Cracking the Shell: Kalawati’s Rise to Entrepreneurship
Cracking the Shell – Kalawati’s Rise to Entrepreneurship
When Kalawati Devi lost her husband and son-in-law, her world collapsed. Living in Jorkat village, Palamu, she became the sole provider for her family, earning barely ₹300–400 a day through farming. Each day was a struggle for food, for school fees, for hope.
Through AIDENT’s Holistic Rural Development Programme with Tata Power, Kalawati’s life began to change. She received a smokeless chulha (clean cooking stove), which not only improved her family’s health but sparked an idea. Using it, she started a small business of boiling and selling eggs in the village.
Her daily income soon rose to ₹600–700. For the first time, she could buy essentials without debt and send her children to school. Her small venture also inspired other women in the community to think of self-employment beyond agriculture.
Today, Kalawati calls her chulha “a tool of change.” What began as a clean energy intervention became a doorway to confidence, entrepreneurship, and dignity proving that sustainable technologies can ignite new livelihoods in the most unexpected ways.