B Chennaiah, owner of a 14-acre farm in Yemmiganur mandal of Kurnool district in western Andhra Pradesh, with his wife Tayamma and their grandchildren, waiting for the Guntur-bound train at Tuggali station. Persistent drought in western Andhra Pradesh is forcing big and small farmers alike to give up agriculture and migrate to more prosperous regions in search of daily-wage work.

Tall and lanky Chennaiah, clad in a shirt and a pristine white pancha (dhoti), was heading to Guntur city in central Andhra, a 12-hour train ride from Tuggali. With him were his wife Tayamma, son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, all set to work on mirchi (chilli) farms for daily wages.

January to April is peak migration season from west Kurnool for those seeking work on Guntur’s chilli farms. Around 200 migrant workers–men, women and children–stood waiting on that platform for the same train that day in January 2019.

This would be Chennaiah’s first stint as a daily wager. He was a big farmer: Until the previous year, he had employed 20 workers on his 14-acre field in Yemmiganur mandal of Kurnool, on which he raised tomatoes, onions and red gram. He was also a farmer leader who had been elected chairperson of a local agriculture cooperative.

Recurring drought in Kurnool over the last five years, however, has left Chennaiah and his family with few options. Average rainfall in Yemmiganur has been falling over 11 years since March 2007, when the region in fact received 100 mm more than average. Last year alone he incurred a loss of Rs 50,000 on every acre, escalating his debts to Rs 10 lakh. Worse, all the 10 borewells on his farm had dried up.

Sankranti, the biggest harvest festival was just a week away, and Chennaiah’s heart was heavy at the thought of leaving home. “Povali, lekapote kadupu raadu,” he said grimly, meaning, “If we don’t go, we will all starve.“

Droughts are a fact of life in Rayalaseema, the arid western region of Andhra Pradesh comprised of the four districts of Kurnool, Anantapur, YSR Kadapa and Chittoor. Between 2000 and 2018, the region has seen 15 drought years, the last nine consecutive, according to data from the office of the Commissioner for Disaster Management published in the Agriculture Statistics report 2017-2018 for the state.

Source: NOAH, an application that tracks rainfall and surface water changes using satellite data.

Coming after consecutive drought years, 2018 brought the worst drought in 20 years. The state government declared 347 mandals (blocks) drought-affected in nine of 13 districts. Further, the entire state received 32% deficient rainfall between June 2018 and April 2019, affecting the main kharif and rabi (October to March, or winter) crops.

Today, agriculture holds no hope for small or big farmers in western Andhra Pradesh. Recurring droughts and the absence of alternative employment opportunities have forced hundreds of thousands of small, marginal and landless farmers, mostly from the Scheduled Castes/Tribes and Backward Castes, to migrate in the post-kharif (July-August monsoon cropping season) period, around Dussehra in October every year. They go in search of daily-wage jobs in agriculture or construction, both within and outside the state. In 2018, about 700,000 farmers migrated from Anantapur and Kurnool districts, reported the New Indian Express.

Drought has impacted close to 3.2 million farmers since 2014, resulting in losses of upto Rs 3,216 crore ($509 million)–money that could have been used to irrigate well over 40,192 hectares of land–The Hindu reported. Drought had damaged 550,000 hectares of farm land and affected 1.6 million small and marginal farmers between 2018 and 2019, according to a press release from the Chief Minister’s Office.

The cost of digging borewells and high pesticide prices are also pushing farmers into debt: 77% of Andhra’s rural agricultural households are in debt, the second highest in the country after Telangana (79%), higher than the national average of 52.5%, according to the latest data published by National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).

Successive droughts have also brought drinking water shortage, hunger, child labour and sex trafficking of migrant workers.

This is the second part of our series that examines how ongoing drought across 42% of India’s land area is affecting people’s lives, and how governments are responding. For this part, we travelled to five districts–Anantapur, Kurnool and YSR Kadapa in the Rayalaseema region in the west, and Prakasam and Guntur in central Andhra Pradesh–all of which except Guntur have been declared severely drought-hit.

Umadevi, Manikyamma, Bharati, Lalithadevi (left to right) wait for the Hubbali-Vijayawada passenger train at Tuggali in Kurnool district. They have been travelling east to Guntur in search of wage work for the last 10 years. Recurring droughts and the absence of alternative employment has forced 200,000 farmers to migrate for daily wage jobs from Kurnool in the last year alone.

A land of contraries

The Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh is a study in contrasts, with uneven irrigation and water facilities even within the same district. For instance, 37.35% of the total area is irrigated by canals in Kurnool district. However, canal irrigation is concentrated in the eastern region while the western regions are parched and have few irrigation facilities.

In Kadapa, the southern region of Rayachoti and Rajampeta are similarly devoid of water while other regions are irrigated. Similarly, 27.43% of the farm land in Prakasam district is irrigated by canals, which are concentrated in the eastern region, leaving the western part dependent on rainfed agriculture.

For the first time in 140 years, no sowing in Anantapur

Prakasam, the worst-affected district, received 58% deficient rainfall between June 2018 and April 2019. For the sixth consecutive year, all the 63 mandals in Anantapur district, where 64.4% of land area is desertified, have been declared drought-hit. The state government sought Rs 1,401 crore ($222 million) from the Centre, of which Rs 900 crore was released for drought mitigation in January 2019.

Rainfall has been increasingly erratic across Andhra Pradesh over a prolonged period, with increasing dry spells (seven consecutive days without rain), according to a Prakasam-based state hydrogeologist who did not wish to be named. Anantapur district has witnessed dry spells lasting 10-45 days in the last 25 years, severely affecting the yield of groundnut, the district’s main cash crop. Most of Andhra Pradesh, except the canal-irrigated districts of Krishna, Guntur, and east and west Godavari, depends on rainfed agriculture.

“For the first time in 140 years, a large majority of farmers have not sown anything at all last year in Anantapur,” said YV Mallareddy, director of Accion Fraterna Ecology Center, an NGO based in Anantapur. He has been studying drought patterns in the Rayalaseema region.

Dry spells are not the only problem, rains when they arrive are more intense now–upto 40 mm a day–eroding the soil.

Farmers in the districts that IndiaSpend visited have yet to receive any official communication from their mandal revenue officer (MRO) on whether their block has been declared drought- affected. “What does ‘declaring drought’ mean?” asked an angry S Chandrashekhar, a tenant farmer in Porumamillapalle in Cumbum mandal of Prakasam district. “Have they given us seeds, fodder or money?”

