigers.

One important lesson, Shethia says, came from the unsuccessful tiger reintroduction effort at Odisha's Satkosia Tiger Reserve in 2018.

"An ambitious programme to reintroduce tigers to the Satkosia Tiger Reserve in Odisha in 2018 ended when one of the two translocated animals died and the other had to be captured. This incident holds a key lesson, this being that the support of local communities is key to tiger recovery".

India's long history of coexistence with wildlife, he believes, remains one of its greatest strengths.

As tigers expand into new landscapes, local communities must become active partners in decisions around recovery, reintroduction and long-term management.

His final message is hopeful.

India's conservation journey has shown that the country is capable of learning from its mistakes, adapting its approach and improving over time. The next chapter, will depend on the same willingness to listen, learn and work together.

Sandeep K Tiwari: 'Conservation cannot happen without people'

For Sandeep K Tiwari, Chief of Conservation at the Wildlife Trust of India, one visit to the Sundarbans in 1996 changed the way he understood conservation.

Until then, protecting wildlife had largely been an ecological challenge. But in the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, he met families who had lost loved ones to tiger attacks.

"That experience impressed upon me a fundamental truth," he says. "Conservation cannot succeed without addressing the socio-economic realities of local communities."

It was a lesson that has stayed with him ever since.

Looking back, Tiwari believes one of India's biggest missed opportunities was failing to secure wildlife corridors before forests became increasingly fragmented.

As roads, farms and settlements expanded, many protected areas became isolated ecological islands. Tigers dispersing between forests often had to move through villages and agricultural land, increasing conflict with people while leaving populations cut off from one another.

For him, the future of tiger conservation lies beyond the boundaries of protected areas.

Protecting forests will always remain essential. But restoring the natural connections between them is equally important.

He also believes conservation has evolved in another important way.

Earlier approaches often excluded Indigenous and forest-dependent communities from decision-making. Over time, that weakened trust.

Today, community engagement, voluntary relocation where appropriate, compensation mechanisms and more inclusive conservation planning have begun to change that relationship.

"That progress must continue," he says.

Technology, too, has an increasingly important role to play.

Better monitoring, ecological research, genetics and behavioural studies are helping conservationists make more informed decisions than ever before.

But technology alone cannot save wildlife. "The people living alongside forests must be partners in conservation," he says.

Community-led initiatives, including Primary Response Teams that help manage conflict and support the safe movement of wildlife, show what is possible when local people become part of the solution.

As India continues to build roads, railways and other infrastructure, Tiwari believes conservation cannot remain an afterthought.

Wildlife crossings, green infrastructure and connected landscapes will determine whether today's conservation successes endure.

When a young person tells him, "I want to save tigers," his answer is immediate.

"That's a fantastic idea."

India needs researchers, policy advocates, communicators, scientists and conservation practitioners, he says. Because protecting tigers is about much more than one species.

"It is about safeguarding the ecosystems that sustain biodiversity, ecological security and ultimately our own survival."

More than letters, a shared message

Each conservationist tells a different story.

One learnt about the relentless threat of poaching.

Another found lifelong respect for tigers while quietly watching one feed deep inside Kaziranga's forests.

One reflected on India's conservation journey and the lessons it offers for the future.

Another discovered, in the Sundarbans, that protecting wildlife is impossible without protecting people.

Yet despite their different experiences, they all arrive at the same conclusion.

Saving tigers has never been only about tigers.

It is about protecting forests before they disappear. Keeping habitats connected. Working alongside communities instead of around them. Supporting the forest guards who patrol every day, often unseen. And recognising that every development decision leaves a lasting mark on wildlife.

Perhaps that is India's greatest conservation lesson.

As we approach #GlobalTigerDay, we celebrate India's remarkable tiger recovery, a conservation success over five decades in the making.

From the launch of Project Tiger in 1973 to a network of 58 Tiger Reserves protecting 84,487 km² of forests, India's journey reflects the power… pic.twitter.com/XafZ6ppoJP

— International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) (@IBCA_official) July 27, 2026

The country's tiger recovery was not the work of a single law, organisation or project. It was built over decades by thousands of people,  forest guards, scientists, researchers, local communities, policymakers and conservationists — who refused to give up on a species that once seemed destined for decline.

Now, a new generation inherits that responsibility.

Whether they become biologists, engineers, teachers, filmmakers, lawyers or storytellers, each has a role to play in shaping the future of India's forests.

As these five conservationists remind us, protecting tigers is not simply about ensuring one magnificent animal survives.

It is about safeguarding the forests that clean our air, protect our rivers, support countless other species and ultimately sustain human life itself.

The next chapter of India's tiger story has not yet been written.

And perhaps it will be shaped by someone reading these words today.

What happens when compassion becomes stronger than fear? 🐅❤️

In 1974, a frightened tigress cub was found alone on the banks of Odisha's Khairi River, too young to hunt and too weak to survive.

She was brought to Saroj Raj Choudhury, the pioneering forest officer who helped shape Simlipal Tiger Reserve. Knowing she had little chance of surviving alone, he and his wife, Nihar Nalini Swain, brought the cub home, nursed her back to health, and named her Khairi.

Khairi didn't grow up as a pet. She grew up as family.

She drank milk from their hands, slept beside them, played freely, and formed an extraordinary bond with the couple who had saved her life. When Saroj later tried to return her to the wild, Khairi kept finding her way back home, the only place where she truly felt safe.

Over the years, Saroj carefully observed her behaviour, contributing valuable insights to wildlife conservation and our understanding of big cats.

In 1981, tragedy struck when Khairi died after contracting rabies following a dog bite. Her loss deeply affected Saroj, who passed away not long afterwards. Until her final days, Nihar continued to call Khairi her daughter.

Their story reminds us that conservation isn't only about protecting wildlife, it's also about understanding, respect, and the profound connections that can exist between humans and the natural world.

Have you ever come across a story that changed the way you think about wildlife? Share it in the comments. 💚

#Khairi #WildlifeConservation #Simlipal #TigerConservation #NatureStories #IndianForests #Wildlife #Odisha #Humanity #PositiveIndia #TheBetterIndia #EnvironmentalConservation #InspiringStories #NatureLovers #Legacy

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Who Was Khairi the Tigress?
Saroj Raj Choudhury and Khairi's True Story
Simlipal Tiger Reserve's Most Famous Tigress
The Incredible Bond Between Khairi and Her Rescuers
India's Most Heartwarming Wildlife Conservation Story

A hundred litchi trees, 300 mahogany trees, and 900 mango trees – this was the landscape across a 36-acre plot in Bichara village, Jharkhand, back in 2020. The land had been leased by 43-year-old farmer Chaitanya Kumar Ganjhu, who was determined to build something lasting.

Every inch of the land was carefully revived to create a thriving orchard. But just three years later, even before the trees had matured, a fire reduced everything to ashes. To this day, Ganjhu does not know who set the blaze.

Heartbroken, he could not even claim insurance because no police official was willing to register a complaint.

"I didn't have insurance or any supporting document to establish my claim, and I returned home empty-handed," Ganjhu tells The Better India.

His farming journey had begun much earlier. In 2015, he had planned to start a lac farm, but limited resources forced him to change course. Instead, he began planting host trees, including 1,200 Indian jujube trees, only to lose them all in the devastating fire.

Spineless cactus showed the way

Looking back, Ganjhu now calls the fire a turning point.

The tragedy left behind a vast stretch of empty land, forcing him to rethink what he could grow next. While exploring new opportunities in 2024, he learnt about central and state government efforts to promote cactus cultivation. Curious, he reached out to an engineer friend, who suggested that spineless cactus could be worth exploring.

"I was excited because cactus farming was completely new to me. During my research, I discovered that natural leather can also be produced using Opuntia ficus-indica, a spineless cactus variety. Our native cactus has thorns, but this one doesn't," he says.

Determined to learn more, Ganjhu spent weeks researching online before connecting with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).

He saw cactus as more than an experimental crop. Unlike lac farming, which generates income only twice a year, cactus offered the possibility of a steadier source of earnings. Encouraged by the government's support for the crop, he contacted ICARDA's centre in Amlaha, Madhya Pradesh, to understand how to begin.

What impressed him most was its resilience.

Spineless cactus requires very little water, stays green even through harsh summers, and grows well in poor soils. Because it has no thorns, it can also be used as nutritious fodder for livestock.

Confident that the crop had potential, Ganjhu purchased 10,000 cactus cladodes from ICARDA at Rs 10 each. In November 2024, he planted them across 2.5 acres of land at Gamhariya Jaltanda, becoming the first farmer in Jharkhand to cultivate spineless cactus on this scale.

Today, his nursery has the capacity to produce nearly two lakh cactus plants every year. He currently grows 25 varieties.

