Rohit Prajapati belonged to an affluent family. But the poor background of his mother’s family always moved him. So, as a student, he vowed to work for people’s welfare, and not for the promotion of his family.

After graduating in mechanical engineering from Vadodara, Rohit worked in five companies. Then he did his Master’s in Germany.

Vatva in Ahmedabad in north Gujarat to Vapi in the south is known as the Golden Corridor in Gujarat. It is so called because of the good transport and communication system and the availability of cheap and unorganized labour for the industries. In this 400 km long region, there are over 50 industrial estates; some of them are chemical estates spread over a thousand acres.

But it is a dark and dangerous corridor for the people. Those who live on the estates and in the surrounding villages face extreme pollution of air, water and soil, which adversely affect their health.

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Taslima Nasreen — an ecstatic transgender woman, accountable entrepreneur and determined social activist. Abandoned by her family at the age of 13, she attempted suicide, but fate had other plans in store for her. She was rescued by a group of transgenders who saw her sleeping in a park at Tirupur.

“If my parents and brothers had noticed me in Tirupur, they would have killed me, so I moved to Bengaluru and underwent a sex change surgery,” says Taslima. There, she applied for jobs in many companies, but since they did not accept her, she had to beg at traffic signals. She moved to Pudukkottai to get treatment as she was unwell and met Anjalai who worked with Mahaveers Trust. Taslima says, “She was one among those who was instrumental in getting me an identity in society.”

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“We shall play school,” the third-grade boy gathered the village children at the backyard of his house. “I am the teacher. And you are all students,” he began.

What Babar Ali began as a game with eight children in 2002, he continues till today. But now he has more than a thousand students. “It began as a game. But we got very serious about it very soon,” says Babar, who was born on 18 March 1993. In his Beldanga village of Murshidabad district, West Bengal, there was no school then. Since many children, including his sister, were unable to go to school, he began to teach them after his school.

While Babar went to school in the mornings, he taught in his “school” from 3 pm to 7 pm in the evenings. After his matriculation, he attended Behrampore Krishnath College, 15 kms away. He obtained a degree in English (Honours) and an M.A. in English and History, while continuing to teach in his school.

His middle-class parents, Mohamad Nasiruddin and Banuara Bibi, encouraged his teaching of the village kids. His father, a jute trader, also offered him money to purchase books and other materials for the students.

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The teacher was horrified to learn the awful tales from the kids. Trina Talukdar was employed to teach the children of the women involved in the sex trade in Kalighat, Kolkata. These minor girls shared with the new teacher how they too had often been forced to work in the flesh trade against their will.

That night, 18-year-old Trina couldn’t sleep. She was further shocked to learn that more than three million females are trafficked in India every year; 40 per cent of them are minors. The girls, who should have been with their books in schools, are forced to please their customers. When these innocent girls don’t entertain their clients, they are starved and tortured.

Instead of selfishly pursuing her future career, the teenager decided to do something to save these hapless girls from sex slavery.

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After his father’s demise, one-year-old Palam Kalyanasundaram’s mother struggled to bring him up. Since there was no school, bus, electricity, or even a proper road in his small village of Mela Karivelam Kulam in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, the little boy had to walk ten kilometres every day to school and back. No other child in his village attended school, since they could not afford the monthly fee of five rupees. So through her hard labour, his mother paid for other children’s fees, books and clothes, so that they too could go to school with him. Thus, from childhood, Kalyanasundaram learned to share with others.

Kalyanasundaram desired to study his rich Tamil culture and history by taking up Tamil literature for his Master’s degree. Seeing his interest, the founder of MTT Hindu College not only introduced the subject in the college, but also sponsored his education. So again Kalyanasundaram saw others’ generosity in his education.

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Odanthurai in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu was a non-descript panchayat in India. But it is now a model for self-governance and income-generation. Winning many awards, it has attracted dignitaries like the President of the World Bank, ministers from South African countries, researchers, government officials and students from 43 countries.