Farmers in several districts told IndiaSpend that they were yet to receive drought relief for 2017. The central government had released Rs 147 crore assistance for 2017 but it has yet to be distributed among farmers, The Hindu reported in August 2018.
The state government’s drought response has evolved over the years–from employment generation during droughts through the Food for Work programme in the 1960s to watershed programmes in the 1990s that involved building assets for water conservation and groundwater recharge through the Drought Prone Areas Programme.

An evaluation of the Andhra Pradesh Drought Adaptation Initiative, a collaborative pilot project between the World Bank and the state government, carried out in two districts of undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2006, found that new thinking and a participatory approach were needed to build long-term climate resilience. This would include income diversification, establishment of buffers of food grain, etc., and participatory management of groundwater.

In 2017, the government conceived the Andhra Pradesh Drought Mitigation Project, a Rs 1,103- crore ($175 million) project in 315 gram panchayats in the five drought-prone districts of Chittoor, Anantapur, Kurnool, Kadapa and Prakasam. In its pilot phase, the project integrates various components such as climate-resilient seeds systems, low-input farming, participatory groundwater management, regeneration of commons, livestock management and access to markets.

“While earlier programmes revolved around groundwater recharge, the issue of demand remained unaddressed,” explained A Ravindra, director of Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), the lead technical agency for executing the project. “This framework addresses the access issue by building systems of participatory groundwater governance.”

Despite groundwater crisis, government continues to encourage borewells

Nearly half of AP’s farmlands are dependent on groundwater sources–up from 37% in 2014 to 42.3% in 2017, according to the yearly Crop and Season Reports and the agriculture statistics published by the state government. In Anantapur and Chittoor districts, 90% and 86% of farms, respectively, use groundwater sources.

In 1969, borewells were introduced as the ideal solution for the state’s persistent drought problem but they have ended up creating acute groundwater shortage. The first policy push towards submersible (electric) borewells that are in use today came in 1998, during Chandrababu Naidu’s government in undivided Andhra Pradesh, when most open wells were closed under the Food for Work programme.
“Had these wells been left open, rains would have recharged the groundwater,” said the hydrogeologist who chose to remain anonymous. “Farmers were also happy to close these wells to save the 10 cents of land which could be used for cultivation. Today, water is not available even if you dig below 1,000 feet.”

As a result, groundwater levels have reached critical levels–there has been an average 4.02% decline between June 2018 and March 2019, the highest being in Chittoor and Kadapa (10.60%).

Between 1986 and 2013, deep borewells in the state increased by 2,716%, according to the 5th Minor Irrigation Census of the state government. In the five years to 2013, deep borewells multiplied by 73%. The government, through Indira Jalaprabha in 2009 and now NTR Jala Siri schemes, has been incentivising the use of borewells despite the deepening crisis.

A borewell driller at work in Giddalur mandal of Prakasam district of central Andhra Pradesh. Despite critical groundwater levels, borewells and groundwater irrigation continue to be the mainstay in the drought-affected districts of AP as the government promotes them through schemes such as NTR Jala Siri.

Digging deeper, but no water

With government support for monocropping and horticulture and the push for borewells, over two decades, farmers shifted to more lucrative crops such as groundnuts and grapes even in water-starved Anantapur.

“Not just big farmers, even small and medium farmers are taking loans to invest in borewells in the hope that one good crop would be enough to clear their debt,” said C Bhanuja, the director of Rural and Environment Development Society (REDS), a Anantapur-based civil society organisation. “When borewells fail, they borrow more and get into deeper debt.”

Data show that semi-medium farmers (land holdings between 2 and 4 hectares) own a third of borewells while medium farmers (upto 10 hectares of land) own about 40%. Small farmers (1-2 hectares) own 14.9%.

“I dug the first borewell in 1998 after the government told us to, at a depth of 150 feet,” recalled B Linganna (64), a farmer in Aakaveedu village of Racherla mandal of Prakasam district. “Within five years, I had to rebore it further, going to a depth of 400 feet. Then 10 years ago, I had to dig deeper–to 700 feet–but water ran out in six months. Today, 80% of the borewells in this region have failed.”

After every one of his four borewells failed seven years ago, had no choice but to hack down all the sweet lime and mango trees on his eight-acre farm. He shifted entirely to sesame and castor, which are rainfed crops. In the last three years, these crops have failed due to severely deficient rains. This year, he harvested only half a quintal of sesame per acre and no castor. “Earlier, my heart would fill with joy when I looked at my farm,” he said. “Today, when I see it, I feel it is better to move on from this life.”

This is a familiar story across western Prakasam, where once-abundant fruit groves and rice and chilli farms have been laid bare. The tragedies that once played out only in Rayalaseema region–debt, migration and suicide–can now be seen across the state.

Between 2014 and 2019, 142 farmers in Prakasam district committed suicide, according to data provided by the state government in response to a Right to Information (RTI) request filed by farmers’ rights activist Kondal Reddy. In the past year alone, 60 of the 1,000 families in Aakaveedu village have migrated to Hyderabad seeking daily-wage work.

Between 2014 and January 2019, 530 farmers committed suicide in Anantapur district, according to state government data provided on an RTI request by the civil society organisation REDS. Most of these suicides were a result of heavy debts brought on by the expense of constructing borewells.

“The answer to this over-exploitation lies in regulating groundwater usage,” said Mallareddy. “We have the Andhra Pradesh Water, Land and Tree Act (WALTA) 2002 which lays down norms of groundwater usage but it is more honoured in the breach than in the observance.” He was among the experts who helped draft the Act.

Irrigation projects not delivering results

Relying on the 62 new irrigation projects the state government had announced since he came to power in 2014, chief minister Chandrababu Naidu declared in February 2019 that Andhra Pradesh would lead the nation in micro irrigation. But data show that 94.58% of minor irrigation schemes up to 2017-18 were focussed on groundwater, with the highest concentration in Prakasam (96.8%), Chittoor (95.7%) and Anantapur (94%).

Surface irrigation schemes, by contrast, constitute 5.42% of total irrigation schemes in the state.

The big irrigation projects in the state have run into problems. The Rs 1,300 crore ($206 million) Pattiseema lift-irrigation project linking the Godavari and Krishna rivers to provide water to parched Rayalaseema was criticised by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for wasting Rs 321 crore by not following contract norms.

The flagship Handri Neeva Sujala Sravanthi project meant to irrigate 600,000 acres in Rayalaseema is drawing farmers’ ire for its slow progress–critics allege that less than half the 100,000 acres meant to be covered in the first phase have been irrigated so far.