Among them, varieties such as Oretha de Elefante Africana, IPA-90-73, Copena V1, Mexica Folder-1278 and Additional-1258, sourced from Brazil, have performed particularly well. Each produces around 10 cladodes annually, compared to two or three from many of the other varieties. The slower-growing varieties, he says, are better suited for research than commercial cultivation.

Water for irrigation comes from a solar-powered borewell. During summer, the plants are watered every five to six days because of the poor soil quality. In cooler months, watering once every 15 days is usually enough. Cow dung manure is applied twice a year.

According to Dr Shiv Kumar Agrawal, Regional Coordinator for ICARDA's South Asia and China Regional Program and Head of the Food Legume Research Platform, grafting is unnecessary for spineless cactus because of the plant's natural ability to regenerate.

"Grafting is not practised at ICARDA because, scientifically, Opuntia already has a high intrinsic regenerative capacity—its cladodes can readily form roots and new shoots without the need for a rootstock. Therefore, grafting does not provide a significant additional advantage in biomass production," explains Dr Agrawal.

"Ganjhu is the only farmer to develop a cactus nursery in India. ICARDA introduced this technique and trained district-level officers and officials from the Watershed Development Department, but only Ganjhu took the initiative. Today, he is successfully growing healthy, disease-free spineless cactus in Jharkhand," says Dr Neha Tiwari, National Associate Scientist at ICARDA, Amlaha.

Commercial opportunities in cactus farming

What began as an experiment soon turned into a business opportunity.

"The saplings are essentially cladodes," Ganjhu explains. "When I received an order for 30,000 saplings, I started pruning the mother plants, which made them shorter. I spoke to Dr Neha, who suggested growing them in polybags. From a single cladode, I was able to raise six to eight new saplings and fulfil the entire order."

Each sapling takes about four months to grow in a polybag.

To meet the demand, Ganjhu employed around 60 women from nearby villages to help prepare and nurture the saplings, creating an additional source of income for them.

The economics, he says, are encouraging.

A single cladode costs him about Rs 10. From that one cladode, he can grow six saplings, which together sell for around Rs 60. Even after accounting for labour, polybags, soil, irrigation and four months of care, he earns a profit of roughly Rs 25 from a single cladode.

His first year was largely about recovering his investment. He spent around Rs 3 lakh procuring planting material and generated almost the same amount through sales.

"It has reached the break-even point," he says. "Now the real profits will come."

Last year alone, he sold around 30,000 cladodes and saplings at Rs 10 each, including transportation costs.

The cactus also serves another purpose on his farm.

"I feed it to my goats. During summer, when grass becomes scarce, spineless cactus is a good source of nutrition because it contains high protein," he says.

Now, he is waiting for the next big order.

Betting on a growing sector

Ganjhu believes the timing couldn't be better.

The Government of India has identified spineless cactus cultivation as one of the focus areas under the Viksit Bharat framework. In Jharkhand, a project has been planned to cultivate nearly two lakh cactus plants across 400 hectares in different districts.

For Ganjhu, this could create a significant opportunity.

"If such projects need saplings, where will they source them from?" he asks with a smile.

His goal is to become one of the state's key suppliers. Based on the number of cladodes currently available, he estimates he can produce close to four lakh saplings, creating a business worth nearly Rs 40 lakh while generating employment for many rural women.

He also plans to participate in future tenders as cactus cultivation expands.

Inspiring other farmers

Ganjhu's success has already begun influencing neighbouring farmers.

Last July, around 15 farmers from Raniyan village, nearly 40 km away in Khunti district, visited his farm after hearing about spineless cactus cultivation. They collected saplings and began planting them on their own land.

These farmers are part of the state's cactus promotion initiative, launched in 2025, under which ICARDA has supported growers with free planting material, manure and assistance for land preparation.

According to Ganjhu, nearly 40% of the participating farmers have successfully established their plantations.

"The department is encouraging farmers to form a cactus growers' association," he says. "Even people who visit my farm often take home 10 or 12 saplings to plant. Slowly, people are beginning to see cactus differently."

He enjoys introducing visitors to the wide range of cactus varieties growing on his farm.

One of his favourites is Oretha de Elefante Africana, a slender variety that produces fewer cladodes but each weighing nearly half a kilogram.

Another, popularly known as the Rabbit Cactus, gets its name from its distinctive pads that resemble rabbit ears.

The familiar prickly pear variety also has commercial value. It is used in salads by restaurants and is cooked as a vegetable in several hilly regions.

More than an ornamental plant

Most people associate cactus with decorative pots or desert landscapes.

But spineless cactus has far greater agricultural potential.

Broadly, cacti are classified into ornamental, fruit-bearing and fodder varieties. Among these, spineless cactus has emerged as one of the most promising crops because it is easy to handle and serves multiple purposes.

Researchers often describe it using the "5F" principle: food, fodder, fuel, fertiliser and fashion.

Besides providing nutritious livestock feed, it can contribute to biogas production, organic fertiliser and even bio-leather, opening up new income opportunities for farmers.

"The most suitable species is Opuntia ficus-indica, commonly known as nopal or spineless cactus," says Dr Neha Tiwari.

"It adapts well to Indian agro-climatic conditions, including plateau regions like Jharkhand. It tolerates drought, fluctuating temperatures and poor soils, making it ideal for rain-fed and degraded lands."

Under field conditions, the plants can grow up to six or seven feet tall, depending on the variety and cultivation practices.

Unlike seasonal crops, cactus does not have a fixed maturity period. However, farmers can begin harvesting cladodes around 10 to 12 months after planting, once the plant has established itself with four or five healthy cladodes.

A crop built for the future

For Ganjhu, spineless cactus is more than a profitable crop. He believes it could help farmers make better use of degraded land while opening up new income streams.

"Our native cactus has no commercial value because of its thorns. But spineless cactus can change that," he says. "The soil conditions in Jharkhand are similar to those in parts of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. If governments continue promoting it, many farmers could benefit."

Experts agree.

According to Dr Neha Tiwari, National Associate Scientist at ICARDA, Opuntia ficus-indica, commonly known as spineless cactus or nopal, is well suited to Jharkhand's climate because it can tolerate drought, poor soils and fluctuating temperatures.

Beyond providing nutritious fodder, the crop has multiple uses. It can be processed into biogas, organic fertiliser and bio-leather, while also contributing to carbon sequestration. Since it requires relatively little water and maintenance once established, researchers see it as a promising option for climate-resilient farming.

The initial investment is estimated at Rs 80,000 to Rs 1 lakh per hectare, excluding fencing. However, because the crop remains productive for 15 to 20 years, the long-term maintenance costs are relatively low.

For Ganjhu, the bigger challenge is not cultivation but creating a market.

"The biggest hurdle is finding buyers," he says. "At present, much of the produce is sent to a processing unit in Uttar Pradesh. If Jharkhand had its own processing unit, it would create jobs and increase farmers' incomes."

Demand, however, appears to be growing.

ICARDA has been working with the Jharkhand government to promote spineless cactus cultivation by supplying planting material and technical support. As more farmers take up the crop and government-led projects expand, Ganjhu hopes his nursery will become a key source of quality saplings across the state.

From ridicule to recognition

When Ganjhu first began planting Indian jujube trees years ago, many people in his village laughed at him.

"They thought I was wasting my time because those trees already grew everywhere," he recalls.

This time, when he introduced spineless cactus, there was scepticism again.

But his family stood firmly beside him.

Having seen his success in lac farming over the years, they trusted his instincts and encouraged him to continue experimenting.

That confidence helped him build a better life.

Income from lac farming enabled him to buy first a two-wheeler and later a four-wheeler. He also purchased land to build a house.

In 2010, he received an award from the Jharkhand Chief Minister for his contribution to lac production.

A farmer who kept looking ahead

The fourth of six siblings, Ganjhu grew up in a lower-middle-class farming family.

His late father cultivated paddy, oilseeds and vegetables using traditional methods.

He attended State Samposhit High School, where three teachers taught nearly 1,000 students.

"The teachers would write questions on the blackboard before moving to another classroom because there were so many students," he recalls.

After completing school, he earned a BA (Honours) degree from Birsa College in 2003.

Finding a job proved difficult.

Instead, he discovered an opportunity in lac farming and has specialised in producing high-quality 'Bihan' lac since 2006.

Today, he is married and has two sons. When he is not working on the farm, he enjoys travelling and watching cricket.

Looking beyond his own farm

Despite becoming India's first farmer to establish a commercial spineless cactus nursery, Ganjhu says he is only getting started.

His long-term goal is to create a cooperative that can help farmers move beyond cultivation into processing and value addition.

"Cactus can be used to produce biogas. The residue becomes fertiliser, and it can also be used to make bio-leather," he says.

