The Indian Institute of Technology Ropar in Punjab has developed a device that ensures high flow of oxygen to patients in need. ‘Jivan Vayu’ is set to be a boon for oxygen supply infrastructure in areas with electricity shortage or frequent cuts. Details here.

In The Slow App, watch the unique bond shared between elephant Sulochana and her mahout Ayyub Khan at Dudhwa National Park in Uttar Pradesh.

A novel initiative of the Lakhimpur Kheri district administration in Uttar Pradesh is bringing financial freedom to rural women by training them to extract fibre from discarded banana stems. Their yarn is going places.

She has roamed the forests in Nilambur in Kerala, in the jungles of the Bori Wildlife Sanctuary in Hoshangabad, and is now spending the last years of her life at Panna. Meet Vatsala who is perhaps the world’s oldest living female elephant. Efforts are on to find her birth records so that she can feature in the Guinness World Records.

To respond to the COVID healthcare services in rural areas, the Odisha government has disbursed Rs 10,000 one-time financial assistance to each ASHA worker in the state. The money can be used to buy masks, sanitisers, soaps, face shields. More details here.

Ram Lotan Kushwaha, a seed conservator from Satna, Madhya Pradesh goes to great lengths to preserve and conserve traditional medicinal herbs and seeds of indigenous vegetables in his farm. The vegetables and seeds also find place in a desi museum he has set up.

A recent study suggests that by retiring old coal-based power plants and utilising renewable sources of energy like solar and wind, Maharashtra can save upto Rs 75,000 crores in the next decade. Details here.

Women self-help groups in a small village in Panna, Madhya Pradesh push the amla into the limelight after giving it a sweet makeover. The state government has included Panna’s amla in its One District One Product scheme to make women self-reliant.

69 per cent of villages in Dantewada district have been declared COVID-free. The rest will be free of the coronavirus by June 15, declares the district administration. But, health experts term these announcements “gimmicks” and say several challenges remain.

In Poompuhar village, where women aren’t even allowed to sit with men in public, five of them break gender stereotypes and start their own restaurant, where their vatha kuzhambu and rava kesari wow their customers.