Transform Rural India

Transform Rural India We are solution designers with a vision of rural India where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive.

By putting communities first and deploying innovations in public and private systems we seek to build flourishing localities. We're on a mission to transform 100,000 stranded villages into flourishing communities with our multidimensional design solutions.

Geeta Devda was married at 16 and pulled out of school in Class 10. When she joined a self-help group in Balipur in ye...
03/06/2026

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

28/05/2026

Today as we celebrate International Day of Action for Women’s Health and Menstrual Hygiene Day, we are humbly reminded that for millions of women in rural India, access to basic healthcare and menstrual health is *still* not a given, it has to be fought for, navigated, and demanded.

This is exactly the gap that Badlav Didis work in every single day.

These self-motivated women, Change Vectors, as we call them, work voluntarily within their communities to ensure that no woman is left without answers on health, rights or entitlements. They track pregnancies, coordinate with health centres, push for facilities their villages are owed.

They do not wait for the system to reach their village. They take their village to the system. Over 4,000 Change Vectors are doing this work across multiple states right now.

This video is part of our TRInitiatives series, where we spotlight the solutions TRI designs for rural India, built with communities as stakeholders, not beneficiaries.

Watch. Share. And tell us - what does meaningful change look like in the communities you work with?

28/05/2026

Today as we celebrate International Day of Action for Women's Health and Menstrual Hygiene Day, we are humbly reminded that for millions of women in rural India, access to basic healthcare and menstrual health is *still* not a given, it has to be fought for, navigated, and demanded.

This is exactly the gap that Badlav Didis work in every single day.

These self-motivated women, Change Vectors, as we call them, work voluntarily within their communities to ensure that no woman is left without answers on health, rights or entitlements. They track pregnancies, coordinate with health centres, push for facilities their villages are owed.

They do not wait for the system to reach their village. They take their village to the system. Over 4,000 Change Vectors are doing this work across multiple states right now.

This video is part of our TRInitiatives series, where we spotlight the solutions TRI designs for rural India, built with communities as stakeholders, not beneficiaries.

Watch. Share. And tell us - what does meaningful change look like in the communities you work with?

⭐️

It was an honour to host the Women and Child Development Committee of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly for their Mahar...
26/05/2026

It was an honour to host the Women and Child Development Committee of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly for their Maharashtra study tour.

The delegation, led by Kalpana Soren Ji, MLA, Gandey, included Poornima Sahu Das ji, MLA, East Singhbhum–Jamshedpur, Shashi Bhusan Mehta ji, MLA, Panki, and senior officials from the Department of Social Welfare, Jharkhand.

🤝 The visit brought together policy leaders, CSR foundations, corporate leaders and women-led enterprises for immersive field visits and structured discussions on women's economic empowerment, health and nutrition, climate resilience and innovative financing.

⭐️ A key learning was how institutions like Maharashtra Institution for Transformation ( ) are enabling states to mobilise resources and accelerate development outcomes through strategic partnerships.

We are grateful to all participants and partners for making this exchange purposeful. Through the PPIA approach, cross-learning platforms like this strengthen state capacities and deepen partnerships for equitable development in Jharkhand and beyond.

Thank you, Kalpana ji, for your time and for so beautifully capturing the spirit of this dialogue. Bringing together Jha...
22/05/2026

Thank you, Kalpana ji, for your time and for so beautifully capturing the spirit of this dialogue.

Bringing together Jharkhand’s leadership with India’s foremost CSR foundations was only a beginning, the real work now is turning that shared vision into action on the ground. We look forward to walking that path together.

The Jharkhand Rural Women Policy consultation brought together government leaders, grassroots voices, experts, and women...
21/05/2026

The Jharkhand Rural Women Policy consultation brought together government leaders, grassroots voices, experts, and women’s collectives to shape a stronger framework for rural women’s empowerment in the state.

Convened by the Government of Jharkhand through Jharkhand State Livelihoods Promotion Society, with support from Transform Rural India, the consultation featured key voices including Hon’ble Minister for Rural Development Deepika Pandey Singh and Supriya Shrinate, National Spokesperson, Indian National Congress, who reinforced the need to move from fragmented interventions to systemic, women-led transformation.

Key recommendations from the consultation included:

👉🏼 A comprehensive rural women’s policy spanning livelihoods, health, nutrition, safety, land and tribal rights, climate resilience, and digital inclusion

👉🏼 Stronger participation of women in Gram Sabhas and Panchayati Raj institutions

👉🏼 Better market access, entrepreneurship support, and stronger implementation of PESA

👉🏼 Gender-responsive budgeting, data-driven policymaking, and robust accountability mechanisms

At TRI, we were honoured to contribute to the dialogue on women’s economic empowerment, focusing on stronger livelihoods, entrepreneurship, skilling and removing barriers to women’s economic participation.

“If there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is that rural India does not lack aspiration or capability.”In ...
19/05/2026

“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.

Families are changing. Should development strategies change too?As the world marks , this is also a moment to ask wheth...
15/05/2026

Families are changing. Should development strategies change too?

As the world marks , this is also a moment to ask whether development practice is keeping pace with the changing realities of family life.

In rural India, migration, climate stress and shifting gender roles are transforming families in multiple ways. In this latest piece, our colleagues Shyamal Santra and Shampa Roy explore why stronger development outcomes depend not only on supporting individuals, but on strengthening families, communities and collective systems of care.

What do you think is the right approach to building development models that reflect these changing realities?

Click here to read the full article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-families-change-development-must-too-transform-rural-india-6tiac

Photo and insight credits: Nitu Singh Md. Rayhan Siddik

India’s proposed Women Farmers’ Entitlements Bill, 2026, could mark an important shift in how we define who counts as a ...
14/05/2026

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

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