Bihar

A native of Bihar's Barauli village, Abhishek Kumar left his well-paying job to take up farming on his ancestral land in 2011. Today, he is associated with 95 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) in the country, having mentored more than 2 lakh farmers to date.

Anil Paul from Patna, Bihar, has maintained his terrace garden for the past 30 years. He grows exotic varieties of fruit trees and flowering plants in his 1000 sq ft garden and hasn't disposed of wet waste for 20 years.

From just Rs 5, Bihar-based Dr Ramanand Singh has increased his fees to a nominal amount of Rs 50. At times he waives the fees to serve the underprivileged of society

Raghvendra Kumar, who also goes by the sobriquet ‘Helmet Man of India’, sold his house and three bighas of land, distributing 50,000 helmets free of cost across 22 states.

Mushroom farming expert Pushpa Jha from Darbhanga, Bihar invested only Rs 500 and started growing mushrooms in her own house using unique methods

Senior government officers Santosh Kumar, Vijay Kumar and Ranjan Prakash from Bihar launched the Ambedkar Initiative for the Marginalised (AIM) Pathshala that provides free education and study material to underprivileged students in Gopalganj, Aurangabad and Samastipur districts

Dr Sunil Kumar, an oncologist at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), started Chandrakanti Devi Cancer Foundation in Bihar to help patients diagnose cancer at early stages and seek much-needed treatment

Thanks to civil engineer Udyan Singh, big brands like Biba and FabIndia are buying Bihar's rare Banka silk directly from hundreds of weavers who were once struggling to make a living.

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.

Bihar's Ramchandra Manjhi has overcome gender and caste-based prejudices, financial crisis and several other odds to keep ‘Naach’ alive. He narrates what it is like to be a 'cross dresser' in his career spanning eight decades.