The Better India

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Stories written by rahulanand
Writer .Entrepreneur. Currently working as Innovation Associate at Source For Change , a rural BPO in Rajasthan.

Help A Child : Transforming India through the Gift of Education

As most of us know, Education is one of the possible remedies the doctors have recommended for India to reap it’s demographic dividend in the coming decades. But the truth is higher education has increasingly become unaffordable for the middle class India let alone the BHARAT that’s lives on less than $1 per day. But [...]

December 1, 2011 / 1 Comment / Read More

NextDrop: Using SMS to inform citizens when water would flow from municipal taps

July 5, 2011 2 Comments

Water. A basic amenity needed by all of us. Yet, in most towns and cities across the country, the municipal taps are unreliable. Water supply being sporadic in nature, thousands of people queue up in front of these taps not knowing when the water would flow. Households lose immense amounts of time waiting for water [...]

Grassroots Innovation: Pandharinath’s Onion Transplanter

June 14, 2011 No Comment

Onion transplantation is one of the most labour intensive and time consuming process in onion cultivation. Roughly 1,70,000 to 1,90,000 seedlings per acre are transplanted using 40 people. But one man used innovation, technology and ingenuity to make this a thing of the past. Mr. Pandharinath Sarjerao More has developed an affordable, semi-automatic transplanter for [...]

SMV Wheels: A Social Enterprise Empowering Rickshaw Pullers

May 28, 2011 1 Comment

Manual Rickshaws are a significant means of conveyance in this country. According to a recent estimate, there are 10 million rickshaw pullers & 20 million push-cart vendors in India. Most of them are victims of exorbitant daily rentals and the mafia that doesn’t allow them to own the rickshaws. Many of them live on pavements [...]

Grassroots Innovation: Biomass Gasifier that generates energy at a low cost

May 17, 2011 No Comment

Innovators are scientists looking for the best possible solutions. And innovators usually don’t need laboratories – they are risk takers who experiment with whatever resources they have in their immediate environment. One such innovator is Raj Singh Dahiya who has developed an efficient biomass gasifier that ensures smooth operation of any engine at a low [...]

Project Why: Making A Difference Where it Matters

May 4, 2011 1 Comment

In a bustling metropolis like Delhi, most of us get used to living with slums around us. They form an important part of our daily lives by supplying maids, drivers , cooks to our homes. But not many of us have had the time and the inclination to look into their lives especially their children. [...]

Zero: Mobile Platform for Branch-less Banking

April 11, 2011 No Comment

Our 626,000 villages make up 70 percent of the workforce and contribute 20% to India’s GDP. Yet rural India is severely impoverished. The Rangarajan Committee defines financial inclusion as “ensuring access to financial services, including timely and adequate credit where needed to vulnerable and low income groups, at affordable costs.” Even after the RBI [...]

Grassroots Innovation: Mini Sanitary Napkin Machine for Rural India

April 5, 2011 20 Comments

A nationwide survey gauging menstrual hygiene by Plan India revealed that 68% of rural Indian women are not able to afford sanitary napkins. Sanitary napkin, an essential personal hygiene product, has very low penetration in India due to it’s high price. The survey showed that 81% of rural women use unsterilized cloth since it is [...]

Meet Chintakindi Mallesham – The inventor of the Laxmi Asu Machine that relieved the pain of several Weavers

March 22, 2011 3 Comments

This is a part of an ongoing series called ‘Grassroots Innovation’. A hand winding process called Asu is required in the traditional ‘Tie & Dye’ Pochampalli silk saree tradition. This involves moving the hand over a space of one meter up and down around semi-circularly arranged pegs 9000 times (yes, 9000 times!) for one sari. [...]

Esha: Braille Cards, Workshops and more – Empowering The Visually Impaired

March 11, 2011 No Comment

How many of us can tell who has entered the room based on the way they walk or smell? How many of us can walk into our office blindfolded? And yet we think that blind people are disabled. Esha, a non-profit initiative is working to help the blind realize and utilize their potential by designing [...]