“Grama Sarkara” – A bold anti-corruption initiative of a ‘Gram Panchayat’!

This is the story of a village Sarpanch who once took an undaunted approach to fight corruption by empowering people with information to build a corruption-free Gram Panchayat – a seemingly impossible challenge a reality during his tenure. With a belief that a citizen well-aware of one’s rights with a conviction ingrained in one’s mind that “I will not pay bribe” as the best weapon to fight this evil, Mr Na Li Krishna from a village called Nagarakere decided to confront the unattainable by bringing in transparency & honesty within the system.

A village farmer redefining agriculture sutra!

Well, it’s not the tigers alone on the ‘list of endangered’in India. A heart-to-heart discussion with an earnest village farmer and you would end up including to the above list, an exhaustive range of rice varieties of India, mostly traditional and indigenous.

Kodiyala - A village of weavers who wove clothes for the Maharajas

Small houses on either side of narrow roads, busy traditional bazaars that bountifully display spices & vegetables, old-fashioned name boards that remind you of the 80s and a group of elderly at the pocket-sized tea shops who make you forget GPSs and Google Maps... that’s a scene from a small village called Kodiyala located a few kilometers away from the historical town of Srirangapatna that was once ruled by Tippu Sultan. What makes this village unique is the fact that the weavers of Kodiyala wove the clothes for the royal families of Mysore, Tippu Sultan and many political leaders. This village is a home to hundreds of ‘Padmashalis’, a Telugu-speaking weaver community known to have migrated from Andhra Pradesh hundreds of years back.