For him, the dream is no longer just about growing cactus.

It is about creating an entire ecosystem around a crop that many once dismissed.

After watching thousands of trees disappear in a single fire, Ganjhu could have walked away from farming altogether.

Instead, he chose to begin again.

Today, the same land that was once reduced to ashes is helping introduce a new crop to Jharkhand — one that could create livelihoods, strengthen climate-resilient farming and inspire more farmers to believe that sometimes, the boldest ideas are the ones worth planting.

A train accident took away his limbs.

It did not take away his will to live. ❤️

At just 25, Nikhil Bharadwaj, a Rapido driver, lost his livelihood in a devastating train accident. As he lay critically injured, people gathered around. Many recorded videos. Few stepped forward to help.

But what keeps him going today is not the tragedy.

It's watching his 55-year-old father, still recovering from heart surgery, step out every day as a Zomato delivery partner to support his son.

Now, Nikhil is trying to raise funds for bionic arms—not just to replace what he lost, but to reclaim his independence, return to work, and rebuild his life with dignity.

Sometimes, the greatest act of kindness is giving someone the chance to begin again.

If you'd like to support Nikhil's journey, here are the donation details:

Bank Details
Name: Nikhil Bharadwaj
Account Number: 3224913120
IFSC: CBIN0283323

Every contribution, no matter how small, can bring him one step closer to a new beginning. ❤️

#HumanityFirst #SupportDisability #MedicalFundraiser #KindnessMatters #DonateForACause #BionicArms #DisabilityInclusion #Hope #InspiringStories #PositiveIndia #TheBetterIndia #ActsOfKindness #MedicalSupport #SecondChance #CommunitySupport

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How to Support a Train Accident Survivor in India
Nikhil Bharadwaj's Bionic Arm Fundraiser
Inspiring Story of a Rapido Driver Rebuilding His Life
Disability Support Fundraiser India
Train Accident Survivor's Journey to Independence

At 11, Vivek Shangari found the thing that would one day give him back his life.

It was 1987. He was walking down a school corridor in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh, when he looked through a doorway and saw four BBC Micros being set up by technicians. On one screen, a ping pong game was running.

There were no computer teachers then. No curriculum. No one to guide him. There was only a thick manual and BBC Basic, the programming language that appeared every time the machine was switched on.

So, while his classmates went outside to play cricket during lunch breaks, Vivek went to the computer lab.

Every lunch break. Every library period. Every games period.

When school hours were not enough, he found another way. In Bhilai, some enterprising citizens had begun renting out computers by the hour for Rs 10. Vivek had a piggy bank, given to him by his grandmother to teach him the value of saving. He used those savings to teach himself computers.

Years later, the same self-taught skill would help him survive homelessness, build companies, and create wealth. Today, Vivek has donated more than 96 percent of his wealth to a trust that supports children who cannot afford education.

“I will not romanticise what came next. Being homeless at 18 is not an adventure. It is cold and exhausting and profoundly lonely,” says Vivek, now 49.

His story is also the story of LivingMyPromise, a community of Indians who believe that philanthropy can begin much before one becomes a billionaire.

Those who join the community must be over 18 years of age and have a net worth of Rs 1 crore. They pledge 50 percent of their wealth to charitable causes of their choice, either during their lifetime or in their will.

The pledge is moral and personal. It is made over email. There is no legal document binding the person to it.

Yet, for the people who make this promise, it becomes a way of thinking about security, family, legacy, and what it means to have enough.

A school lab, a manual, and a boy who taught himself

Vivek was four years old when he lost his mother. His father, who struggled with alcoholism and gambling, could not take care of him and his little sister. The children were handed over to their uncle, who took charge unwillingly.

Vivek was poor at studies. When he was in his first year of college, his uncle stopped funding his education. Worse, he threw him out of the house.

By then, Vivek had one thing he could trust: his ability to programme.

He approached the owner of a computer institute in Bhilai and told him about his coding skills.

“I told him about my coding skills. He gave me a test and since I did very well, I got a job as a part-time instructor and lab assistant. I was allowed to stay at the institute. I was surrounded by 20 computers and hundreds of books on computer science, maths and physics! I used these to teach myself what I had failed to learn in school,” he says.

By the late 1990s, India’s IT revolution was beginning to gather pace. In October 1998, a friend returned from Bengaluru and handed Vivek some books wrapped in a Bengaluru newspaper.

His friend thought he was giving him reading material. For Vivek, the newspaper opened a doorway.

Inside it was a job advertisement from a company in Bengaluru looking for freshers who could programme in C and C++, the two languages Vivek loved most.

He borrowed money, bought a train ticket, travelled to Bengaluru, took the test, and returned to Bhilai to wait.

The phone number on his resume was that of the computer training institute where he worked, because he did not own a phone. When the call came, the offer was Rs 7,000 a month.

“They noted, gently, that since I had no formal degree, they would start me lower than my peers and observe my performance. I agreed immediately, on the call, and then asked them to book my train ticket. They did,” he recalls.

When Vivek arrived in Bengaluru, his boss told him the job involved ANSI Common Lisp and Calculus.

It frightened him.

His mathematics teacher in school had once declared him a failure in front of the entire class. Now, the job was asking him to do the one thing he believed he could not do.

His boss, who was based in the US, became the mentor he had never had. He told Vivek to calm down. He sent books from America. He gave him time, patience, and the rare gift of believing that he was capable of more than he thought.

Then something changed.

Vivek realised he was good at it. Mathematics, the subject once used as evidence of his inadequacy, became something he genuinely loved.

“That was my first real awakening. Not the job. Not the salary. The discovery that I was not the student who had failed. I was the student who had never been properly taught,” he says.

Vivek became so absorbed in learning that he began teaching others. First, he taught colleagues on weekends. Then freshers. Then the security guard’s children, the office help’s children, and anyone in the neighbourhood who wanted to learn.

“My company gave me the resources. I gave everything I had. And I discovered something that has shaped every decision I have made since: the more you give, the more you receive. Not metaphorically. Literally. In every measurable way,” he says.

After one year at Rs 7,000 a month, the company raised his salary to Rs 40,000. In the year 2000, in Bengaluru, as a single person, that was a fortune.

Vivek spent four years at ICS. He then worked with Andale and ICICI oneSource. In 2006, he started AceNgage, which had a management buyout in 2010 after it turned profitable.

That same year, he started two more things: Vichaar Foundation, and a company called codeCraft.

The Common Lisp that had once intimidated him became central to codeCraft’s work. The company was building adaptive AI query resolution in ANSI Common Lisp at a time when artificial intelligence had yet to become a buzzword.

Then a Fortune 100 company entered India through its subsidiary. Its flagship search engine, A9, was written almost entirely in Lisp. The company needed Lisp engineers. As it happened, codeCraft had the largest concentration of Lisp engineers in Bengaluru.

They made an offer. It was an acquihire.

Vivek had taught himself BBC Basic in a school corridor in Bhilai in 1987 because there was no one else to teach him. Twenty-six years later, a Fortune 100 company bought his firm because of that obsession and his refusal to stop learning.

From homelessness to helping 300 children study

Vivek built companies and made money. Then, he made a decision that confused many people around him.

He gave almost all of it away.

“I have a home of my own. I have medical insurance. I am well-to-do for a single person. What more do I need?” asks Vivek with a gentle smile.

The decision came from a place he had carried since he was 18.

“When I was in a dire situation as a youngster, the universe took care of me. I decided when the right time came and I had resources of my own, I would give back more than I had received,” he says.

Vivek secured enough investments to generate passive income for his own sustenance and built an emergency fund. Everything else, including his salary from Ace Hacker, goes into a trust called Eklavya, which he started with two friends.

He does not draw a salary anymore. He lives on the returns from his investments.

Eklavya does one thing: it finds children who cannot afford education and pays for their needs.

Fees. Resources. Support.

The work Vivek is proudest of happens in rural areas, where the trust meets parents whose children are working instead of studying.

The team makes them an offer: let the child go to school full-time, let them study and play and simply be a child, and the trust will take care of every expense.

The only condition is that the child must never return to work.

“Education is not a part-time arrangement. Childhood is not negotiable,” says Vivek.

The first year, he says, moved slowly because they were building the infrastructure, fraud detection systems, and processes to ensure the money reached the child. They sponsored a handful of children while setting up those systems.

In the two years since, Eklavya has sponsored 300 children. The trust spends between Rs 80,000 and Rs 1 lakh per child per year. So far, it has invested Rs 2.5 crore in 300 futures.

Vivek, who still does not have a college degree, believes no child should be deprived of education because of lack of financial support.

This belief also brought him to LivingMyPromise.

