With sheer will, this duo is transforming lives of women in rural India

An ambitious civil society initiative is trying to plug the state's failure in some of the most backward parts of the country

For Anish Kumar and Anirban Ghose, the two encounters bordered on the epiphanic. Kumar and Tata Trusts managing trustee R Venkataramanan were touring Jharkhand when they met a middle-aged woman in Tilladih in Gumla district. Thanks to the introduction of water harvesting and intensive agriculture, the 70-odd households in the village had seen their average incomes shoot up from Rs 40,000 to almost Rs 300,000-400,000 a year. When they asked the woman what else she wanted, she gave them an astonishing reply: She said that she wanted her children to be like them. 

The woman explained that though she had more