Modernisation work on the Tungabhadra High Level Canal (HLC), a major source of irrigation in Anantapur district, has been delayed by 10 years.

In November 2018, Naidu laid the foundation for the Rs 83,796 crore ($13.2 billion) Godavari Penna river linking project to provide water to the Rayalaseema region, but experts questioned the viability of drawing another 7,000 cusecs of water from the Godavari.

Some areas with canals passing through have inadequate access to water for drinking and irrigation, such as 13 villages of Mydukur mandal in Kadapa district that lie along the Telugu Ganga canal that flows to the Brahmasagar reservoir 12 km away, but provides no water for drinking or irrigation to the villages.

“This canal has been flowing since 1995 but we do not get water,” said Cheekiri Chinna Venkatasubbiah, the former sarpanch of Tipparedipalle, one of the villages and chairperson of the local primary agriculture cooperative society. “Until now we depended on rainfall and borewells but this year every source has failed. For the last 10 years, we have been constantly petitioning the government. Every year, they come and survey and nothing happens.”

“We need a lift irrigation project to provide canal water to the upland villages but the government has not sanctioned it,” said a project engineer with the Telugu Ganga project in Mydukur who did not wish to be named.

Their lands left fallow, farmers seek jobs in richer districts or other states

Migration from the Rayalaseema region has been rising steadily over the last five years. Farmers either head for chilli fields in Guntur or construction sites in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kerala. Farmers in Bomannapalle village in Madikera mandal of Kurnool district estimated that 30% of the fields in their village were fallow and 80% of farmers had moved to Hyderabad to work as municipal waste workers.

A group of migrant workers, who are small, medium and large farmers from Kurnool district, arrive at Guntur station on their way to chilli farms in this prosperous canal-irrigated district. “No rains, dry borewells, no crops. What choice did we have?” says Sekhamma (second from left), a single woman with two teenaged children, who has left behind a seven-acre farm in Gonegandla village in Kurnool district to work in Guntur.

On an early morning in January 2019, 200-odd migrant workers from Kurnool district alighted at the Guntur junction after a 12-hour journey spent standing. With their belongings stuffed into white plastic fertiliser bags–groceries, clothes, avakkai (pickles) and plastic water cans, men, women and children made their way to the chilli farms in the prosperous, canal-irrigated district. For the four months between January and April, the chilli farm where they work as daily-wage labourers would be their home.

“Varshalu levu, bore lo neelu levu, pantalu levu. Emi cheyyali [No rains, borewells dry, no crops. What could we do?],” said Sekhamma, a single woman with two teenaged children, who left behind a seven-acre farm in Gonegandla village in Kurnool district to work in Guntur.

While there are no official estimates, 200,000 people are estimated to have out-migrated from Kurnool district in 2018, 100,000 to Guntur district alone. 487,000 people from Anantapur district–a tenth of its population–have left, according to a civil society report from 2018.

Farmers are also selling their livestock to clear their debts; there is no fodder for the animals in any case. In the Dhone agriculture market in Kurnool district alone, livestock sales rose by 3.13% between November 2017 and December 2018, reported The Times of India. In the Cumbum lake region in Prakasam district, which once had abundant fodder, farmers are having to buy fodder at a higher price from the paddy-growing regions in Andhra Pradesh.

Guntur’s hardscrabble farms

At the chilli farms of Guntur, life is difficult. In Talacheruvu village in Atchampeta mandal, IndiaSpend met 30 families living in tarpaulin tents with no sanitation facilities. The settlement, on the periphery of a 30-acre chilli farm, offered little privacy. Women and girls were given a tiny enclosure to bathe.

“We left our comfortable homes to live in these cramped tents,” said K Mahalakshmi, a seasonal migrant worker from Aspari in Kurnool district who has been working at the same farm for six years now.

K Mahalakshmi, a seasonal migrant worker from Aspari in Kurnool district travels 380 km to Talacheruvu in Guntur in central Andhra Pradesh, every year for the past six years. The journey takes 12 hours. Migrant workers leave behind their comfortable homes and live in cramped tarpaulin tents on the periphery of the farm.

Over the years, the recruitment of migrant labour from Kurnool has turned into a well-oiled business. Every year, the big chilli farmers of Guntur district–those with 10-50 acres of land–pay an advance of upto Rs 3 lakh to a ‘mutha mestry’ (group head), a migrant worker himself, to recruit workers from his village. Each family is paid an ‘advance’ of Rs 5,000-Rs 10,000 depending on its needs and the sum is deducted from their wages.

Women work a gruelling 10-hour shift on chilli farms in Guntur in central Andhra Pradesh, only to return to domestic work at their makeshift camp–heating water, washing clothes, making dinner.

“We are in no position to negotiate our wages,” said Shekamma, a worker. “Reddy [a generic caste name used for a big farmer] pays for our tent and water. He gives us our wages only at the end of the season. In between he gives us some money based on our needs.”

On Telangana’s cotton fields, where most migrant workers go between October and December, the wages are around Rs 7 for picking a kilo of cotton. This year the wages have been reduced to Rs 3 a kilo because of poor yield, as IndiaSpend reported in December 2018.

Nagamma, Suvarnamma, Narsamma (left to right) were just back from Vikarabad in Telangana when IndiaSpend met them at Adoni station in Kurnool district in western Andhra Pradesh. They had returned home after only 10 days because they had been paid only Rs 3 per kilo of cotton picked against the usual Rs 7 in previous years. Drought and farm distress in other regions affect the wages of farm workers.

“We have to pick 40 kilos of cotton a day to earn a decent wage so we often eat with one hand and pluck cotton with the other to make the most of our day,” said S Lalithamma, a worker in Aspari just back from Zaheerabad in Telangana after the cotton picking season.

Lalithamma and Bhimakka (left to right) had returned to Aspari from Zaheerabad in Telangana in January 2019 after the cotton-picking season. Since cotton pickers are paid by the quantity they pick, they must pick a minimum of 40 kg a day to make a decent daily wage.

Chilli picking is also less rewarding this year after a pest attack damaged the crop in most parts of Guntur–daily wages are down from Rs 250 to Rs 200, a worker said. The minimum daily wage for agriculture labourers in Andhra Pradesh is Rs 285.90 for men and Rs 197.98 for women.