How a group of volunteers turned giving into a pledge

LivingMyPromise, or LMP, was modelled on The Giving Pledge, a global initiative through which billionaires commit to giving away a large part of their wealth.

LMP takes a similar idea and brings it to Indians who have achieved a degree of financial security.

The initiative was launched in 2018 with six members. Four of them were Daan Utsav volunteers: Girish Batra, who first had the idea for LMP, Rama Arya, Bharati Dasgupta, and Venkat Krishnan. The other two founding members were Amit Chandra and Sridhar Rajagopalan, who support Daan Utsav but are not active volunteers.

Daan Utsav grew out of the Joy of Giving Week, a national celebration of giving that began in 2009. Girish had volunteered for the Joy of Giving Week that year, where he connected with Venkat Krishnan, one of the founders of GiveIndia.

For Girish, giving was something he had grown up around.

“We were spiritually inclined as a family, so giving was natural. We never felt insecure about the future. I come from a middle-class family. Shopping for clothes was a luxury. We went for two holidays in the first 20 years of my life. But we were content. Our lifestyle was minimalist. My father gave us a good education. His mantra was: hard work leads to money. I was lucky to be good at studies and completed engineering and MBA courses. After several years in the corporate sector, I now support startups,” Girish shares.

His own understanding of wealth changed as he built his career.

“I support the act of wealth creation. But I believe that the best use of wealth is giving back to society. Beyond a point, getting a bigger home or bigger car gives no satisfaction. With this belief in mind, we decided to pledge 50 percent of our wealth to charitable causes. My wife Tanu, who is a yoga teacher, is also a promisor,” says Girish.

The Giving Pledge had around 200 promisors at the time, including four Indians such as Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Azim Premji.

“When you speak to people, you realise that folks from all segments of society are happy to give. I have heard stories of vegetable vendors and auto drivers who have given to help others. That’s because there is a joy in giving,” he relates.

Gunjan Thaney, who now heads LMP, says the premise was simple: if billionaires could make such a public pledge, Indians with financial security could also think deeply about how much they truly need and how much they can give.

From six founding promisors in 2018, the community has grown to 175 promisors, including individuals and couples.

The Rs 1 crore question behind the pledge

To join LMP, a person must be over 18 years of age and have a net worth of at least Rs 1 crore.

The threshold is an eligibility criterion. LMP says it is meant for people who have achieved financial security, including salaried professionals, government employees, small business owners, and first-generation entrepreneurs who have built wealth gradually through savings, home ownership, and long-term investments.

In the Indian context, LMP says, many people with a net worth of Rs 1 crore to Rs 5 crore fall into this category. An average 2BHK in Mumbai or Delhi alone costs over Rs 1 crore, the team points out. Someone who has not reached this level of wealth is unlikely to be able to give away half their wealth without putting their own security at risk.

“There is no right time or age to take the pledge. You have to be over 18 years of age and have a net worth of Rs 1 crore, including property. Our youngest promisor is 27 while our oldest is 80 years old. We have couples where only one member is a promisor. We have single women who don’t have children as promisors. The pledge can be taken by Indians living anywhere in the world,” explains Gunjan, who has been running the initiative for five years.

The net worth includes all assets that belong entirely to the person, including the home they live in, inheritance, property, jewellery, investments, and assets in India or anywhere else, after subtracting liabilities. A spouse’s assets are included only when the couple signs up together.

LMP does not independently verify a person’s net worth before they join. The pledge is based on trust and individual integrity.

Prospective promisors are usually introduced through existing members or trusted networks. If someone reaches LMP through the website, Gunjan has a detailed conversation with them to understand their lifestyle, needs, family situation, and philanthropic intent.

“Our community is still small. New promisors are mostly known to existing ones. If someone new reaches us through our website, I have a detailed discussion with them to get a sense of their lifestyle, needs and family. We encourage the promisor to discuss with his spouse and children before taking the pledge. They have to be on the same page. Once I am convinced about their intentions, I have an existing promisor talk to them. Then we invite the person to join the community,” says Gunjan.

Although there is no legal binding, LMP insists that each promisor’s name is listed publicly on its website.

“While there is no legal binding to the LMP pledge, we insist that the promisor’s name is listed on our website. Almost 99 percent of our promisors want to remain anonymous, but we do not give them that option. The purpose of making their names public is to inspire others to follow suit. The only way to join this community is to be open about it,” says Gunjan.

A promisor’s name, photograph, and statement of purpose are published on the LMP website. Other personal details, including contact information, net worth, asset details, and current or future giving plans, are kept confidential.

Why education leads the giving list

For many promisors, the pledge is only the beginning. The harder question is where and how to give.

Susai Anthony, 30, is the giving manager at LMP and has been with the initiative for two years. He has a graduate and postgraduate degree in social work.

“The most common age group of promisors is the 55 to 80 age group. Among the total promisors, around 30 percent are couples. Among the individual promisors, 70 percent are men and 30 percent are women,” he says.

The promisor community comes from different professional backgrounds. Corporate sector professionals make up 32.7 percent, social sector professionals 26.5 percent, entrepreneurs 14.3 percent, retired professionals 9.8 percent, professionals such as doctors, artists and writers 5.8 percent, freelancers 5.4 percent, homemakers 4.5 percent, and those from family business backgrounds 1 percent.

The five causes closest to LMP donors are education, livelihood and skills development, health and medical relief, disability inclusion, and rural and tribal development.

Education receives the highest level of interest and support. This includes primary, secondary and higher education, vocational training, technical education, research, scholarships, informal education, and related initiatives.

Around 30 to 40 percent of promisors plan to give through their will. The rest, like Vivek, give during their lifetime.

Susai helps promisors identify a cause. Once they choose an area, such as elderly care, he researches the subject and maps different possibilities for donation. He also helps them with the process of giving.

The LMP team identifies non-profit organisations through social incubators, trusted networks, and other credible sources. They have initial conversations with these organisations, assess their work, and share insights with the relevant promisors.

The final decision rests with the promisor. Each promisor engages directly with the organisation and decides whether to support it.

LMP does not conduct formal due diligence for promisors. It also does not track or monitor later interactions, funding decisions, or the impact of donations. These remain private and are managed independently by each promisor.

Many promisors voluntarily share their annual giving details with LMP. So far, more than 100 of the 175 promisors have done so. The initiative maintains a broad understanding of each promisor’s giving plans, interests, and commitments, while respecting their privacy.

At present, all signatories are part of a closely connected community, where each member is personally known to at least one other member. As the community grows, LMP hopes to preserve these trusted relationships through regular engagement.

The team also connects promisors who support similar cause areas, so they can learn from each other, share experiences, and collaborate where useful.

The family conversations behind giving away wealth

A pledge to give away half of one’s wealth naturally affects family conversations, especially with children.

The LMP team has spoken to children of parents who have become promisors. Gunjan says many of them respond with warmth and maturity. A common view is: give us a good education, and then do whatever you want with your wealth.

Many children, she says, appreciate their parents for donating to social causes.

For Dev Sinha, 20, the son of promisor couple Dhiraj Sinha and Deepali Bhagat, the conversation began when he was 15.

Dev is now studying BBA in Bengaluru. His father has spent many years in the corporate sector, while his mother is a distributor for edtech products.

“One day, my father came up to me and asked me if I was okay if he donated 50 percent of his wealth to social causes. I told him I had no problem. I felt I was living a privileged life and if some of my parents’ wealth could help underprivileged people, it would be great,” says Dev.

His parents have donated to education, healthcare and disability inclusion. They have also contributed their time, skills and experience.

“My parents have always been socially conscious and taking the pledge has been an opportunity for them to support the causes they care about, and give back to society. The causes they have donated to so far are education, healthcare and disability inclusion. They have not just donated money. They also contributed their time, skills and experience. This has been an important influence on me. It has reshaped my thinking on responsibility and giving back,” says Dev.

Why LMP asks for such a big commitment

For LMP, the 50 percent pledge is intentional.

Gunjan says the number is meant to attract people who have thought deeply about how much they need and how much they can give.

“We do not take anything from anybody. There is no incentive to join LMP. The most expensive thing you can commit to is half your wealth. We want the right people to join us. Those who are willing to do this. We don’t want to make the community bigger by offering lower levels of donation,” she explains.

Promisors can change their mind and back out, especially in the event of an unforeseen need such as a major health requirement.

Gunjan says many members plan carefully before making the pledge.

“Most promisors have budgeted for major expenses. Most have taken health insurance. They have budgeted for children’s education and a home for themselves. So, they are not worried about the future and can actively focus on giving. Still, if they want to back out, they can. There is nothing binding them legally,” she explains.

Tax benefits are not linked to joining LMP. Each country has its own rules, and tax benefits apply only when promisors donate to an eligible organisation.