The panchayat, nestled in the foothills of the Nilgiris, has won accolades for supplying drinking water to all its villagers, providing housing to all, tapping renewable energy and for adopting several green measures. It also has a corruption-free administration and its annual income has grown multi-fold.

The credit goes to R. Shanmugam, who took over as the panchayat’s president in 1996, though he had studied only up to the tenth grade.

The pilot project of the late Chief Minister Jayalalitha’s Pudhu Vaazhvu Thittam (Poverty Reduction Scheme) was first executed here. They have implemented the state government’s Green House Project Scheme under which more than 850 houses were built, the highest in the state, and handed over to the poor. The panchayat was then declared hut-less.

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Laxmi Gautam was moved by the plight of widows in the holy city of Mathura. The heads of young widows were shaven and they had to wear only white saris for the rest of their lives. Child brides became widows before they became women. No one respected them after they became widows. Penniless, they had to depend on others for food and clothing. This forced some young widows to become prostitutes for their survival. Heirless widows were not given a decent cremation. Many bodies became prey to street dogs. Laxmi resolved to do something for them when she grew up.

Born in 1963 in Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, Laxmi studied Hindi and History at Agra University and obtained her doctorate. She was then appointed associate professor at the Institute of Oriental Philosophy, Vrindavan.

After her classes, Laxmi would go to the Yamuna cremation ground, collect abandoned dead bodies, even the rotting ones, and give them respectful cremations. She has performed last rites for more than 500 widows, and has been carrying out this noble deed for the last 30 years or more.

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‘Give us plastic waste, drink tea in return’, invites a tea stall near the famous Kumbhalgarh Fort in Rajasthan.

Bhaga Singh weighs the waste plastic he receives at his tea stall on his weighing machine. The 31-year-old vendor then offers tea and a samosa in a paper cup and plate to the customer in return for one kilo of waste plastic. By doing this, the chaiwala is making a humble initiative to make the area plastic-free. The waste plastic he collects is given to the waste collectors.

“I don’t do it for profit; but for a plastic-free Kumbhalgarh,” says the young man from Kelwara village. Located near the Aravalli Hills, Kumbhalgarh Fort has a 36 km long wall, said to be the second-longest wall after the Great Wall of China. The World Heritage Site attracts a large number of tourists who dump a lot of plastic. Bhaga’s village alone generates more than 2,000 kgs of waste every month, with 527 kgs of plastic alone.

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While Indian Americans have the highest average income of all ethnic groups in the U.S., why in India does one in four live in abject poverty? American-Indian Virendra ‘Sam’ Singh was obsessed with this question. He then realised that it was due to women subjugation.

Singh was born as one of eight children in a zamindar’s family in Anupshahr, western Uttar Pradesh in 1939. He was the first one in his family to become a graduate. He was also the first in the area to go abroad to study and make a living. Completing his Master’s in the U.S., Singh joined DuPont in Lowell and worked there for 35 years, leading the company’s Asia operations. He raised two daughters.

The patriarchal Anupshahr abounded in female infanticide, female illiteracy, child marriage, rape and ill-treatment of women by their husbands. Singh realised that many poor families in India can’t afford basic schooling, parents also don’t want to invest in girls since they will go away to their in-laws and the village government schools are not up to the mark. He thought, “Financial dependence breeds social dependence.”

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The sleeping kid smelt smoke. Fire was emanating from the overloaded electrical outlet in his room. Then he saw the fire spreading in his house. His two-year-old sister was sleeping on the same bed, but the five-year-old boy didn’t panic. Noah Woods got out of the bed. It would be too late to wake up his parents sleeping in the other room.

Noah picked up his sleeping sister, Lily, and through the only opening, the window, he got her out of the house. Then he noticed the family dog, too, was sleeping there. So the little boy re-entered the room and pulled the dog out to safety.

Six of his family members, including his parents and grandparents, were sleeping in the other rooms of the house. But Noah could not enter them.

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