Transform Rural India

Geeta Devda was married at 16 and pulled out of school in Class 10.

When she joined a self-help group in Balipur in years later, she began to understand, for the first time, what she herself had been denied.

With training from TRI on gender, rights and local governance, that understanding became action. She started helping women in her village know their rights and how to act on them.

What followed were:

✅ 60+ domestic violence cases reported
✅ Women sitting equally in Gram Sabha meetings
✅ A community that now knows how to use the system

This is what community-first development looks like, not a programme delivering to people, but people who now know how to demand what is theirs.

Read Geeta's full story, as featured in TheBetterIndia https://thebetterindia.com/changemakers/rural-women-empowerment-balipur-geeta-devda-collective-action-transform-rural-india-11885992

✍️ Nishtha Kawrani, Vidya Gowri Venkatesh
⭐️ Pallavi Jain, Aliva Das

“If there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is that rural India does not lack aspiration or capability.”

In the latest chapter of , meet Ankita Rathor.

What began as a journey in engineering evolved into a decade of working at the intersection of communities, governance and sustainable rural development. Over the past few years at TRI, Ankita has been working at the intersection of climate resilience, natural resource management and community-led rural transformation.

Along the way, it is stories like Wasala Makta that stay with her, a village that moved from uncertainty to ownership and eventually became a learning site for other communities.

For Ankita, the most meaningful change is not just in livelihoods or infrastructure, but in the confidence of communities to lead their own development journeys.

🔗 Read Ankita’s full story here: https://www.trif.in/finding-my-place-in-rural-transformation/

Stay tuned as we continue sharing stories from working at the heart of systems change.

India’s proposed Women Farmers’ Entitlements Bill, 2026, could mark an important shift in how we define who counts as a farmer.

This week’s Thoughtful Tarakki piece by Anish Kumar, Co-founder, , begins with the long-overdue recognition of women farmers, many of whom do the work of farming while remaining excluded from formal entitlements and visibility.

But the article makes a larger argument: this invisibility extends beyond gender to India’s vast marginal farmer population, with consequences for rural demand, migration, employment and the country’s development trajectory.

As India charts its path to Viksit Bharat, can we afford to keep ignoring the farmer India refuses to see?

👇🏼 Click here to read the full article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/farmer-india-refuses-see-transform-rural-india-wdmkc