West Bengal

Kolkata's iconic Pice Hotels once offered affordable meals to hungry and homesick migrant workers. Today, these traditional eateries still attract foodies and tourists searching for authentic Bengali food flavored by history.

A native of Durgapur, Sumita Banerjee moved to Kolkata a few decades ago. A former school teacher, she found her calling as a green activist when she noticed a blatant disregard for the well-being of Kolkata's second-largest water body, Rabindra Sarovar.

S P Pandey runs SPOAR - Society for Protecting Ophiofauna and Animal Rights - an organisation that works to resolve animal human conflict in West Bengal, and collaborates with the forest officials, gram panchayat and tea estate owners.

Matiur Rahaman from West Bengal is a social activist who has been bringing back dead bodies from abroad. He has also liberated many labourers who got stuck either in overseas jails or detention camps since 2017.

Twenty farmers from Balagarh Block in West Bengal’s Hooghly district are growing a variety of watermelons using the poly mulching technique endorsed by the ATMA (Agriculture Technology Management Agency) scheme. This method saves water and improves the fertility of the land too.

The Better India's very own staff member, Sanchari Pal, currently in West Bengal tending to her ailing father, narrates her quest for the much coveted Remdesivir drug to treat her ailing father and the events that transpired

Daammee, meaning 'awesome', sources a variety of different products from cottage industries situated in the hills of Darjeeling, Siliguri and Kalimpong and offers them to customers all over India on their online marketplace.

First discovered in 1907, Chandraketugarh is a 2,500-year-old site in West Bengal. We unearth the many links it provides to international trade in the mysterious Indus Valley Civilisation.

Biren Kumar Basak from West Bengal remembers the days when he earned Rs 2.5 to now establishing a Rs 50-crore venture, employing 5,000 artisans. His sarees have won several awards including Padma Shri.

When the list of Padma awardees was announced earlier this week, some names familiar to readers of The Better India cropped up.