After losing her daughter to a car accident, 64-year-old Dorris Francis spends four hours, the busiest ones, every day of the last 14 years on the road, a cap on her head, whistle and baton in her hands, helping ease traffic in Ghaziabad.
Mira Kagti set up Sishu Sarothi, the Northeast’s first school for specially-abled children.
Kunal Maan, who grew up in a red-light district, started Maan Foundation to provide 'love and respect' to the women who earn a living out of the 98 brothels in Delhi’s Garstin Bastion or GB Road, home to the city’s biggest red-light area
Abodh Aras on leaving a cushy corporate job to start NGO Welfare for Stray Dogs
49-year-old Arun Gupta runs the Pinkishe Foundation, a non-profit organisation that runs pad banks across 25 states and Union territories, and works toward providing accessible menstrual healthcare products and literacy to millions of women.
Esmail Daimary was instrumental in creating the 56k bigha Gethsamane Joint Reserve Forest, which drastically reduced the decades-old man-elephant conflict in the region
Sunil Kumar Gurjar left engineering to create folk music with piercing philosophical lyrics that has found a huge fan following among the youth
After the death of a close friend in a road accident, Raghvendra Kumar, nicknamed the 'Helmet Man of India', has been distributing helmets for over eight years now
Suicide by her father drove Kiranjit Kaur to educate widows of farm suicides about their rights and eventually built a strong solidarity network.
For Delhi-based musician Pragnya Wakhlu, music is not just a personal journey.
Mira Kagti set up Sishu Sarothi, the Northeast’s first school for specially-abled children.
Kunal Maan, who grew up in a red-light district, started Maan Foundation to provide 'love and respect' to the women who earn a living out of the 98 brothels in Delhi’s Garstin Bastion or GB Road, home to the city’s biggest red-light area
Abodh Aras on leaving a cushy corporate job to start NGO Welfare for Stray Dogs
49-year-old Arun Gupta runs the Pinkishe Foundation, a non-profit organisation that runs pad banks across 25 states and Union territories, and works toward providing accessible menstrual healthcare products and literacy to millions of women.
Esmail Daimary was instrumental in creating the 56k bigha Gethsamane Joint Reserve Forest, which drastically reduced the decades-old man-elephant conflict in the region
Sunil Kumar Gurjar left engineering to create folk music with piercing philosophical lyrics that has found a huge fan following among the youth
After the death of a close friend in a road accident, Raghvendra Kumar, nicknamed the 'Helmet Man of India', has been distributing helmets for over eight years now
Suicide by her father drove Kiranjit Kaur to educate widows of farm suicides about their rights and eventually built a strong solidarity network.
For Delhi-based musician Pragnya Wakhlu, music is not just a personal journey.
Punjab’s Forrest Gump, Sewa Singh, campaigns for tree plantation and plants trees in public places
Known as Haryana’s ‘Tree Man’, Devender Sura (35) is a constable in the Haryana Police. An athlete, the father of two turned environmentalist after observing the loss of forest cover in his state
Agriculturist CV Raju single-handedly revived the Etikoppaka toy industry by taking it back to its organic roots.
Kandal Rajan planted mangroves as he fished along Kannur's Pazhayangadi river and has now even started a mangrove nursery.
The Mundas, a Santhal tribe, are often remembered for their rebellion against the British in 1855.
Artist Mayuri Chari whose installation series, 'I Am Not Created for Your Pleasure', questions and challenges regressive patriarchal norms
It was in 1992 that Vidya Athreya first saw a leopard in the wild. Thus began a story of love and friendship that has lasted for three decades.
Ambedkarite journalist and caste activist, Sumit Chauhan, on his community-based media organization, The News Beak
Research scholar Prajwal on the experience of being denied a hostel room at University of Hyderabad
BRC, a Dalit non-binary autistic person, talks about choice, will, finding solace while constantly wondering about the next meal or safe house, and the rule of evolution to forget trauma and sadness
Vijay, a Dalit, queer student wants freedom from casteism to judgement on queer fashion, and more
Shripad Sinnakaar says that in a country where caste is assigned at birth, for a Dalit to be a nobody is a repository of inventions and new possibilities
A law student Mayukha makes a case by stating that not respecting how someone wants to be addressed, given their historical marginalisation, amounts to violence too
Teenager Sameera Jalan started PinThread project as an NGO that provided scores of women in Gorakhpur with gainful employment during the pandemic to create sustainable products from discarded materials
Jaipur-based Nishant Hussain started National Muslim Women Welfare Society to provide survivors of domestic violence, dowry a safe space, and to women caught in the triple talaq situation, legal recourse
Assam’s Pabitra Rabha, 46, on his resolve to fight the stigma and discrimination faced by those affected by Dwarfism
A resident of Basti district in Uttar Pradesh, Sitaram Das has some unusual friends. He calls out to them from this side of the pond, and they shuffle towards him.