Job guarantee programme not working

Jobs under the Mahatma Gandhi National rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are hard to come by in drought-hit mandals. “This is because district administrations are not keen to open new works and give additional 50 days of work that workers from drought-affected regions are eligible for,” said Chakradhar Buddha, program manager of Libtech, an organisation leveraging digital technologies for improving public service delivery in India. “This affects Dalits [“lower” castes], Yanandis [a vulnerable tribe in Prakasam and Nellore districts] and single women who lose upto Rs 10,000 a year,” he said.

The government has recently revised the daily wage rate under MGNREGS in the state from Rs 205 to Rs 211 for the year 2019-2020.
There are large hoardings in these districts promoting MGNREGS and they feature the chief minister and his son N Lokesh, who is also the minister for rural development. “Unna Oorulo ne upadhi undaga, valasalaku enduku dandaga [Why migrate when there are jobs in your village],” the hoardings ask.

Poster promoting MGNREGS, featuring CM Chandrababu Naidu and his son N Lokesh, the rural development minister, in Prakasam district. “Why migrate when there are jobs in your village?,” the hoardings ask. Migrant workers in the drought-affected districts say the government has withheld new works under the scheme since October 2018 and delayed wage payments by more than six months.

“This is a joke,” said Bhimakka of Aspari in Kurnool district. “There is no MGNREGS work available since October last year and the government says new jobs will be available after March. We have not even been paid our wages for the last six months.” Pending wage payments have been delayed to the tune of Rs 911 crore in the state, according to state government data.

Chakradhar, the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha activist, accused the Naidu government of perverting the very idea of MGNREGS. “It has changed from a demand-driven, rights-based legislation where work should be available on demand to a top-down, techno-managerial process, where government creates jobs based on its whims and fancies,” he said.

The chief minister announced Annadatha Sukhibhava, an agricultural support programme, in February 2019, to give Rs 10,000 per annum to landowning farmers and Rs 15,000 per annum to tenant farmers. The government has identified 519,352 farmers and has initiated payments to 515,864 farmers. However, payments to tenant farmers have been delayed to the beginning of the kharif season post-elections, due to be held over April and May 2019, reported The Hindu. While farmers welcomed the monetary support, they really demanded water.

“Give us water. Give us a canal. Give us our freedom,” said Veeranagappa, a farmer with a medium-sized land holding in Pattikonda in Kurnool district, adding that the deputy chief minister, KE Krishnamurthy, represents the Pattikonda constituency in the state assembly (legislature). “Is our condition invisible to politicians?”

What drought and migration are doing to children

Mamatha (12) has just returned after a 10-hour shift picking Teja chillies–one of the hottest varieties–in Talacheruvu village in Guntur district. Her hands are burning but she has no time to rest because she has to also fetch water and help her mother cook dinner. “Chethulu manta vesina, attane chestamu [We continue to pick chillies even when our hands burn],” she said.

Mamatha (12) who has just returned after a 10-hour shift picking the hottest varieties of chillies in Guntur. Around 40% of farm workers on Guntur’s chilli farms are children, who have to work in extreme heat conditions and are out of school for the most part of the migration season from October to May.

Children make for about 40% of the farm labour at work in Guntur’s chilli farms. A survey conducted in three mandals of Atchampeta, Krosuru and Bellamkonda in Guntur district by a local NGO, LEAF, in 2018 found 20,000 children working on farms. Summers here, when temperatures rise to 47 degrees Celsius, can be especially hard on these children.

“Only when the four of us work can we earn Rs 70,000 in the four months we are here. This is the sum that can feed us for the rest of the year and pay off only the interest amount on our loans,” said Guntamma (35), a farm worker from Gonegandla in Kurnool. Her two children, Veerender (12) and Malleswari (7), work with her.

Of the 600 children enrolled in a government high school in Aspari mandal, 100 had migrated with their families in search of work, we found. Some 50 of the 160 children enrolled in classes 9 and 10 had dropped out after their families had migrated.

“Attendance levels drop after the crop season ends in August when many families migrate,” said the school headmaster. “The children return in December to sit for their half-yearly exams, after which they go back and then return for the final exams in March. We have instructions from the district education office not to detain any children though their attendance levels are 30-40%.”

LEAF has been lobbying with the mandal education officer at Atchampeta Mandal in Guntur to start night schools for the migrant children. “They refused, saying that it is Kurnool district’s problem not ours,” said A. Satyanarayana, who heads LEAF.

IndiaSpend wrote to the district collectors of Kurnool and Guntur asking if any measures were being taken for the welfare of migrant children. This report will be updated when they respond.

Children left behind by migrant parents at a seasonal hostel in Kairuppala village in Aspari mandal of Kurnool district in central Andhra Pradesh. The district administration in collaboration with NGOs has started 67 seasonal hostels that can accomodate 50 children each, as a temporary measure in 2019.

The Kurnool district administration has started seasonal hostels run by NGOs as temporary relief. “We have started 67 seasonal hostels in the first phase of drought mitigation in Kurnool district, which will accommodate 50 children each. We plan to open 87 more in the second phase,” said Vidyasagar, the head of the AP Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan. But we found that at the seasonal hostel in Kairurppala village in Aspari mandal, children are offered no facilities except  dinner and lunch.

“This is mismanagement and we will take strict action,” said Vidyasagar when IndiaSpend brought the facts to his notice, “But usually kids prefer to stay at home with their grandparents.”

Hunger, exploitation–women and children bear the brunt

Life can be difficult for children who stay back. “Pillalu pastu untaru [The children are always hungry here],” said Sudhakar Reddy, a primary school teacher in Kareddipalle in Kadiri mandal of Anantapur, a tribal thanda (hamlet) inhabited by the Lambada community.

Children as young as six are left behind with aged grandparents when parents migrate to Kerala, which has strict rules against child labour.
Ten-year-old Jyoti gets up at 5 am and cooks for herself, her brother and her avva (grandmother), something she has been doing since she was six. “Annam, gojju, rasam anni chesthanu [I cooked rice, curry and rasam],” she said. When the “store biyyam” (subsidised rice under the public distribution system (PDS)) runs out, she and her brother Murali will carry 6 kg rice bags each on their backs from the nearest PDS store, 3 km away.

“When rice runs out in their homes kids go hungry for days,” said Sudhakar Reddy. “For most of these children, the school mid-day meal is the only meal for the day. This is why the first thing I do is serve them their meal when they arrive at 11 am.”

