Five good things happening in India this week
Namaste, and welcome back to Today’s India. This week brings a pocket-sized heart test, a tiny traveller from the Arctic, and some very unusual notebooks.
1. A heart test in two minutes, now in 20,000 villages
When Rajat Jain lost a close friend to a heart attack at 21, he started asking how a basic heart test could reach places far from any hospital. In 2016 he and four co-founders started Sunfox Technologies in Dehradun, and built Spandan, a pocket-sized 12-lead ECG that plugs into a smartphone and produces a report in about two minutes, with no separate battery or internet connection needed.
The company says more than 60,000 devices are now in use across 28 states, reaching over 20,000 villages, with around 60 per cent of users in rural or semi-urban areas. On the Char Dham Yatra route in Uttarakhand alone, more than 13,100 pilgrims have been screened and 463 critical patients identified in time for treatment.
2. A rare bird tagged in Russia is back on Bengal’s coast
Birdwatchers in South 24 Parganas photographed a spoon-billed sandpiper at Kargil Beach in Bakkhali on October 24, and again at nearby Patibunia the next day. A lime-green tag marked “2K” showed it was the same bird first seen at Patibunia in March, and one that had been tagged in Russia’s Chukotka region in July 2025, around 8,000 km away.
The species is Critically Endangered, with fewer than 500 thought to survive in the wild. Local birdwatchers now survey the two beaches every month, and the forest department has put up signboards and stepped up patrolling so the mudflats stay a safe place to rest and feed.
3. From 27 sewing machines to steady salaries in Aarey
In Mumbai’s Aarey forest, Warli Adivasi women who once stitched only when orders came in now hold factory jobs with monthly pay, provident fund and medical cards. It began when Cassandra Nazareth and her team gave the women 27 sewing machines so they could stitch the Warli-painted bags themselves instead of outsourcing the work. After the lockdown, factories came calling.
Shubhangi Rohakar, 35, says it is the first time in her life she has had a PF account. Others still take home orders for quilts and bags on the side, and the extra income is paying for rations, college books and new homes.
Some of the best tailors in any city are found only through a neighbour’s recommendation. The same goes for the home cook everyone orders from, the tuition teacher with a waiting list and the yoga instructor who never advertises.
OpenMap gives local businesses, tutors, coaches and trainers their own page and AI agent, so people (and the AI assistants they use) can find them and send them requests. It is launching in London first.
If you know tailors, tutors, coaches or small business owners like these, in London or wherever your circle reaches, we would love your help introducing them. Become an OpenMap partner
4. Notebooks made from rhino dung, and income for villagers
Retired mining engineer Mahesh Chandra Bora began experimenting with his wife’s kitchen blender after reading about elephant dung paper on a flight. His daughter Nisha left a 17-year corporate career to join him, and in 2014 they founded Elrhino in Assam.
Elephants and rhinos cannot fully digest the grass they eat, so their dung is full of usable plant fibre. Elrhino buys it from villagers living near wildlife habitats, then cleans, boils and presses it into paper for notebooks, journals, bags and lampshades. The idea is simple: when the animals bring income, people have one more reason to protect them.
5. A Goa town turns kitchen scraps into manure in two days
In Bicholim, Goa, food waste no longer has to travel to a landfill. Nisargruna, a process developed by BARC scientist Dr Sharad P Kale, shreds sorted kitchen scraps, adds a microbe mix and pumps in air, turning one tonne of waste into about 150 kg of manure within 24 to 48 hours, right where it is collected.
Plans are now underway to set up similar units across municipalities and village panchayats in the state, which could mean fewer garbage trucks on the road and cleaner dry waste for recycling.
If one of these stories made you smile, forward this email to someone who could use some good news today.
See you in the next edition.
Team Today’s India