Umang Bhattacharyya

For over two decades, ITC’s Social Investments Programme has worked on soil and moisture conservation to revive livelihoods and ecosystems in rural India. Scenes of labour migration set the context for the critical fallout that comes from a national water crisis. Memories are triggered, and farmers narrate their history in a time when they had nothing to eat, and nothing would grow. Through collaborative multi-stakeholder partnerships including government agencies, village panchayats, NGOs and communities, ITC helped build and regenerate water harvesting structures to reverse land degradation, provide perennial irrigation, and transform agricultural productivity. The story is told through the eyes of farmers who have witnessed a return of water on dry land, and of a way of life that sustained not just families, but communities. With a coverage of over 950,000 acres and 269,000 households, this resurgence of water has helped catalyse a holistic social revolution. 

Duration: 7.22 minFormat: HDProduced by The Ministry of Steel, India and the United Nations Development Programme

Film by : co-motion. Samreen Farooqui, Shabani Hassanwalia and Umang Bhattacharyya

Challenging the definition of a working woman in an Indian context, the film sets up the rural working woman as a site for unrecognised labour. She’s a working woman who is left out of income figures and GDP debates, even though she heads 23 million households in rural India. These are families that often can't afford even medical treatment for their ailing children. ITC’s Women Empowerment program helps turn rural women into successful entrepreneurs. With a focus on women who live in extreme poverty and are sole earning members, ITC provides training and financial support so women can set up small businesses, form self-help groups or micro- enterprises, and brings in technology for the woman farmer. It has had a cascading effect. These women are building savings, investing in their own health and nutrition, becoming decision makers in families and communities, and breaking biases built over thousands of years.

Every year, around 15 million young boys and girls enter India's workforce - yet the country faces a huge skills gap. As of 2018, there were 31 million unemployed Indians. A major reason is a lack of access to quality training in marketable skills. Khusro, 26, is one such youth from small town India, and the protagonist of this film. With a head full of hope and heart full of dreams, he found himself defeated by a social reality that he didn’t create. Along with, Dharmendra, Saurabh and Sarita, Khusro tells a story of how their life began to change, when they found themselves at a Skill and Vocational Training initiative run by ITC – that skills them up, and gets them their first jobs. We witness the protagonists get ready for employment, find confidence, and shape themselves while dreaming new dreams in this new, volatile India.