For years, farming in Haridwar’s sugarcane belt followed a familiar pattern: more chemicals, more fertiliser, and rising cultivation costs. Productivity remained the priority even as soil fertility declined.

As a 12-year-old boy, Dadi Shiva along with his father would sleep beside the canal regulator during irrigation season.

When you think of farming incomes in India, you think in thousands. Rarely in lakhs. And almost never double digits – Rs. 28 lakh a year is almost unheard of. Yet, on a small patch of land (2.7 ha) in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, that is exactly what Suman and her husband have built. Not through a single breakthrough—but through a series of deliberate, well-timed shifts.

For a village in Gujarat’s rainfed cotton belt, where farming has become increasingly difficult attributed to rising temperatures, water stress, and declining soil health, the sapling forest has become a visible sign of change.

In Patancheru, where factories sit beside farms, water once flowed in only one direction — away. Downstream. Depleted. Disappearing. Today, some of that water is finding its way back.