“We have petitioned the district administration to have local distribution centres in these villages with high migration [rates] so that children do not have to walk [long to fetch it], but the government has done nothing,” said C Bhanuja, the director of REDS, a local NGO.
Trafficking of young girls and women is common in these drought-prone districts. “Young girls are lured out of villages on the pretext of being sent for domestic work and then sold off to brothels in Delhi, Bombay and the Gulf countries,” said Bhanuja, who said she has rescued trafficked women in Kadiri mandal in Anantapur district.

Adamma Nayak of Kareddipalle village in Anantapur district, who had been going to Kerala for construction work for the last 10 years, has decided to stay back in her village this year to ensure the safety of her daughter, Shyamala. Trafficking of young girls and women is common in the drought-affected areas. They are sold to brothels in Delhi, Bombay and the Gulf countries.

Adamma Nayak (40), of Kareddipalle in Anantapur district, who has been going to Kerala for the last 10 years, has decided to stay back this year to look after her 16-year-old daughter, Shyamala. “I cannot escape this poverty, I may earn only Rs 200 here and many days there is no work,” she said. “But at least, I can now ensure my daughter’s safety.”

(Rao is an independent researcher based in Hyderabad. Follow her on Twitter @bhanupriya_rao)

We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.

Courtesy: India Spend

The post Losing Their Fields And All Hope, Andhra Farmers Turn Daily Wagers appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Ramavath Challi, 26, whose husband Madhu drank pesticide after failing to repay a Rs 6 lakh debt, was part of the large contingent of women farmers from Telangana who marched to New Delhi as part of the ‘Dilli Chalo’ march on November 29 and 30. The protesters demanded a special session of parliament to pass ‘Kisan Mukti’ bills and a Women Farmers’ Entitlement Bill.

Paucity of rains had caused the cotton crop on their five-acre patch to fail for four consecutive years, and Madhu had racked up loans totaling Rs 6 lakh ($8,500), mostly from private moneylenders, in part to dig two borewells. These borewells had failed–groundwater levels have fallen drastically across Telangana–and Madhu had been struggling to repay his debt on which the interest was 24% annually.

It was only after Madhu’s death that Challi realised the extent of their debt, when lenders demanded their money back. A year-and-a-half on, Challi is yet to receive any compensation from the state government because the local revenue department has refused to treat Madhu’s death as farm suicide because the land title was in his mother’s name.

Challi has been managing the farm by herself. She expects to make Rs 20,000 this year–Rs 1,600 per month or Rs 53 a day, less than the World Bank’s $1.5 (Rs 106) poverty cut-off. The yield is likely to be low due to scanty rainfall. In a good year, the farm yields six to seven quintals (100 kg) per acre; this year, it might give just three.

In any case, the crop will have to be sold to the local seeds dealer, who gave Challi credit to buy seeds and fertilisers, at a pre-agreed price of Rs 5,100 per quintal, lower than the government-mandated minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 5,450.

Challi supplements her farm income with daily-wage work, which is only available in the agricultural season, and odd stitching jobs. “Itla ela bathakala amma?” she asks, how am I supposed to survive like this?

Challi represents the face of agrarian distress in Telangana, 55.5% of whose population earns a living from farming. Challi was among the large contingent of women farmers who marched to New Delhi as part of the ‘Dilli Chalo’ agitation on November 29 and 30, 2018. The protestors demanded a special session of parliament to pass two Kisan Mukti (Farmer Liberation) bills–the Farmers’ Freedom from Indebtedness Bill, 2018, which would give every farmer the right to institutional credit, a one-off complete loan waiver and debt relief after natural disasters; and the Farmers’ Right to Guaranteed Remunerative Minimum Support Prices for Agriculture Commodities Bill, 2018.

Women farmers such as Challi are also demanding enactment of the Women Farmers Entitlement Bill, which would give recognition to women as farmers, giving them access to land titles, water resources and institutional credit.

The march was part of a recent groundswell of agitation by farmers across India, as low crop yields–due to climate change, successive droughts, flash floods, pest attacks, etc.–and other factors such as fluctuating or less remunerative prices are making the farm economy unviable.

As Telangana prepares to elect a new government this month, IndiaSpendtravelled to five of its districts reporting high suicide rates–Warangal (urban and rural), Jangaon in central Telangana, Jayashankar Bhupalpally in the east, Nalgonda in the south and Adilabad in north Telangana–to understand the factors at play.

Telangana’s farm crisis
Telangana, the newest state of India, was carved out of Andhra Pradesh after a strong people’s movement in 2014. Its first chief minister, K. Chandrashekhar Rao (popularly known as KCR) of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), promised to transform it into Bangaru Telangana (golden Telangana), the most farmer-friendly state in India.

Agriculture provides a livelihood, as we said, to more than 55.5% of the state’s population. But four-and-a-half years since it won statehood, Telangana faces acute farm distress, with 2,190 farmers having committed suicide–more than one every day–according to data from the state government’s police department. The data were obtained by activist Kondal Reddy through a Right to Information request, because the National Crime Records Bureau has not published  data on farm suicides since 2015.

Of these, 124 suicides took place in Siddipet district, which houses Chief Minister KCR’s constituency, Gajwel. Telangana had the third highest farmer suicides in the country after Maharashtra and Karnataka in 2015, according to data submitted by the central government to the Supreme Court.

Suicide data from the Telangana government’s police department in reply to a Right to Information request filed by activist Kondal Reddy. Between 2014, when the new state of Telangana came into existence, and 2018, a total of 2,190 farmers took their own lives. Activists, however, have recorded 3,799, 73% higher than the government figure.

State government data show a 75% decline in the number of farmer suicides between 2015 (948) and 2018 (232), but farmer rights activists say both these numbers are underestimates.

An alternative dataset compiled by Rythu Swarajya Vedika (RSV, meaning Farmers’ Self-Rule Forum), a collective of farmers’ organisations in Telangana, by collating data from police stations and from news reports, put the number between 2014 and 2018 at 3,779, of which 210 were women. Their data also show a decline between 2014 and 2018, but of 14%, much lower than the state government’s claim.

Over 89% of rural agrarian households in Telangana are in debt, the second highest proportion in the country after Andhra Pradesh, according to the Telangana Social Development Report published by the state government. The average for the rest of India is 52%. Of these, 65% have taken loans from non-institutional, private sources as government banks remain reluctant to lend without the surety of a land title. Much of this debt is used to dig bore-wells as 70% of agricultural households are dependant on groundwater irrigation, the report notes.

