Society, Culture and Peace

Enhancing socio-cultural well-being, ensuring justice and equity

Featured here are initiatives to enhance social and cultural aspects of human life: the revival and progressive use of visual, performing, and other arts, of the myriad crafts of the country, of threatened or submerged languages, of food and cuisine diversity, and other such cultural traits and processes. They also cover the various struggles and constructive movements to achieve social justice, to reduce inequalities and inequities of various kinds including caste, class, gender, ethnicity, and religion, and to create dignity in living for those currently oppressed and exploited. Finally, they include movements to generate ethical living and thinking, and spread values such as simplicity, honesty, frugality, and tolerance.

From Nagaland to the World: How indigenous knowledge is shaping climate action, ecological justice

“We need to mandate spaces for women in governance and decision-making, starting at the grassroots village level and moving upward,” says Seno Tsuhah.

Barefoot counsellors – filling the void in rural mental healthcare

Meet the "barefoot counsellors,” trained by the Karnataka Health Promotion Trust, born during COVID, and quietly redefining community mental health support at the grassroots.

Institutional Memory of Vikalp Sangam: A Review of the Process in its First Decade

We documented Vikalp Sangam’s Institutional Memory, to capture the Vikalp Sangam process, the unique insights and learnings of the members along their journey.

Not rescue but revolution: Inside Kranti’s radical classroom

On the Himalayan slopes, far from the red-light districts where its students come from, a small school carves a new path for social change.

What women’s work songs reveal about the changing climate

Long before climate science named the crisis, women were registering these shifts in another language – song.

How the hard ‘na’ insists on Marathi’s caste hierarchy

"This is what I call segregated sociability: the fracturing of a shared linguistic community along caste lines, so that even speakers of the same language cannot meet and be sociable with each other."

Observations on Metho

Where the sense of community was so systematically erased, that the idea of trust and friendliness as being our default mode was considered foolish from the day we could make sense of the world around us.

Sacred groves anchor traditional healing: study

A recent study documents medicinal plants used by Indigenous communities in West Sikkim in India, linking traditional healing to the conservation of sacred groves and monastery forests.

What if the Musi River could lead the development of Hyderabad?

If River Musi led Hyderabad’s planning, it would demand the restoration of the entire water network and integrating all aspects of the built environment with water spaces such as river banks, flood plains, and wetlands.