Gurpreet Singh runs NGO Manukhta Di Sewa in Punjab for mentally ill and destitute
Deep Narayan Nayak, a schoolteacher in Pashchim Barddhaman, West Bengal, is called Rastar Master for running tuitions for underprivileged children on village streets
Anti-slum-demolition activist Santosh Thorat, a slum dweller himself, has brought about computer and voter literacy, among other rehabilitation initiatives in Mankhurd slums
Para-badminton player Manasi Joshi has won several medals since, including gold at the 2019 Basel Para-Badminton World Championships
Teachers' Day: The Book Club: Saquib Ahmed and other youth in Kishanganj district of Bihar are setting up public libraries and holding book fairs to motivate youngsters to read.
Badrul Duja’s RTI query led to setting up of sexual harassment committees in more than 70 government departments across Jammu and Kashmir.
1,000-odd mothers in the Tamil Nadu city of Coimbatore have joined in the efforts of the Coimbatore Parenting Network's breast milk bank initiative.
The sanitary pads made by Jayashree Parwar's women's group in Goa are organic and can decompose in eight days.
Volunteers of Pradeep Sangwan’s ‘Healing Himalayas’ foundation have trekked 10,000 km and handled more than 800 tonnes of garbage in five years.
Teachers' Day: Meet Premchandra Ram, Competitive Exam Coach and the man behind Bihar's Super-30 coaching centre.
Jagbir Singh’s Pritam Spiritual Trust, a voluntary organisation, has provided artificial limbs to over 10,000 people, mostly landmine amputees, victims of cross-border firing and shelling.
Jyoti, who became the first woman to graduate from Garhi Khajur village in Haryana’s Karnal district, is now a community leader
83-year-old Ghulam Mohammad Zaz is the last working craftsman in eight generations of Srinagar’s famous craftsmen who make santoors, sitars and rababs.
A pioneer of the people’s movement starting from his village—Beej Bachao Andolan (Save Seeds Movement), Vijay Jardhari is a true crusader of the seed movement in the hills.
The idea behind PFC, a socio-political film club was to take documentaries on socio-political issues in different Indian languages to the common people these films talked about.
Apart from convincing families not to send their children to other cities out of the lure of a few thousand rupees, Gorelal Manjhi, a daily wage labourer, also keeps an eye on the children of his village.
Ashvini Jojra’s social work is going on under the canopy of Serving All Humanity Yearningly Over the Globe (Sehyog India), of which he is the founder-president.
Used as a live firing range by security forces, Tosamaidan had turned into a death zone shells often killed civilians. Then Dr Shaikh Ghulam Rasool stepped in.
Kamal Chakraborty is a writer who runs the Bhalopahar Society dedicated to forest conservation and tribal development
In a remote part of Bihar’s Gaya district where hillocks jut out of the ground like shrapnel, an old man dug a canal all by himself to get water to his village.
The hundreds of cement dolls outside Azhagu Muthu Ayyanar temple in Cuddalore’s Thenambakkam village are a symbol of devotees' desires and wishes fulfilled.
Tribal rights activist Rattan Manjari is an iconic woman whose battles with patriarchal norms are legendary.
Conservationist Simon Oraon has given his whole life to providing solutions to avert water crisis.
Padma awardee Chandi Prasad Bhatt on his stellar role in the iconic Chipko movement
Without bees, the world as we know it will cease to exist. Md Ariful Islam migrates to spread this message around this country and bring awareness about the importance of bees in the environment.
Dr Shahid Rasool took over as scientist-in-charge of the CSIR field station in 2020. For the past many years, he has been on a mission to popularise lavender cultivation across Jammu and Kashmir and make the region one of the largest producers of the flower.
Started by the trio of Purnima Tammireddy, Rohith and Aditya Korrapati, the regional publishing house is set to publish its first title, a translation of Saadat Hasan Manto’s works, in Telugu next month.
Than Singh, who hails from Rajasthan, is a head police constable whose current post is at Red Fort, Delhi. Apart from his job, he also teaches slum children.