Farm incomes in Telangana are meagre–a small farmer (owning 2 hectare (ha) to 4 ha) earns a monthly average of Rs 4,637 from the farm and Rs 1,319 as labour, according to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) report Income, Expenditure, Productive Assets and Indebtedness of Agriculture Households in India, 2012-2013. This amounts to Rs 200 a day, lower even than the mandated agriculture minimum wage (that is upwards of Rs 300 per day for unskilled workers and higher for semi-skilled and skilled workers).

Women bear an equal burden of farm distress, if not more. As in the rest of India, their role in agriculture in Telangana is largely hidden–women constitute 36% of cultivators and 57% of labour in Telangana, according to Census 2011. Yet, they are neither counted as farmers nor get the institutional support that comes with it. They earn unequal wages too–women are paid Rs 200 while men are paid Rs 300 as daily wages for agriculture.

Nevertheless, they work on the farm, help their husbands/families repay loans, bear domestic violence which is often exacerbated by farm losses and debt, and, if their husbands commit suicide–culturally, debt is associated with acute shame and indignity in Telangana–manage farm activities singlehandedly. All this while, they are the primary caregivers for children, the elderly and the disabled.

Unequal access to land and failure of land reforms
Farm distress in Telangana is rooted in the larger failure of land reforms and redistribution in the state, as well as a heightening unviability of the farm economy.

The average size of operational land holdings in Telangana has decreased from 1.37 ha to 1.12 ha in the decade between 2000-01 and 2010-11, indicating both demographic pressures and diversion for non-agricultural purposes, the Telangana Social Development Report says.

Large tracts of farmland are being diverted from agriculture to non-agricultural purposes–industrial corridors, real estate, special economic zones (SEZs) and ironically even large irrigation projects such as the Rs 80,000 crore ($11 billion) Kaleshwaram project, said Usha Seethalakshmi, an independent researcher who has been studying land use patterns in the state and is a member of the women farmers’ collective Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch (MAKAM). Celebrities and wealthy people are also known to buy large tracts of land.

This diversion has made land “a speculative commodity”, such that small and marginal farmers are unable to afford buying it, said Ravi Kanneganti, a trade unionist and state convenor of RSV. Meanwhile, the number of tenant farmers is increasing.

Further, the state has completely failed to implement the Land Ceiling Act, 1973, which caps ownership at 18 acres for “wet land” (with some form of irrigation) and 54 acres of dry land, Kanneganti said. Land ownership remains concentrated in a few hands.

As a result, medium and large holdings (4 ha to 10 ha, and above), which constitute 3.3% of the total operational holdings, are spread over 19% of the state’s land area. Marginal holdings (below 1 ha) constitute 62% of all holdings but occupy 25% of the land, according to the Telangana Social Development Report.

Of rural households, 43.3% are landless. The scheduled castes, which constitute 15.5% of the population, operate 9.6% of the land. Women, with 22.38% of operational land holdings, operate 19.6% of land, according to the latest agriculture census. Women’s average holding size is 1.02 ha, while men’s is 1.14 ha.

The link between land ownership and farm suicides is evident from a study by RSV and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) released in 2018, which investigated 692 farm suicides in 23 districts. It found that 92.5% of farmers who had taken their lives were landless, small or marginal farmers.

The government’s response to unequal access, especially for the scheduled castes, was to distribute three acres each among dalit (ranked lowest on the Hindu caste hierarchy) families under the Land Purchase Scheme–the state would buy land costing up to Rs 7 lakh per acre and distribute it among landless and small landowning dalit families. Of the promised 900,000 acre, 14,620 acre (1.6%) were distributed among 5,759 households in four years.

“None of the dalit families in this village got a single acre of land as KCR had promised. Forget small landowners like me who have half an acre, they did not even give to the landless dalits,” said Naresh, a young dalit resident who gave only one name. He lives in Gogilapuram in Chandampet mandal, one of the poorest mandals (equivalent to a block, the middle tier of rural local governance in Telangana) in Nalgonda district.

Such schemes are impractical, Kanneganti said, suggesting that the state should redistribute land by strictly implementing the Land Ceiling Act. “Unfortunately, land reforms and land redistribution have gone out of the political agenda,” he said, adding that political parties promise small welfare measures without attention to income, food and livelihood security.

More tenancy, fewer benefits
The Hyderabad Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1950, which applies in Telangana, prohibits renting out of land. However, over the last decade, unequal access and fragmentation of holdings have forced farmers, particularly small and marginal ones, to rent larger tracts to make a viable living from agriculture.

Tenancy holdings increased from 4.7% of total operational land holdings in 2002-03 to 20.1% in 2014, according to the Telangana Social Development Report. Leased area constitutes 14.8% of total operational area, up from 3.1% in 2002-03. Other backward castes (OBCs) and scheduled castes operate the highest share of tenancy area, at 16.3% and 14.6%, respectively.

Without titles, tenant farmers are denied all forms of institutional support such as crop benefits–loans, insurance, subsidies and government input schemes such as Rythu Bandhu, the government’s flagship input support programme which offers Rs 8,000 per acre to land-owning farmers. “A farmer with no land title stands to lose Rs 50,000-100,000 per annum,” said M. Sunil Kumar, adjunct professor and advisor at the Center for Tribal and Land Rights, NALSAR University of Law, and a former state director of the US-headquartered non-profit Rural Development Institute (now called Landesa).

Ramavath Lakya, of Ramavath thanda in Nalgonda district, whose son Ramavath Shankar hanged himself in 2017 for failing to repay Rs 9 lakh in debt. Shankar owned 1.5 acres of land and took another 15 on tenancy. Despite strict laws against tenancy, Telangana is witnessing a large increase in the number of tenant farmers. Without titles, tenants get no government benefits or bank credit.
Tenancy charges are as high as Rs 15,000-20,000 per acre in the rich black soils of Warangal and Adilabad regions suitable for cotton. In the less conducive and irrigation-poor regions of Nalgonda and Mahbubnagar, it varies between Rs 2,000 and Rs 5,000 per acre. Since the rent has to be paid at the start of the agriculture season, and banks do not lend to those without land titles, tenant farmers are left at the mercy of private, often usurious, moneylenders.

It is no surprise that 75% of farm suicides were by tenant farmers, as the RSV-TISS study found. More than half the tenant farmers who killed themselves owed upto Rs 4 lakh to private moneylenders. Since they had no outstanding bank loans, they did not qualify for loan waivers by the government.

In a first-ever experiment in India, the government of undivided Andhra Pradesh had in 2011 enacted the Andhra Pradesh Land Licensed Cultivators Act, which provided loan eligibility cards (LECs) to enable tenant farmers to access crop loans and other benefits.

