Beyond Views: The Better India's Impact Report 2025

One October morning, during an otherwise routine workday, we received a message that reminded us how storytelling can bring safety and livelihoods to people in the remotest areas.

Advertisment

Add The Better India As A Trusted Source

The message came from a local NGO worker who supports children rescued from bonded labour. It was filled with joy! Photos of children clutching school kits, and mothers standing proudly with their new goats and buffaloes.

Not long ago, these same children had been trafficked from their villages, forced to work in bag-making units far from home, and denied school, safety, and the simple right to a childhood.

Months earlier, we had published their story and asked our readers to help. Reporting on vulnerable children is never simple. But this was a story we knew deserved persistence. And once again, our readers proved that compassion can move people to act.

Thanks to our readers’ contributions, five families, many led by single mothers, received goats and buffaloes to begin dairy livelihoods. One woman opened a small shop from her home while caring for her bedridden husband. The shop is humble, but it is a chance for this mother to feed her children and look after her husband, without being exploited.

Fifteen rescued children returned to school, with uniforms, books, and the opportunity to learn and grow, rather than living in inhumane conditions.

For us, that on-ground impact mattered more than any metric attached to the original story. It marked the point at which the story moved beyond our platform and changed lives. 

At The Better India, these are the very moments that define our work.

Not just when a story crosses a million views.
Not just when a reel trends.
Not just when our content is quoted or republished elsewhere.

What keeps us driven are the messages that arrive days, sometimes weeks or months later, carrying evidence that something shifted permanently because a story was read and taken seriously.

Where impact really begins at The Better India

Every story we tell begins with a deceptively simple question: why does this matter, and how can it make things better?

Behind every story we feature is a human being fixing a broken system, reimagining an age-old practice, or building something better where solutions had never reached. This year, those humans included doctors restoring forests, engineers addressing water scarcity, women reclaiming livelihoods, and everyday citizens refusing to accept that “this is just how things are”.

What gives these stories their power is not scale alone. It is intent.

At The Better India, we have never believed that impact journalism means chasing the loudest problem of the day. Instead, we follow people, often working without a spotlight, sometimes against overwhelming odds, always with persistence.

In 2025, that choice repeatedly showed us what storytelling can do when it is rooted in trust and humanity.

How one story saved a life - literally 

One story, deeply personal and unflinching, led to something we could never have predicted. It was about a woman who had endured domestic violence and, through years of resistance and advocacy, had built a life centred on helping other women find safety and strength.

Days after the story was published, she received a message from a reader she had never met. The woman had been scrolling late at night, overwhelmed and on the brink of ending her life. Reading the story stopped her.

Instead of closing the page, she reached out. She asked for help.

For the reader, the story became a lifeline. For the woman at its centre, publication became confirmation that telling the truth, even when it is painful, can reach someone exactly when they need it most.

When recognition leads to solutions and inspires thousands

For some, impact arrived not in funds or infrastructure, but in recognition.

A rose farmer.

A conservationist.

An innovator.

People who had spent years doing the work without applause suddenly found themselves seen. 

After we published a feature on CSIR-NEERI scientist Dr Lal Singh, government departments in Maharashtra and Karnataka reached out directly, inviting him to conduct site visits to implement his Eco-Rejuvenation Technology. A private college asked him to revive a degraded patch of land on its campus.

The outreach followed for one reason: the story reached the right desks.

After our story onVikrant Kale’s journey from engineer to farmer went live, the impact reached far beyond clicks. Officials from the central government’s agriculture innovation patent office saw the story and recognised the value of his work with the exotic white jamun variety. They visited his farm, assessed his innovation firsthand, and initiated the formal patent process under the Innovative Farmers category. What began as a published article became a bridge to official recognition and a pathway to securing intellectual property rights for Vikrant’s breakthrough, a milestone that promises long-term dignity, opportunity, and validation for his efforts.

Similarly, after we talked about Swapnaloke’s work with Sabar tribal children who hunt lizards to survive, donations totalling Rs 30,623 arrived within days. The support helped sustain free residential education, nutrition, and care at a critical moment. 

When a story gave a paanseller a new identity

For Pintu Pohan, a paanseller from a Kolkata slum, recognition once felt unimaginable.

For 25 years, through poverty, floods, and neglect, he wrote. He authored 10 books while running a roadside shop, taught himself, earned a master’s degree, and ensured his children had opportunities he never did.

After our story went live, messages and calls poured in. People finally saw the world he had built with his pen.

For Pintu, beyond the virality, it gave him a sense of identity and recognition for his skills, long overdue.

The surgeon couple saving tigers 

A feature on Earth Brigade Foundation’s solar pump model led to an unexpected collaboration. After reading the story, DFO Varun Jain reached out to conservationist Dr Sarita Subramanian and her husband. That connection led to eight solar-powered water installations and five electrified forest camps in the Udanti–Sitanadi Tiger Reserve.

The outcome reduced human–animal conflict, improved patrol safety, and strengthened water security for wildlife. Both credit the story with initiating a collaboration that may never have happened otherwise.

How people across India stepped in for one another

This year also showed us how timely storytelling can become timely help, allowing help to reach people at the moments that mattered most.

When floods submerged parts of Punjab in September, evacuation boats became the difference between life and loss. Through our collaboration with Donatekart, readers helped raise over Rs 8 lakh to fund boats and relief kits. Families displaced overnight were met not just with sympathy, butwith essentials and dignity.

In another instance, readers responded quickly to our story on Share At Door Step (SADS). Within days, nearly 8 pickup and drop-off requests were placed, resulting in the collection of over 200 pounds of clothes, toys, shoes, and essentials. Through partner NGOs in Pune and Mumbai, these donations supported more than 200 families.

In Pune’s tribal villages of Mulshi, over 1,100 families received solar-powered lights and fans, many for the first time. For some, it meant safety after sunset. For others, relief from summers that had previously turned fatal.

In Mirzapur, 60 girls received bicycles, transforming a 10-kilometre forest path into daily access to school. Sometimes, impact looks like a policy change. Sometimes it looks like a girl arriving in class on time.

Across these efforts, from summer kits for brick kiln workers in Uttar Pradesh, to reflective collars for 3,000 stray animals across five states, to eco-friendly rakhi livelihoods for 300 women generating over Rs 5 lakh in sales, the pattern remained consistent. When stories were told with raw honesty and integrity, our readers responded with action.

We do not just cover India, we map it

There is a persistent assumption that positive journalism is easier, that it avoids complexity, conflict, or discomfort. Our experience suggests the opposite.

The TBI team reports on trauma without reducing people to it. We examine broken systems while holding space for those repairing them. We acknowledge injustice without allowing despair to be the final word. This balance is deliberate. It requires rigour, restraint, and responsibility, especially at scale.

Today, our stories reach nearly 300 million people every month. At this scale, optimism cannot be simplistic. Every story must stand up to scrutiny, context, and consequence.

We do not just cover India, we map it. From over 12,000 cities, towns, and villages, we bring local solutions into national conversations, ensuring they are not lost to invisibility.

Looking ahead

As we close 2025, we often think of that October message, not because it praised our work, but because it showed us what happens when stories are allowed to travel beyond the page.

Our role remains unchanged: to listen first, tell stories with care, and hold truth with empathy so it can move people to act.

Thank you for reading, sharing, questioning, and believing with us.

Here’s to another year of telling stories and the people who turn them into change. 

— Chief Editor, English, The Better India