The Better India – Positive news. Happy Stories. Unsung Heroes.

Tired of the sensationalized reports and negative journalism of Indian newspapers and magazines, Bangalore based husband and wife duo – Anuradha and Dhimant Parekh decided to set up a platform that focuses only on happy stories. Thus The Better India was born.

It was an honest attempt to celebrate and bring together those unsung heroes and heroines, the small deeds that were making a difference and filtering out stories of scandals, gossip, murders and other such morbid doing that made their way to mainstream news. The Better India consolidates material relating to the incremental progress being made by industrious people of the country who actually care about change. Focusing on developments being made on the social and economic front, and hoping to inspire people to create an impact, The Better India does something quite simple – it makes one believe that not all hope is lost.

The Better India began as a blog because of its low cost of delivery and easy accessibility. Acting as a filterblog, by posting relevant links of stories, after scanning through loads of materials from newspapers, magazines and other blogs; it started primarily via reader contributions and soon gained traction through individuals and social networks. While it is currently a self-funded initiative, Dhimant hopes to make The Better India a commercial, for-profit venture.

Nearly two years old – The Better India now publishes original content. With a new post every week – Dhimant and Anuradha are on a constant look out for stories. Each article is well researched, people interviewed and facts verified. They even recently began an internship program and currently have two interns working at The Better India. The interns are very involved with the news coverage and reporting and publish their own articles on the blog. The main objective still remains in letting people know of the good things happening around them, and connecting like- minded people. It also hopes to be a good resource base for people wanting to make an impact but not knowing what or how to go about doing it. Providing the readers with real life examples helps in illustrating the possibilities of various acts – however small, to create a larger impact.

With adequate press coverage and tie up’s with NGO’s, The Better India has gained large visibility in the city of Bangalore and throughout the country. Dhimant was even invited by IIM – Ahmedabad to give a talk on Positive Journalism.

Aside from spending most of his time with The Better India, Dhimant is also a writer. His foray into writing began when he was introduced to a friend’s blog, which led him to start him own. He began writing short stories as part of his blog. When his stories were well received by his readers, he decided to take ten favorite stories and put them together in a self – published book. His collection of short stories called “Neumonia and Other Sketch Stories” is also available as an e-book, can be downloaded at – http://www.sketchstories.com/

One can read more of Dhimant at – http://www.dhimantparekh.com/

The Better India at – http://www.thebetterindia.com/