LMP itself is a fully community-managed initiative. Its operating expenses, including salaries for the core team, are funded through contributions pooled by the promisors.

Currently, the three core team members are employed through the payroll of two organisations operated by two of the promisors.

“We conduct events and meets where everyone pays for their own travel and stay,” says Gunjan.

What they hope to build by 2030

Gunjan, who is now based in Australia, spent a decade in the wealth management space, helping high net-worth individuals make more money.

She wanted to do something more meaningful.

Life came full circle. She now helps people give away their wealth.

For LMP, giving is a personal choice, but it is also a cultural act. The public pledge is meant to inspire more people to think about wealth, legacy, and responsibility.

The initiative does not do fundraising. It serves as a platform where people can connect, learn, share ideas, and give more meaningfully.

LMP aims to expand its community to 500 members by 2030.

For Vivek, the idea remains deeply personal. Long before he had money to give, people gave him chances: access to a computer lab, a place to sleep, books from a mentor, and faith at a moment when he had none in himself.

Now, through Eklavya and LivingMyPromise, he is passing that forward to children whose futures can change with the same simple gift he once received: the chance to learn.

The latest spell of monsoon rain has brought more than just heavy showers to Gujarat.

Floodwaters have submerged homes, disrupted livelihoods and left hundreds of people stranded as rescue teams race against time to reach those trapped.

Across several affected areas, familiar roads disappeared beneath muddy currents. Entire neighbourhoods were cut off, leaving families stranded on rooftops, inside schools and in waterlogged homes. For many, rescue was no longer a matter of distance but of access.

While the Army, local authorities and emergency responders worked tirelessly to evacuate people, another kind of support was taking shape in the skies.

In Dholka, drones helped rescuers locate stranded residents, assess flooded areas and deliver essential supplies to places that had become nearly impossible to reach.

A startup steps into the rescue effort

Among the organisations supporting the operation was Prime UAV, a drone technology company based in Mehsana, Gujarat.

Founded in 2019 by Pradip Patel and Hiten Patel, the startup develops unmanned aerial solutions for agriculture, infrastructure inspections, mapping, surveying and disaster response. It is also recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

Over the years, the company has expanded beyond commercial drone services to build expertise in aerial surveillance, mapping and customised drone solutions — capabilities that become especially valuable during natural disasters, when speed, visibility and access can make a critical difference.

This was not the company's first emergency deployment.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime UAV supported local authorities with sanitisation efforts and lockdown monitoring. In 2020, it also deployed drones during the locust invasion that affected crops across Gujarat and Rajasthan.

According to CEO Pradip Patel, those experiences shaped the team's disaster-response approach and reinforced the role drones can play during public emergencies.

Reaching places rescuers couldn't

When reports emerged that people were stranded in Dholka, the Prime UAV team immediately mobilised and joined local authorities and relief personnel.

"When we learned that children and residents were stranded due to severe flooding in the Dholka region, we felt an immediate responsibility to act. We strongly believe that technology should serve society during times of crisis," tells Patel to The Better India.

"Within 30 minutes of receiving the information, our emergency response team, along with rescue and surveillance drones, was mobilised and dispatched to the affected area."

In several locations, rescue teams first used tractors and boats to reach flood-hit areas before drones surveyed the terrain from above.

The drones provided real-time aerial views of inundated neighbourhoods, helping responders identify stranded people and assess the scale of flooding. Their role became even more valuable after sunset, when poor visibility made ground operations increasingly difficult.

According to the company, the drones continued monitoring flooded areas through the night, giving rescue teams a clearer picture of conditions on the ground.

Patel says features such as GPS-enabled location tracking, live aerial feeds and payload delivery systems proved especially useful during the operation.

The live footage helped responders identify priority locations and plan safer routes through floodwaters. Meanwhile, customised payload systems enabled essential supplies to reach places inaccessible by road or boat.

Although Prime UAV did not carry out evacuations directly, its drones strengthened ongoing rescue operations by helping teams locate stranded residents, assess inaccessible areas and make faster decisions.

"The mission demonstrated how drones can significantly improve situational awareness and response efficiency during disasters," Patel says.

Technology supporting people

At its heart, this story is not about drones.

It is about families waiting to be rescued, children sheltering in schools, emergency workers navigating dangerous conditions and communities coming together during a crisis.

Technology simply gave those responders another tool.

Drones cannot replace rescue workers, but they can help them locate stranded people more quickly, assess risks in real time and deliver supplies to areas that remain cut off.

The collaboration between emergency responders and technology providers in Dholka shows how innovation can strengthen traditional rescue efforts rather than replace them.

A new chapter in disaster response

As extreme weather events become more frequent and monsoon floods continue to affect communities across India, technology is becoming an increasingly important part of disaster management.

In Gujarat, amid rising floodwaters and widespread disruption, Prime UAV's intervention offered a glimpse of how locally developed technology can support emergency responders when every minute counts.

The real story is not the drones themselves, but the people they helped rescuers reach — a reminder that innovation, when used for the public good, can become a lifeline in times of crisis.

Sources:

Prime UAV

'Gujarat floods: Drone startup helps in Dholka rescue operations' by Press Trust Of India.

'Ahmedabad Floods, The Reality Check: Concrete Above, Empty Pipes Below' by Gujarat Samachar, Published on 26 July 2026.

'Drone startup aids flood rescue in Gujarat as Army evacuates over 790, IMD forecasts easing rain', The Times of India, Published on 27 July 2026.

His family lost their source income. He drove an auto to pay for college. He even missed an interview call that could've changed everything. Despite it all, Yogesh chose to keep going.

From odds to opportunity, his journey proves that determination can find a runway anywhere, even on the streets of Uran.

This is a story of how grit can turn setbacks into takeoff.

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Title: Inspiring Innovation
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The clock had just touched 11 on a weekday morning when I called Dipalee Nitin Rahangdale. On the other side of the phone came the soft sound of water splashing against terracotta pots, followed by a warm voice asking me to wait for a moment.

“I am just watering my plants. Can you give me a minute?” she asks gently.

A few moments later, the rustling leaves settled into the background as she returned to the call from the balcony of her rented apartment in Delhi. At 32, she speaks with a calmness that comes from finding inner peace after emotionally exhausting years, and from learning to rebuild life slowly through nature and creative expression. Her balcony is not grand by any means. Measuring just 14 by 7 feet, it is small, compact, and tucked into a city apartment. Within this limited space, she has created something astonishing.

Hanging vines spill gracefully from railings, philodendrons curl around shelves, money plants trail across corners, and nearly 50 plants stand healthy under her care. Every inch of the balcony carries intention, patience, and healing, making it feel alive beyond its greenery alone.

"Gardening became therapy for me," she says softly. "People think peace comes from money, success, or other people. But emotionally, everyone needs something that belongs only to them. You need a hobby that heals you from within. For me, that became gardening."

Today, thousands of people know her through her Instagram page, @WabiSabiWithDipalee, where she shares glimpses of slow living, indoor gardening, and mindful spaces. Her videos are comforting and easy to follow. There are no extravagant makeovers or luxury aesthetics designed purely for social media validation. Instead, her content reflects ordinary life in a simple, beautiful way. A woman watering plants in the morning sunlight. A mother preparing potting mix with her child. Peaceful reflections about mental health, patience, and finding beauty in imperfection.

It is this honesty that has helped her build a loyal online community of over 4,069 followers who connect with the peaceful world she has created.

Her journey feels even more touching because this little balcony garden has become a shared space between her and her six-year-old son, Kavish. While many parents struggle to pull children away from screens, he spends his afternoons helping his mother water plants, plant seeds, and rearrange pots. Sometimes, he leaves cartoons midway to sit beside her while she works with soil and leaves.

Together, mother and son are growing something bigger than a garden.

The corporate life that slowly drained her

Before becoming a gardening content creator, Dipalee spent years working in the corporate sector while trying to balance marriage, motherhood, and constant work schedules. Like many women, she strongly valued financial independence and wanted to build her own identity through work.

"I always wanted my own identity and the ability to stand on my own feet, so being financially independent and earning for myself was always something that mattered to me," she says in a conversation with The Better India.

But slowly, the pressure of corporate life began draining her emotionally. Her office hours officially stretched from 9.30 in the morning to 7 in the evening, but reality was far harsher. Meetings continued late into the night because senior management arrived towards the end of the day. 

By the time she returned home, it was nearly 9 pm, and whatever energy remained had already been consumed by exhaustion.

"I could not spend time with my son," she recalls. "The whole day would disappear in work, and I used to come home feeling emotionally empty."

In June 2023, after years of pushing herself through exhaustion, she made the difficult decision to quit her job, one that felt especially hard for someone who valued independence and self-identity.

