Good News: Pay Garbage for Food, Wellness for Rural Women, and More

Pay Garbage for Food

At the Garbage Cafe near Ambikapur’s main bus stand in Chhattisgarh, plastic waste doubles as currency. Established by the Municipal Corporation of Ambikapur in 2019, the cafe offers a full meal—rice, curries, roti, dal, salad and pickles—in exchange for one kilogram of plastic waste. Half a kilo earns snacks like samosas or vada pav. The impact has been tangible. Since 2019, the cafe has collected 23 tonnes of plastic, reducing landfill-bound waste from 5.4 tonnes a year in 2019 to two tonnes in 2024. Along with other measures, this helped Ambikapur earn a place among India’s cleanest ‘medium cities’ (one with a population between 50,000 and three lakh) in the Super Swachh League, a category created by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to honour cities excelling in cleanliness, in 2024.

Wellness for Rural Women

A 2017 Lancet study estimated that 197 million Indians live with mental disorders, with depression and anxiety most common. In rural India, mental health care remains particularly neglected. To address this, psychiatrist Geetha Jayaram launched Project Maanasi in Karnataka in 2002, integrating psychiatric care with primary healthcare. Initially centred in Mugalur village, the project now reaches over two million households across 212 villages, focusing on women and children and providing medication at low or no cost. Beyond treatment, the programme has helped patients secure and sustain employment post-recovery. Its success has led to replication in Kenya, Guatemala, Canada and Lithuania.

More Healthcare Strides

Surgeons began 2025 by removing a brain tumour once deemed inoperable, thanks to a new precision technique. Soon after, children with rare inherited vision loss showed dramatic improvements following experimental treatment. Cancer care also advanced, with new drug combinations boosting survival in aggressive breast cancers and blood cancers—often with fewer side effects than chemotherapy. Artificial intelligence joined the clinic too, sharply reducing the time needed to diagnose strokes through faster brain scans. Respiratory patients got good news as well: a monthly injection for severe asthma may soon replace daily steroid use. Reproductive medicine also made headlines, as babies were born free of deadly inherited diseases using advanced IVF techniques. Taken together, these developments didn’t just extend life—they improved its quality in ways patients could feel.

Photo Courtesy: Adobe Stock

Always Connected

On a clear December morning at Sriharikota, India’s heavy-lift rocket LVM3 thundered off the pad carrying an unusual passenger: BlueBird Block-2, a giant ‘cell tower in space’. Built by US company AST SpaceMobile and launched by ISRO, the satellite is designed to beam 4G and 5G signals directly to ordinary smartphones, even in remote deserts, forests or oceans. No extra dish, no special handset—just your regular phone and an open sky. For villagers who walk kilometres to find a single bar of network, or for disaster-hit regions where towers fall, this could be a revolution. The launch also marks India’s growing strength in commercial space, sending both rockets and possibilities higher.

Human Rights on a High

Progress does not always arrive with fireworks, but 2025 still delivered landmark moments. Same-sex marriage became legal in Thailand and Liechtenstein, with Thailand marking the milestone through joyful mass weddings—the first such law in Southeast Asia. In the US, the Supreme Court rejected efforts to roll back marriage equality, reaffirming a key civil rights decision. In the UK, a 200-year-old law criminalizing rough sleeping was finally scrapped, alongside stronger protections for renters and workers. Even symbolic gestures mattered: Syria marked Human Rights Day for the first time, a step that international observers welcomed. None of these moves solved everything—but they signal a steady expansion of dignity and legal protection across borders.

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