The Andhra Pradesh government had set a target of giving 419,412 cards to the Telangana districts in 2013-14 but gave only 43,000, as per RSV data. While there is no exact count of tenant farmers in the state because the data are not collected, farmers’ rights activists say the target number is a fraction of the number of tenant farmers in the state. The Telangana government gave fewer LECs every year except in 2016 when it gave 43,669 cards–none in 2015 and fewer than 12,000 in 2017. In 2018, only the Adilabad district administration gave 5,000 cards.

“Even with LECs, banks are not very keen to give loans to tenant farmers without the security of land titles. Banks are not willing to take the risk since the LECs are valid for a year [only],”  Kondal Reddy, a farmers’ rights activist based in Hyderabad, told IndiaSpend.

How farming is becoming unviable
In 2016, 38-year-old Itikyala Sudhakar and his 35-year-old wife Jyothi of Narsakkapally in Warangal (Rural) district shifted to sowing chillies from cotton, after seeing their neighbour’s chilli crop fetch Rs 13,000 per quintal in 2014 and Rs 12,000 in 2015, with assured procurement from the corporate group ITC.

The couple harvested 160 quintals from the eight acre they cultivated as the yields that year were an unprecedented 20 quintals per acre. That year, prices crashed to Rs 1,000 per quintal (there is no minimum support price for chilli). They had racked up debt of Rs 6 lakh, of which Rs 50,000 had gone to pay just the labour to harvest the crop.

The couple were unable to sell their crop due to the glut of chillies in the market. Having nowhere to store his crop, Sudhakar dumped the chillies in the field, went home and hanged himself.

Itikyala Jyothi’s husband Sudhakar hanged himself in 2017 after their bumper chilli harvest fetched Rs 1,000 a quintal, as against Rs 13,000 the previous year. Fluctuating market prices and failure to get Minimum Support Prices are among the reasons why farming is becoming unviable, especially for small and marginal farmers, in Telangana.

In addition to fluctuating prices, farmers must contend with scanty rainfall and pest attacks, which result in low yields and contribute to making agriculture unviable.

Telangana is largely dependent on rainfed agriculture, where kharif (June to October) is the major cropping season. However, 23 of the last 30 years have witnessed drought, according to agriculture statistics published by the Telangana government.

As a result, 70% of agricultural households rely on groundwater, incurring debt to dig tube wells and dug wells, the Telangana Social Development Report says.

Groundwater levels have fallen, not the least due to overdrawing encouraged by free 24×7 power for farmers.

Access to irrigation is unequal. Only 25.5% scheduled caste and 29.9% scheduled tribe households have access to irrigation, according to the Telangana Social Development Report. Farmers allege reservoir waters are diverted to politicians’ favoured constituencies, at farmers’ cost. Irrigation projects, too, are allocated for politically chosen areas, they allege.

Experts have questioned the claims of flagship irrigation projects such as the gigantic Kaleshwaram project, saying its irrigation potential is much lower than the government claims.

Mission Kakatiya, a minor irrigation infrastructure development programme that aims to restore tanks and strengthen community-based irrigation, however, got a positive evaluation report by NABARD Consultancy Services, which said the project had increased irrigation intensity by 45.6% over the base year. However, the Comptroller and Auditor General’s compliance audit found the target of restoring 20% of tanks in three months to be unmet and unrealistic.

All in all, government programmes have proved insufficient, at the least. Given the paucity of water, the state’s cropping intensity (number of crops sown on the same field during one agricultural year), at 116%, is lower than the Indian average of 137%. And crop yields are frequently affected.

This year, the yields of cotton, the major crop, have been poor due to poor rainfall, and farmers find the crop unremunerative even though prices this year, ranging between Rs 5,250 and Rs 5,300, have been higher than the Rs 4,250 in 2017.

“Unless we get a yield of 6-7 quintals that sells at a price of 6,000 rupees per quintal, it is not viable for us,” said Ramji, a cotton farmer of Angudipeta thanda in Nalgonda district. In a rare good year, the yield goes up to 10 quintals per acre, according to the agricultural statistics data.

In contrast, in Adilabad district, 160,000 acre of crops, mainly cotton, were washed away by severe floods in August this year. “We usually pick cotton three times in a year. This year, there is no third picking, which we usually do around Sankranti [a harvest festival celebrated in January],” said Bhoomanna, a middle-aged cotton farmer in Dhanoor village in Adilabad.

Moreover, pest attacks such as the pink bollworm have been ruining the cotton crop in Telangana for the last three years. Last year, according to estimates by the district administration of Adilabad, 20% of the cotton crop was lost. Paddy farmers in Dharmasagar reservoir area in Warangal said the pest had ruined half their crop.

Farmers also have to contend with faulty seeds and fake pesticides. In Ambala village of Warangal (rural), 30 farmers who bought 70 bags of paddy seeds on the same day from the local agriculture cooperative saw 60 acre of paddy crop fail due to faulty seeds. The farmers have been holding weekly protests in front of different offices, including their local MLA and state finance minister Etala Rajendar’s home, with little result.

“Meeku super-fine biyyam pandichedi, memu control biyyam tinedi,” said U. Omkar, a 30-year-old farmer from Ambala who tills five acres of land on tenancy, meaning, “We grow super-fine rice for you while we eat subsidised rice from the public distribution system.”

Why farmers are not getting MSP
“Every government only talks of crop loan waivers, which are useless for farmers like us,” said Chirra Erranna, a tenant farmer of Guthpala village in Adilabad. “What we need is agriculture investment support and fair prices for our crop.”

The problem with MSP is that it is not a statutory but a suggestive price, Kanneganti of RSV explained, “In reality, the price a farmer gets is decided by the private players in the market yards. Because of the credit that farmers take from informal sources, they end up selling to the private traders even before the produce reaches the market yard.”

Only government agencies such as MARKFED, National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation Of India Ltd (NAFED), and Cotton Corporation Of India (CCI) procure at MSP from the farmer. Even then, they do not buy the entire produce.

“CCI does not buy more than 10% of the cotton crop directly from the farmers,” Chander Rao, a farmers’ union leader and advisor to the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices based in Warangal, told IndiaSpend. In Warangal’s Enamamula market yard, Asia’s second largest, CCI procured not more than 500,000 quintals of the total 50 million last year, he said.

Cotton crop being loaded onto trucks to be taken to Warangal’s Enamamula market, the second-largest cotton market in Asia.