"Leaving work affects you mentally, especially as a woman, when there is a sense of guilt attached to stepping away from a career, but I came to realise that I needed peace, and I needed time for myself and my child," she says.

Her elder sister, Rupali Ravindra Rahangdale, watched this emotional transition closely from Pune. According to her, the difference between the Dipalee of a few years ago and the woman she is today is impossible to ignore.

"She was constantly stressed because of work," she says. "I had seen her become mentally exhausted. But gardening changed her completely. It made her calmer, more positive, and much more patient." Throughout her difficult phases, Rupali became one of her strongest emotional support systems.

"Whenever she felt demotivated with gardening, I would tell her not to stop and remind her that one day her hard work would pay off, so I shared her videos with people and kept motivating her constantly because I genuinely believed in what she was creating," she says warmly.

The childhood memory hidden in marigold flowers

Dipalee's connection with plants did not begin in adulthood. It had existed within her since childhood. Growing up in Maharashtra, she was surrounded by homes where gardening was simply a part of life. Her family maintained a kitchen garden like many households around them, but while others focused on vegetables, she found herself naturally drawn towards flowers and decoration.

"We used to grow marigold flowers during Diwali," she says with a smile that instantly softens her voice. "I still remember decorating the house with those flowers. Those are some of my happiest childhood memories."

Even as a child, she loved arranging spaces and decorating corners beautifully. While many children developed an interest in cooking or household work, she found joy in aesthetics and greenery.

"I was never really drawn to cooking," she laughs, "but I have always loved flowers, home decor, and the process of turning spaces into something peaceful."

As life became busier, however, gardening slowly disappeared into the background. After moving to Delhi and entering professional life, she barely had time for hobbies. The pace of adulthood consumed her attention completely.

Yet somewhere within her, that childhood love for plants remained alive.

Then came August 2019, a turning point she now looks back on with gratitude. After switching jobs and spending more time at home, she bought her very first plants. "I started with a money plant, aloe vera, and tulsi, just very easy-to-care-for plants that could survive without much effort," she recalls.

At the time, she had no idea those three plants would eventually transform her entire life.

The plants that died before the garden bloomed

Like many beginners, she initially learnt gardening through YouTube videos and internet tutorials. But the process came with confusion, mistakes, and heartbreak. "A lot of my plants died in the beginning," she says honestly. "Sometimes because of wrong information online, and sometimes because I did not understand the plant properly."

One of her biggest lessons came through jade plants.

"Everyone used to say jade plants are indoor plants, even nursery owners would sell them that way, but when I observed them closely myself, I realised they actually need bright sunlight to survive," she explains.

At another point, she followed online advice suggesting kitchen waste could be directly added into soil as fertiliser, but she later realised that only peels were actually helpful, while the rest led to fungus and pest attacks that damaged several plants. "I felt terrible," she admits. "There were times when I would almost cry after losing a plant."

But slowly, gardening began to teach her lessons that went far beyond plant care, building her into someone more patient, observant, and emotionally strong, even in difficult moments.

"Gardening taught me that every environment is different," she explains. "You cannot blindly follow someone else's advice. You need to understand your own home, your sunlight, your balcony, your weather."

Over time, her tiny balcony grew into a flourishing indoor foliage garden filled with snake plants, spider plants, philodendrons, money plants, aloe vera, bougainvillea, jade plants, wandering jew plants, umbrella trees, adeniums, lilies, air plants, areca palms, tulsi, zig-zag cactus, and many more varieties.

Because the balcony receives limited sunlight, she primarily focuses on foliage plants and low-maintenance greenery. Living in a rented apartment also influenced her gardening style significantly.

"I did not have the option of a terrace garden, and moving heavy outdoor plants from one room to another is extremely difficult, especially with monkeys and birds outside that damage them, so indoor gardening became the best solution for me," she explains.

Why did she name her page 'Wabi Sabi'?

Her Instagram page name, @WabiSabiWithDipalee, reflects the philosophy she now follows consciously. Inspired by the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi (finding beauty in imperfection), she believes beauty exists in imperfection, simplicity, and authenticity rather than polished perfection.

"Social media makes people feel that everything has to look perfect, from homes to aesthetics to lives, but I believe real beauty actually exists in imperfect things too," she says.

This philosophy is evident in the way she decorates her balcony. Instead of expensive decor, she reuses simple items creatively, proving that peaceful spaces do not require luxury.

For Dipalee, gardening slowly turned into emotional healing. "When I sit with my plants, my stress disappears," she says calmly. "Gardening slows your mind down."

Her routine remains intentionally simple. Every day, she spends around half an hour checking soil moisture, watering plants only when necessary, pruning leaves occasionally, and adding vermicompost whenever required. Instead of chemical pesticides, she uses turmeric to prevent fungal infections naturally.

"The biggest mistake people make is overwatering," she explains with a laugh. "Plants usually die from too much care rather than too little."

The little boy who leaves cartoons for plants

But perhaps the most beautiful development has been the bond gardening created between her and Kavish. When Dipalee first became a mother, many people warned her that raising a child and maintaining plants together would be impossible.

"People used to say that children would spoil plants and throw soil everywhere, but in my experience, my son and my plants grew together naturally, learning to coexist and care for each other over time," she says.

Initially, her son occasionally played with soil while crawling around the balcony. But slowly, he began understanding that plants required care and gentleness. Today, at six years old, he actively participates in almost every gardening activity.

"He helps me water plants, make potting mix, plant seeds, and repot plants," she says proudly. She believes gardening has changed him emotionally, too. Earlier, like many children, he spent long hours watching cartoons. Now, whenever she works on the balcony, he leaves the television behind and runs towards her eagerly.

"He has become more caring," she says. "If he sees a plant somewhere, he immediately asks if we can bring it home." More importantly, gardening has taught him patience and acceptance.

"When you plant seeds, they do not grow overnight, so he is learning to be patient, to wait for things to mature slowly, and to understand that not every plant survives, which is also teaching him that failure is a natural part of life," she explains.

Sometimes, his innocent dreams leave her emotional. "He tells me that when he grows up, we will open a seed shop together," she says, laughing softly.

Growing slowly, but authentically

In April 2025, Dipalee finally decided to share her journey online through Instagram. Unlike creators chasing overnight virality, she focused entirely on authenticity. "My audience is growing slowly, but organically," she says. "I want genuine people connecting with me."

Today, her content revolves around indoor gardening, balcony decor, mindful living, and emotional well-being through nature. Her videos capture small, personal moments from daily life: rearranging foliage in the morning sunlight, preparing potting mix with Kavish, or discussing mental peace and self-growth.

In the future, she hopes to convert her passion into something larger.

"I would love to help people create peaceful balcony spaces," she says. "I want to teach them which plants suit different homes and how gardening can improve mental health." And if she ever gets her dream home, she already knows exactly what she wants.

"I want either a penthouse or a ground-floor home with lots of gardening space," she says instantly.

As our conversation ended, she returned to watering her plants while Kavish hovered nearby excitedly, asking questions about a new sapling they had recently brought home.

Watching them together, it became evident that this little balcony was never only about gardening. 

It was about healing slowly after burnout. About slowing down in a world obsessed with speed. About finding emotional peace through nature. And perhaps most importantly, it was about understanding that even the smallest rented spaces can bloom beautifully when nurtured with patience and love.

All pictures courtesy Dipalee Nitin Rahangdale.

For years, Devaki Amma’s days began in the paddy fields of Muthukulam, a coastal village in Kerala’s Alappuzha district. Farming was the rhythm of her life, work she had known since childhood and continued alongside her husband, Gopalakrishna Pillai, a retired headmaster.

Then, at 46, a car accident brought that rhythm to a sudden stop.

The injury severely restricted her movement, and doctors advised her to avoid physical strain for nearly three years. For someone used to working outdoors from dawn, the long stretch of enforced rest felt unbearable. The fields she had tended for decades were suddenly beyond her reach.

Life, as she knew it, had changed overnight.

How recovery turned into a habit of planting

Confined largely to her home, Devaki Amma began planting a single sapling on the sandy plot near her house, land that had until then only been used for post-harvest activities. It gave her something to do while her body healed. She planted another, then another. There was no plan to build a forest. It was simply a way to pass the days without her usual work.

That small, repeated act did not stop once she recovered. Friends and relatives began bringing seeds and cuttings on their visits, and her husband and children joined in the effort. 

Her daughter Thankamani, who would go on to head the Environmental Engineering department at a Thiruvananthapuram College, grew up watching this quiet, steady labour. 

What had started as a way to escape boredom slowly turned into a shared family project, and then into Devaki Amma's life's purpose. 

