Politics, from below.

After three failed monsoons, Vidarbha cotton farmers quietly switch to millet

The shift is not a government scheme. It is happening in two-acre parcels, on the advice of grandmothers, against the explicit warnings of input dealers.

A 14-village federation in Marathwada is quietly rewriting the rules of groundwater

No NGO. No app. A handwritten register, a community well-meter, and a rule that nobody irrigates sugarcane without the gram sabha's vote.

Wages delayed 217 days. A district in Jharkhand keeps showing up to work anyway.

In Khunti, the muster roll is full and the bank accounts are empty. The labourers have started keeping their own register.

A Mukhiya in Saharsa hired three teachers from the panchayat fund. The state says he cannot.

The school has 412 children and four sanctioned teachers. The panchayat says it cannot afford another generation of waiting.

We do not cover the Lok Sabha. There are forty newspapers that do. We cover the gram sabha. There are almost none that do — with patience, with structure, and without a story pre-decided before the reporter arrives.