Editorial

Women coming together is a splendid phenomenon with manifold benefits: good for the protagonists themselves, for their families and for their communities. That is the essence of our cover story, which explains how collectives of rural women, carefully nurtured and professionally run, are providing a platform for their members to find financial well-being.

 Perhaps as importantly, these enabling enterprises are sparking a change in the patriarchal order of rural India, with women members stepping out of their homes and finding their feet in the world. That means money in their hands, a voice in the household and recognition in the village and even beyond. Our cover story details how five all-women collectives from five states — Maharashtra, Gujarat, Nagaland, Mizoram and Odisha — are making a difference in the lives and prospects of their members.

In our Centre Stage section, the subject is a programme that has led to the creation and sustenance of more than 500 school and village libraries in the districts of Yadgir and Koppal in Karnataka. This edition of Horizons features, additionally, an extensive initiative at the community level — targeting more than 40,000 infants and children — to tackle chronic malnourishment in four districts of Rajasthan; and a report on the Tata Trusts-supported India Health Fund’s continuing effort to combat the medical scourge that is antimicrobial resistance.

A highlight of this issue is our interview with Ganesh Devy, an exceptional scholar who has traversed a variety of disciplines — from linguistics and languages to cultural studies, anthropology, history and philosophy — to explore India and Indianness. A public intellectual of rare calibre, the soft-spoken and modest Mr Devy has written some 90 books, a stupendously prodigious output that includes standouts such as After Amnesia, Of Many Heroes and his latest, India: A Linguistic Civilization.

Also on the Horizons menu this time is a perspective piece by Shikha Srivastava, who heads the urban poverty alleviation portfolio at the Tata Trusts, advocating for underprivileged women seeking secure housing in India’s urban centres. To wrap it up, there’s the pictorial spread on a 10-state collaborative research project, involving the Tata Trusts and the Indian Institute of Spices Research, Kerala, to maximise the advantages of cultivating spices in the country’s rural reaches.

Christabelle Noronha

We hope you will help us make Horizons better with your valuable feedback. Please do write to us at horizons@tatatrusts.org.