Author: priyanshush21

By a SWAR Fellow who is still figuring it out (and is okay with that) Picture this: a guy who couldn’t clear UPSC prelims, sitting in a field he had never heard of, working on a project he didn’t know existed, in a village whose name he couldn’t pronounce eight months ago , and somehow, […]

It began like a quiet river,twelve paths crossing somewhere betweendreams and dusty roads of India.Different tongues, different homes,yet one shared promise to leave the world a little kinder than we found it. First came Kushal,a traveler with books in his backpackand philosophy in his breath.From Ahmedabad’s thoughtful streetsto the forests of Kondagaon and Narayanpur,he debates […]

As the fellowship moves towards its closure, something strange has been happening to me. Slowly, quietly, without any announcement , I have started seeing things differently. Not just the work. The way I look at what is right and what is wrong has genuinely shifted, and I am still in the middle of figuring out […]

There’s a reel I keep coming back to. A woman, speaking plainly, no dramatic background music, no fancy cuts – just her, sitting somewhere ordinary, saying something that refuses to leave my head: “We spend half our lives waiting for fairness. We complain about the cards we were dealt, our background, who betrayed us, what […]

I read Tuesdays with Morrie on a cold January night, wrapped in a blanket, sitting in the same room where I’d been working fifteen-hour days for the past two weeks. I wasn’t planning to read it. I picked it up almost by accident – someone had left it on the table, and I just needed […]

When I first heard about the exposure visit as part of my SWAR Fellowship, I understood it in a very simple way. I thought it was meant for learning from different organisations -understanding their models, their strengths, how they work with communities, and how they sustain their impact. For me, it was like stepping into […]

Just when you think you finally understand the ground reality, the field humbles you. It shows you how much more there is to learn. That’s exactly why I love fieldwork. It never lets you live in assumptions. For the past few months, I’ve been on field and visits almost every day. Bastar, with all its […]

This morning I was sitting in Makdi Singray village for a discussion on tamarind collection and processing. Normal field day. After the meeting wrapped up, I got talking with Shrimani didi. Just casually, I asked her – “Didi, aapko pata hai aaj kya hai?” She smiled, almost like it was a slightly silly question, and […]

I have been sitting with this question for a while now. It started when I was in the middle of hiring for my team – going through CVs, sitting across from people in interviews, trying to figure out who to bring in. And somewhere between the second and third round, it hit me: I was […]