Tag Archives: India

Three Women Fuel a Revolution

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In Khamgaon, a kite festival is taking place. The sky is not blue but orange, pink, green, red filled with kites. A kite floats, slowly descending from the open skies..

A kite descends from the sky

A young girl chases it, forgetting that she is crossing the bridge that divides her village. A chain of events has been put in motion.

Chasing the kite...

...crossing the bridge












Ganga and Salma belong to lower caste families and stay on one side of the bridge. Poonam stays on the other side where high caste families live. But everyday, they walk the same path to collect firewood from an ever-decreasing forest. And everyday the forest recedes further and so they have to walk longer.

Poonam, Ganga and Salma

Collecting firewood












The bridge separates them – customs dictate that Ganga and Salma cannot cross the bridge, cannot touch Poonam, cannot eat with her… but what they are about to discover, is that their problems unite them.

The biogas plant - a promise of freedom?

A dilapidated biogas plant that everyone had forgotten about promises freedom – from the need to walk miles to the forest, from the hours spent collecting firewood, from a kitchen filled with smoke that is slowly eating away at their lungs. But is the promise of freedom enough to overcome the caste divide? Is it enough, the idea of biogas, to convince Bhavani Devi to cook with lower caste women?

Will Bhavani Devi agree?

Will the dream become a reality?












And where is the money to repair the biogas plant going to come from? After all, this is a small, forgotten village… where the only thing everyone remembers is that we should not work together…

Watch the film April 2011.

Director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Director of Photography: Vivek Thakur
Script: Vikas Chandra
Photographs: Nitin Upadhye

Breaking News: Muppets take over the GTS office

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On a cold December morning, the muppets arrived at our door. Why? To film a promo for the Be! Fund, of course. What is the Be! Fund, you ask? Well, as our two wacky and lovable muppets discovered, Be! Fund is India’s first not-for-profit venture fund that will invest in young entrepreneurs, age 18-29, from low-income groups, to define and pioneer businesses that solve the social, economic and environmental problems they face in their lives and communities.

Jhandu and Munni, our two Be! Fund applicants

Upasana, our Be! Fund Manager












The promo, which will air on local cable channels in 50 slums across Delhi, encourages young people to choose to become entrepreneurs and apply for investments of up to Rs. 5 lakhs to start their businesses. Watch out for muppets taking over a local cable channel near you this month!

Breaking News!

World Famous Chulbul Chaturvedi

Two Sides to Every Story

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The story of the tortoise and the hare is always told from the point of view of the tortoise. But what if it was told from the hare’s point of view? Will that change the way we look at the winner and the loser of the race? With this thought, we wanted to tell the story of an entrepreneur who wants to get a bank loan from more than one perspective. This is the story of Manjeri, a young tribal woman who applies for a loan at the local rural bank. This is also the story of Nandan, the loan manager at the bank.

Nandan and Manjeri

Manjeri wants to get a loan to start a business of renting bicycles. Her plan is to buy 10 cycles that she will rent to girls so that they can go to the secondary school in town; she will also rent bicycle to people who go to work a few kilometers away but don’t want to spend too much money traveling in buses. Manjeri goes with her business plan to the bank and explains her idea to the loan manager. He listens to her and asks her to come back with a completed form. But when she brings back the filled in loan application form, he sends her back again because she doesn’t have any one to guarantee her loan. And when she manages to get a guarantor, he sends her away again because she doesn’t have any collateral. Every time persistent Manjeri would come to the bank, she would be sent back to get another signature, another document, another form stamped.

Manjeri sent away every time

Nandan is a loan manager at the local bank. Everyday, many people come to him asking him to give them a loan for something or the other. When Manjeri comes to him with her idea of starting a cycle renting business, he appreciates the idea and is impressed by her planning and the thought that has gone into the business plan. But he knows that because she is a first time entrepreneur, he cannot give her the loan and at the same time, he doesn’t have the heart to say NO to her directly.

Nandan does not want to say NO directly

Does Manjeri get the loan or will she have to give up on her dream of starting a business? Find out more when the book comes out early 2011.

What happens to Manjeri's dream?

Suraj Ka Super Waterworks

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“Hamare gaon mein bijli kab bhejoge?” (When will you send electricity to our village?) This question starts the journey of a life time for Suraj – the protagonist of the first Be! Movie.

Suraj at the beginning of his journey.

Suraj’s story is set in the picturesque village of Lachchipur; close to the village a dam is being built and everyone in the village is very excited by this development. The villagers are hopeful that now, after many years, their village will finally have electricity. But when Suraj’s sister, Puja goes to the dam site to find out when electricity will come to their village, the engineers laugh at her. They say that the electricity from the dam is for big towns and cities, not for her sleepy village.

"Bijli kab bhejoge?"

Suraj decides to take charge of the situation and goes to everyone from the village headman to the district collector in order to get electricity. In fact, the district collector taunts Suraj to create electricity on his own if he wants it so much. And that is what he decides to do.

"Make your own electricity!"

Suraj searches for information about ‘creating electricity’ and seeks out Pooran Bhandari. Bhandari tells Suraj how with the use of traditional technology of water mills (gharats) he can generate electricity and light for the village. Suraj is overjoyed to hear this and can’t wait to start on renovating the gharat in their village but there is a bigger challenge that he must face: to convince the villagers to be a part of the project and find the money needed to renovate the gharat.

With the help of his friends and calls for a village meeting where he tells everyone all he has discovered about the gharat. He tells them all that will be possible once they have electricity: children will be able to study late at night, people will be able work at night, will be able to start different kinds of enterprises – their productivity will double, their lives will be better. His impassioned arguments convince the village women who decide to support him.

Suraj at the village meeting.

But even with their support, he doesn’t have enough money. To make his dream a reality Suraj has to take the biggest risk he has ever taken: get a bank loan…

Watch the movies in early 2011.

Director: Vinnil Markhan
Director of Photography: Vishnu Rao
Script: Shiraz Ahemd
Photographs: Nitin Upadhye