Turning sandy land into a living forest

Over more than four decades, Devaki Amma's saplings spread across nearly five acres of coastal sandy soil, a stretch of land she named Thapovanam. She worked without formal training, relying instead on close observation of the soil and the local climate. Mulching, organic manure from home-reared cattle, and careful retention of leaf litter gradually improved land that was never expected to hold a forest.

As Kerala's monsoon pattern shifted over the decades, with longer dry spells followed by concentrated bursts of heavy rain, Devaki Amma adjusted her methods rather than abandoning them. 

Her family adapted their mulching techniques at intervals to prevent waterlogging and protect root systems, a set of solutions drawn entirely from years of trial and repeated observation rather than any textbook.

Two ponds within Thapovanam have never run dry. They support groundwater recharge, help prevent seawater from seeping into the coastal soil, and sustain aquatic life through the year. 

The forest also holds an Indian bael tree estimated to be around 200 years old, far older than Thapovanam itself, now standing within an ecosystem that grew up around it.

3000 trees in Kerala’s forest-less district 

Alappuzha is the only district in Kerala without natural forest cover, which makes Thapovanam more remarkable. The forest today holds over 3,000 recorded trees, plants, shrubs and creepers, including rare and medicinal species increasingly hard to find elsewhere in the state. 

It shelters peacocks, owls, the emerald dove and migratory birds, alongside butterflies and other small wildlife, functioning as a repository for native Kerala plant species under threat from habitat loss.

Everything is maintained organically, without chemical fertilisers, using methods Devaki Amma developed over decades of trial and observation. 

She built all of this without institutional funding or a trained team, working largely without public recognition for most of those four decades. Her methods now draw interest from a newer generation of tree planters, including Krishnakumar S, who has helped build over 40 dense urban forests to cool Indian cities.

From one sapling to a Padma Shri

Devaki Amma, now 91, is widely known across Kerala as ‘Vanamuthassi’, or grandmother of forests. Her work drew national attention well before this year, including the Indira Priyadarshini Vrikshamitra Award in 2003 and the Nari Shakti Puraskar in 2018, and a mention by former President Ram Nath Kovind in his Republic Day address. 

This year, she received the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour, in the Unsung Heroes category. and was the only recipient from Kerala.

Thapovanam is now visited by students, researchers and nature enthusiasts studying grassroots biodiversity conservation, and Devaki Amma has encouraged schools, colleges and households across the state to grow native and medicinal plants of their own, often providing seeds and seedlings herself. 

Her daughter Thankamani now cares for her full time, while the rest of the family continues to help maintain the forest.

Devaki Amma still tends her plants daily, urging everyone she meets to plant at least one tree. Her four decades of quiet, repeated effort stand as proof of what patience, a family's support and a single sapling can eventually become.

Sources:

'Forest Conservationist Devaki Amma Receives Padma Shri from President Droupadi Murmu': Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Published 2026

'The grandmother of forests: How Devaki Amma grew a jungle and a legacy': by Deccan Herald, Published 25 January 2026

'Padma Shri Awardee Devaki Amma: The Woman Who Grew Forests': DNN24, Published 31 May 2026

Most of us picture tigers prowling through dense tropical jungles. But the world's largest cat has mastered landscapes far more diverse than popular imagination allows, from icy forests in Russia to tidal mangrove swamps in India, and from towering Himalayan foothills to Southeast Asia's rainforests. 

On International Tiger Day, here's a journey through the remarkable homes that continue to shelter one of Earth's most iconic predators.

A tiger silently padding through waist-high grass. Another weaving through tangled mangrove roots as tides rise around it. Yet another leaving fresh paw prints on snow in temperatures that plunge below -30°C.

They all belong to the same species.

For centuries, tigers have evolved into masters of adaptation, surviving in landscapes so dramatically different that they seem like homes for entirely different animals. 

While many people imagine them living exclusively in dense jungles, the tiger's range stretches across some of the planet's most extraordinary ecosystems.

These habitats aren't just beautiful — they are among the most biologically rich and ecologically important landscapes on Earth. 

They also reveal another important fact: saving tigers means protecting an astonishing diversity of ecosystems.

1. The frozen forests of Russia

Perhaps the last place anyone expects to find a tiger is in snow.

Yet the Amur (Siberian) tiger, the world's largest tiger subspecies, inhabits the coniferous and mixed forests of Russia's Far East, with a small population extending into northeastern China.

Winter temperatures here routinely fall below -30°C, and snowfall blankets the forests for months.

Unlike their tropical cousins, these tigers have thick fur, larger paws that act like natural snowshoes, and an extra layer of body fat to survive the bitter cold. Their lighter orange coats blend surprisingly well with snowy landscapes broken by tree trunks and winter shadows.

It is the northernmost home of any wild tiger on Earth.

2. India's mangrove kingdom

Now imagine the exact opposite.

Instead of snow, there are shifting tides.

Instead of dry forest trails, there are muddy islands crisscrossed by tidal creeks.

The Sundarbans, spanning India and Bangladesh, is the world's largest mangrove forest and home to one of the planet's most unique tiger populations.

Tigers of world’s largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans Tiger Reserve. pic.twitter.com/ad99AcYKNj

— Trikansh Sharma (@trikansh_sharma) April 27, 2026

Here, Bengal tigers have adapted to life among salt-tolerant trees, tidal channels, and muddy terrain. They are exceptional swimmers.

As sea levels rise because of climate change, the Sundarbans is also becoming one of the most vulnerable tiger habitats on Earth.

3. The endless grasslands

Not all forests are dense.

Some tiger landscapes are wide, open grasslands stretching as far as the eye can see.

In reserves like Kaziranga, Manas, and Dudhwa, tall elephant grass grows over four metres high, creating natural cover for predators.

These floodplain ecosystems are incredibly productive, supporting dense populations of deer, wild pigs, and buffalo, the prey that sustain healthy tiger populations.

This tiger was born to sparkle ✨
This Golden Tiger of Kaziranga is worth more than solid gold…
VC:In the clip pic.twitter.com/rP0Wc3RRUL

— Susanta Nanda IFS (Retd) (@susantananda3) January 30, 2024

The annual floods that replenish these grasslands also maintain one of India's richest wildlife landscapes, shared by rhinos, elephants, swamp deer, and hundreds of bird species.

4. The Himalayan foothills

The forests below the Himalayas present yet another world.

Protected landscapes such as Corbett, Rajaji, and parts of Bhutan and Nepal combine river valleys, rocky hills, sal forests, and mountain streams.

Tigers here navigate steep terrain that demands strength, agility and endurance.

As temperatures rise globally, scientists believe these higher-elevation forests could become increasingly important for tiger conservation.

5. Southeast Asia's tropical rainforests

The rainforests of Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Indonesia represent some of the oldest forests on Earth.

Dense vegetation, towering trees, and year-round rainfall make them challenging places for both predators and researchers.

Tigers living here often have enormous territories because prey densities are lower than in India's grasslands.

These forests are biodiversity hotspots, sheltering clouded leopards, sun bears, hornbills, tapirs and countless other species alongside tigers.

6. Dry deciduous forests

India's best-known tiger reserves, such as Bandhavgarh, Kanha, Pench, Ranthambore, and Tadoba, lie within dry deciduous forests.

Unlike evergreen jungles, these forests change dramatically with the seasons.

Leaves fall during summer, creating open woodlands where prey animals become easier to spot. During the monsoon, the forests transform into lush green landscapes teeming with life.

A playful cub puts its skills to the test, trying out a stalking trick picked up from its mother. What may look like a game today is actually an important learning phase, helping young tigers understand the wild around them. Every crouch, stalk and surprise. pic.twitter.com/gglIyS9G7K

— Pench Tiger Reserve (@PenchMP) June 21, 2026

These habitats support some of the world's highest tiger densities, proving that seasonal forests can be just as important as tropical rainforests.

7. Swamps, wetlands, and riverine forests

Many tiger habitats revolve around water.

Across India, Nepal and Southeast Asia, riverine forests and wetlands provide year-round prey, dense vegetation and reliable freshwater.

These ecosystems also help regulate floods, recharge groundwater, and support millions of people downstream.

Protecting tigers here often means safeguarding rivers that sustain both wildlife and human communities.

Tiger is an “umbrella species”

A tiger is often called an umbrella species, and protecting it means protecting everything beneath that umbrella.

Each landscape that shelters tigers also stores carbon, purifies water, supports pollinators and sustains thousands of other plants and animals.

The snow forests of Russia regulate northern ecosystems. The Sundarbans buffer devastating cyclones. India's grasslands support endangered rhinos and elephants. Rainforests absorb vast amounts of carbon while harbouring irreplaceable biodiversity.

Saving these habitats, therefore, means protecting far more than a single charismatic predator.

International Tiger Day is often celebrated with numbers: how many tigers remain, how many reserves exist, how populations have recovered.

