Hiren Kumar Bose

Sushma Devi is the recipient of a microbusiness grant from School of Hope & Empowerment, a combined initiative by The Better India and TATA Communications’ CSR team.

Kalawati happens to be one of the project participants of S.H.E. (School of Hope & empowerment), a combined initiative by The Better India and TATA Communications’ CSR team.

Lilabati Mahata, hailing from a drought-prone West Bengal's Jhargram, mobilised hundreds of village women to erect and lay water conservation structures.

Dattaraya N Kale of Solapur, Maharashtra, has developed five new varieties of grapes over the years. His latest called the 'King Berry' grows up to 20 mm (2 cm) in length with a 25 mm (2.5 cm) diameter.

Chhattisgarh-based Leelaram Sahu has been growing brinjals since 1988. He developed the new and improved 'Niranjan Bhata' variety of brinjal that is now being grown by farmers across India with his help.

Food scientist-turned-farmer, Chandrasekhar Bhadsavle, fondly addressed by farmers as ‘Dada’, introduced the Saguna Rice Technique (SRT) among a handful of farmers in Neral (Karjat) in 2013. Today, it is practised by progressive farmers in all the 16 agro-climatic zones of Maharashtra.

The Sukhet project is the brainchild of Dr Ramesh Chandra Srivastava, vice-chancellor RPAU, a vermicompost evangelist who is on a mission to popularise it in the state of Bihar.

Shamkant Thange and his family have helped revive the local 'Tikhliya' mango variety by saving grafts from the branches of one tree. His 2-acre orchard now grows 200 mango trees.

Rajesh Shah loves Alphonso mangoes, and it is this love that stopped him from felling old trees planted by his grandfather. Instead, he used the 'girdling' technique that is quite popular with mango farmers in Gujarat.

While the process ultra high-density planting (UHDP) has been practised for years in Israel and South Africa, it is only recently being followed by a handful of enterprising farmers like 62-year-old Parmanand Gavane in Maharashtra.