Agriculture & Rural Development

In keeping with its commitment to support local communities during COVID-19, AkzoNobel India today announced its latest ‘People. Planet. Paint.’ sustainability initiatives. The CSR project follows a two-pronged approach that addresses the health and well-being needs of community members across five states while also meeting the online learning needs of more than 300 children...

Rotary and Tata Trusts have announced a five-year collaboration to advance socio-economic indicators through multi-thematic interventions across India. The collaboration will scale efforts in multiple areas like Healthcare, Cancer Care, Covid Care, Nutrition, Rural Uplift, Livelihoods, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene and Education, among others. The announcement follows a Memorandum of Understanding signed by Mehrab Irani, Group...

HDFC Bank spent Rs. 634.91 crore towards #Parivartan, the umbrella programme for all Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, in FY 2020-21. Out of Rs. 634.9 crore, over Rs. 110 crore was allocated and utilised towards initiatives focused on Covid-19 relief. Further, the bank’s #Parivartan has cumulatively impacted over 8.5 crore lives across India. #Parivartan focuses on...

The Vedanta Group, India’s leading natural resources producer, announced Rs. 5,000 crore social impact programme focussed on nutrition, women & child development, healthcare, animal welfare and grassroots level sports, including major investments in a Corona-free village project across several States to combat the pandemic. This social impact programme will be run under the aegis of...

Maharashtra faces an increasing risk from climate change which is likely to impact the production of four major crops - Soybean, Cotton, Wheat and Gram, grown in the State, according to a study by the Institute for Sustainable Communities. The report titled “Climate Change Impacts on Maharashtra Agriculture” examines the week-wise 30-year averages of historical...

Rural tech startups Frontier Markets, HESA and 1Bridge have announced the formation of a coalition to address the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic in the rural sector. The Rural Access coalition aims to raise $8 million to ensure employment, awareness and accessibility to 1 million rural households in 6,000 villages across 4 states in...

Corporate Social Responsibility has emerged as a strong mechanism for businesses to affect community-based water projects. Between 2014 and 2019, CSR has funded over Rs. 5,018 crores in environmental sustainability, Rs. 2,087 crores in sanitation and Rs. 824 crores in safe drinking water in India according to a report by the United Nations Development...

Artificial intelligence in agriculture is attracting the attention of technology bigwigs like IBM. At a time when the whole world is disrupted by COVID-19 and social distancing is the norm, electronic mandis, for example, could offer an excellent way for transactions between farmers and customers in the post-COVID world. Manoj Balachandran who heads CSR at...

IDFC FIRST Bank announced the launch of Ghar Ghar Ration Program, an employee-funded program for its low-income customers whose livelihoods are affected by COVID-19. The Bank also announced a comprehensive program for the families of employees who unfortunately lost their lives due to COVID-19, and a number of other CSR initiatives aimed at controlling...

As the second wave continues to affect the income of the daily wage earners such as painters, Nippon Paint (India) Private Limited (Decorative Division) extends support to the painter community. The paint manufacturer has resumed its outreach efforts to painters who have been affected due to a lack of employment opportunities. In the first phase,...

Covid Livelihood Coalition (CoLive), a consortium of grass-root level Covid response collectives, has come together to protect and sustain India's most vulnerable communities linking health and livelihoods at a local scale. Its maiden endeavour is a survival kit that targets nearly 2 lakh tribal families in 5000 villages in the states of Karnataka and...

As the country battles the second wave of the pandemic, Nayara Energy, a downstream energy and petrochemicals company, extended further support for people near its Vadinar refinery. The company announced the launch of a Covid care centre with 50 beds in Zakhar village, to provide for the care and treatment of Covid-19 positive patients suffering...