But perhaps the greatest conservation story lies in the astonishing places it still calls home.

The tiger reminds us that resilience is written into nature's most extraordinary landscapes.

Protecting the tiger, therefore, is about ensuring that these remarkable worlds, so different from one another, yet equally vital, continue to thrive for generations to come.

Sources:

‘Sundarbans may get a bigger tiger reserve: What the proposed habitat merger means for India's mangrove wilderness’: By First Post Lifestyle Desk, Published on 24 June 2026

‘Meet the Siberian tiger: The world’s largest cat roaming the Asia's snowy forests’: by Lindsey Jean Schueman, Published on 4 December 2025

‘Russia boosts protection for Tigers’: by Traffic, Published on 30th October 2012

Every monsoon, Mumbai floods.

Just a few months later, the same city struggles with water shortages.

How can billions of litres of rain fall every year... and still not be enough? 🌧️💧

Singapore once faced a similar challenge. Instead of treating rain as a problem, it redesigned the city to capture, store, and reuse rainwater from rooftops, roads, and drains. The result? Less flooding, greater water security, and a smarter way of living with the climate.

As climate change brings more intense rainfall to Indian cities, perhaps the real question isn't how quickly we can drain rainwater away—it's how much of it we can save.

Sometimes, the most valuable resource isn't scarce. We're simply letting it slip away.

Should Indian cities adopt Singapore's rainwater management model? Tell us your thoughts in the comments. 👇

#Mumbai #Singapore #RainwaterHarvesting #WaterConservation #UrbanPlanning #ClimateAction #FloodManagement #SustainableCities #ClimateResilience #SmartCities #TheBetterIndia #PositiveIndia #EnvironmentalSolutions #Monsoon #FutureCities

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When 20-year-old Rasiya Banu first picked up a DSLR camera, she was terrified.

Growing up in Vyasarpadi, a working-class neighbourhood in North Chennai, she had become accustomed to hearing outsiders describe her locality with words like “dangerous”, “dirty”, or “rowdy area”. The labels followed her into classrooms and colleges. They shaped how others saw her before they knew her name.

In 2024, Rasiya used photography to challenge those assumptions.

Through her lens, she documented football players, flood survivors, sanitation workers, grieving families, and the everyday lives of women in her neighbourhood. Each image became an act of reclaiming a story that others have long told on behalf of her community.

“People here are not as others describe. They are not criminals, and this place is not dirty,” she said, as she recalls her photography journey.

Rasiya was one among several young photographers mentored by Chennai-based documentary photographer M Palanikumar through Vyasai Thozhargal, a grassroots collective in Vyasarpadi that works with children and first-generation learners. 

Over the past few years, the initiative has evolved beyond education support into something more ambitious: helping young people discover the power of visual storytelling and use it to represent their own realities.

In a neighbourhood often reduced to headlines and stereotypes, cameras have become tools of confidence, creativity, and social change.

A locality that refuses to be defined by stigma

To understand why photography matters so deeply here, one must first understand Vyasarpadi.

For decades, North Chennai neighbourhoods such as Vyasarpadi have been portrayed through a narrow lens. Popular culture frequently associates the area with crime, violence, poverty, or social unrest. Residents have repeatedly spoken about the discrimination they face simply because of their address.

“Try taking a taxi to Vyasarpadi,” Palanikumar said. “Most drivers will refuse to come inside.”

Yet the reality is far more complex.

Behind the stereotypes are communities built on resilience, solidarity, labour, and aspiration. Families work long hours to support children's education. Women run households under difficult circumstances. Young people dream of becoming journalists, engineers, lawyers, artists, and teachers.

Many of these stories rarely make it into mainstream narratives. That gap is precisely what Vyasai Thozhargal seeks to address.

Founded in 2014 by first-generation graduates from the locality, the collective began as an educational movement focused on ensuring that children from the neighbourhood remained in school. One of its most visible initiatives is Dr Ambedkar Pagutharivu Padasalai, a free tuition centre that today supports around 150 students.

The organisation emerged from a simple belief: education can become a pathway to dignity and equality. Over time, however, its members realised that access to education alone was not enough.

Children also needed spaces to express themselves, develop confidence, and see possibilities beyond what society expected of them. Photography became one such space.

Handing over the camera

Palanikumar is no stranger to using photography as a tool for social justice. Known for documenting marginalised communities and labour issues, he has long believed that those living a story are often best positioned to tell it.

“If people from a particular community tell the story, the depth and emotions attached to that are even deeper,” he said. “The way they narrate their stories itself is a political statement.”

With support from Vyasai Thozhargal, he began training young residents of Vyasarpadi in photography and visual storytelling. The programme was not structured like a conventional photography class.

Instead of directing students on what to shoot, he encouraged them to observe their surroundings, speak to people, and photograph what mattered to them.

Participants were given access to cameras and taught technical skills, but equal importance was placed on empathy, observation, and storytelling.

For many, it was the first time anyone had asked them to document their own lives.

The transformation was remarkable.

Over the course of more than a year, students produced thousands of photographs capturing neighbourhood celebrations, household labour, local traditions, friendships, environmental challenges, sports, and family life.

What emerged was not merely a collection of images but an archive of lived experiences.

The stories outsiders never see

One of the most powerful examples came from Rasiya. Following the death of football player Priya, whose passing sparked widespread outrage across Tamil Nadu, Rasiya felt compelled to document the young athlete's story.

“Priya was a stranger to me,” she said. “Yet I couldn't accept that her passing was reduced to a mere news headline.”

Through photographs and conversations with family members, she created a visual narrative that restored humanity to a story many had encountered only through breaking news updates.

Other participants focused on equally intimate subjects.

There were images of single mothers working tirelessly to support their families. Photographs of sanitation workers taking a brief tea break after long shifts. Portraits of elderly temple workers carrying out decades of service despite financial hardship.

Some students documented flooding and climate impacts in North Chennai. Others explored gender, sports, friendship, and childhood. What connected all the projects was authenticity.

Rather than searching for dramatic scenes, the photographers turned their attention to ordinary moments that revealed extraordinary resilience.

“The students' outlook on life, spaces, and the people they engage with is vastly different from external projections,” Palanikumar observed.

Their work challenged the tendency to view marginalised communities only through the lens of suffering. Instead, the photographs showed complexity: joy alongside hardship, aspiration alongside struggle, dignity alongside deprivation.

When confidence begins to grow

The impact of the initiative extends well beyond photography. For many participants, the experience altered how they see themselves.

Young people who once hesitated to speak in public now discussed their work with visitors and journalists. Students who had never considered creative careers began exploring opportunities in journalism, media, and visual communication.

Nandhini, one of the participants, is pursuing journalism. Others have spoken about wanting to continue documenting social issues affecting their communities.

Photography has also created new forms of representation. Historically, communities such as Vyasarpadi have often been photographed by outsiders. The resulting images, while sometimes well intentioned, can still reinforce unequal power dynamics.

Here, the photographers belong to the neighbourhood. They know the people they photograph. They understand the context behind every image.

As Palanikumar noted, the students often notice details that outsiders might overlook. Their perspective is not observational. It is lived.

An exhibition on the streets

Perhaps the most symbolic expression of the initiative came through the exhibition 'Engal Therukkal Engal Kadhaigal', or Our Streets, Our Stories (2024).

Rather than displaying photographs inside a conventional gallery, organisers transformed the streets of Vyasarpadi into an exhibition space.

Hundreds of photographs were displayed outside homes and along neighbourhood lanes. Visitors walked through the community while viewing stories created by its residents. The choice was deliberate.

“There is a need for actual recognition of North Chennai,” Palanikumar explained to media. “Every photo frame was placed outside their homes so that the exhibition attendees could easily communicate with them.”

The exhibition challenged not only perceptions of Vyasarpadi but also assumptions about who gets to be an artist, whose stories deserve visibility, and where art belongs.

For local residents, seeing their lives represented with dignity was deeply meaningful. For visitors, it offered an opportunity to encounter a side of North Chennai rarely portrayed in mainstream narratives.

More than photography

At its heart, the Vyasai Thozhargal initiative is not really about cameras. It is about access to creativity, self-expression and confidence.

For children growing up in communities where opportunities are often limited, these experiences can be transformative. A camera can become a bridge between observation and action. Between invisibility and recognition.

The young photographers of Vyasarpadi proved that stories do not need to come from outside experts or visiting journalists. Sometimes, the most powerful stories emerge when communities are trusted to tell their own.

As one message from the participating students declared before their exhibition: “What you've seen, heard, known and what you've told us. This isn't Vyasarpadi. Only we can share our stories. And now, we are doing so.”

In neighbourhoods long spoken about by others, that simple act of self-representation may be the most powerful change of all.

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