A chance encounter with a curry in Delhi led to Shashi Bhushan Tiwari setting up a mushroom cultivation enterprise in his village in Muzaffarpur that sells button mushrooms worth Rs 50 lakh per month, and provides employment to over 100 rural women.

At a time they are usually scrambling from floods, Bihar’s farmers are facing a drought. Urban India can probably not comprehend the annual crises for the farmer in Bihar, now normalised in India’s monsoon headlines.

Of the 38 districts in Bihar, 31 have reported deficient rainfall this southwest monsoon season. Farmers in distress as paddy sowing and transplantation remain way short of the target.