One reason farmers are unable to sell to CCI is that it procures cotton with moisture content between 8% and 12% (with the price falling with rising moisture content). Cotton rejected by CCI is sold to private buyers at much lower prices.

The latter have their own ginning facilities, Rao said, where they make cotton bales and sell to the CCI. The entire market is controlled by a few private players, he added.

“In Warangal’s market the entire cotton trade is in the hands of a mere 100 traders and commission agents, who are in turn funded by just two or three investors, mostly Reddys and Komatis [trader caste in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana]. They decide who the farmer can sell their crop to,” said Beeram Ramulu, a farmers’ rights activist based in Warangal.

Last year, private buyers bought the cotton rejected by CCI at a price ranging between Rs 2,500 and 3,000 per quintal. CCI had procured it at an MSP of Rs 4,320 in Warangal’s market, Ramulu added.
The Telangana government has not earmarked a budget for ensuring MSP in the state, Kanneganti added. “Earlier, Rs 500 crore was allocated to MARKFED to procure produce at MSP. This year, MARKFED can only procure if it applies for loans from banks. Else farmers have no choice but to sell to private traders,” he said.

Why farmers find Rythu Bandhu inequitable
To alleviate farmers’ situation, chief minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao announced two flagship schemes in April 2018, Rythu Bandhu and Rythu Bima.

Rythu Bandhu, a Rs 12,000 crore ($1.7 billion) scheme, gives Rs 8,000 per acre (in two equal instalments) as input support to farmers. Rythu Bima, a life insurance scheme, provides compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the family on a farmer’s death, irrespective of the cause. Some 5.7 million farmers have received Rythu Bandhu support, as per state government data.

As necessary as the schemes are, Rythu Bandhu and Rythu Bima can only be availed of by farmers who have land titles reflected in government records. A large category of farmers–tenant farmers, women farmers without titles, ‘Podu’ farmers who have been farming on forest lands for many years without titles, those farming on endowment lands as tenants and Scheduled Tribes who have not received titles under the Forest Rights Act (FRA)–are excluded.

With uniform investment support for small and large farmers alike, as opposed to progressive support where smaller farmers would get more, the scheme ends up benefitting large absentee landowners who reside outside of villages and for whom farming is not the primary source of income.

Tenant farmers in Angudipeta thanda are angry at the state government for excluding tenancy lands from the Rythu Bandhu scheme. “Who is this support scheme for?” they ask. The flagship input support scheme excludes all farmers who do not own land–tenant farmers, women, podu farmers, etc.

“The government calls this ‘Pettubadi Sahayam’ [input support]. So who should get input support? Those who are making actual investments on the farm or those who are sitting in Hyderabad?” said Ramji, a farmer of the Lambada community who goes by one name, in Angudipeta thanda in Nalgonda. Ramji owns one-and-a-half acres and has leased 12 more to grow cotton. He received Rs 6,000 under the scheme as a first tranche, while his Reddy (landowning caste) landlord got Rs 48,000, he said.

“Just like these landowners take away crop loans and benefits of insurance schemes because they have land in their names, while we do all the work, they are enjoying Rythu Bandhu support also,” said Bhoomesh, a farmer from the Gond community in Indravelli town in Adilabad.

Farmers say the money offered is also inadequate.  

“I got Rs 2,000 for the half an acre I have on my name. It is not enough to cover the ploughing costs of Rs 4,000 an acre and I need to plough my field three times before sowing cotton,” said Challi, the farmer from Nalgonda.

The government, while linking the scheme to land ownership, had hoped that big landowners and landlords would pass on the input support to small farmers, especially tenants who operated their lands.

“If KCR thinks the big landowner is passing on the Rythu Bandhu money to us tenant farmers, then he needs to get out of Hyderabad and come here,” said Jakka Malakanna of Dhanoor village in Adilabad, “The landowners have instead increased the lease rates from the next season. I used to pay Rs 12,000 per acre, now they are asking for Rs 14,000.”

This was a common story that angry farmers told across all the districts IndiaSpend travelled to.

There is enough demand for land from small and marginal farmers, and the landlord knows it. “He simply says, ‘Chesthe cheyyi lekunte ledu [Take it or leave it]’,” said Rajeswar Reddy, a big farmer who owns 15 acres in Dhanoor village of Adilabad and is a member of the local unit of  the Communist Party of India.

The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), in its manifesto for the upcoming election, has promised to increase support under Rythu Bandhu to Rs 10,000 per acre, but has not said anything about including tenant farmers.

In its 2014 manifesto, it had promised to complete a land survey exercise as land records had not been updated since the 1930s. On coming to power and to facilitate implementation of Rythu Bandhu, the government undertook an ambitious Land Records Updation Programme (LRUP), under which revenue records were updated and fresh ownership titles issued to 5.7 million landowners.

Yet, many titles remain to be updated or awarded. For instance, numerous small and marginal farmers who inherited land have been unable to have the titles transferred from their parents’ names to their own. This procedure takes upto a year and numerous visits to the local revenue offices, Sunil Kumar told IndiaSpend.

Many villagers said they did not even know about the updation programme, and others alleged that village revenue officers, instead of involving the community, had updated records in an arbitrary manner, often sitting with an influential person in the village.

IndiaSpend met a group of 50 farmers in Dhanoor village in Adilabad who had not received any benefits under Rythu Bandhu, despite having land titles reflected in the new ‘Pattadar Passbooks’ issued to land holders by the state government.

“If land records purification was the end goal, it should have been done differently–in phases with community involvement. The government did it on a mission mode for the Rythu Bandhu scheme and ended up excluding a lot of people. The new government needs to settle it as soon as possible, else a lot of small and marginal farmers will suffer,” said Sunil Kumar of NALSAR.

(Rao is an independent researcher based in Hyderabad.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post Telangana’s Farmers’ Friend Scheme Has Failed To Stem Farm Distress, Or Farmers’ Anger appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Salma, the Tamil poet and author, found her ticket to freedom when she contested the Tuvankurinchi town panchayat elections. In 2004, Salma joined the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and contested the state assembly elections. Disillusioned by entrenched sexism and lack of spaces for women, she now wants to quit and return to grassroots activism.
 
Salma, a celebrated Tamil poet and novelist, believes that it was her literary talent that caught her the biggest break in her life. During the course of her term as the head of the Tuvarankurinchi town panchayat in Tiruchirapalli district of Tamil Nadu in 2004 she caught the eye of K Kanimozhi, fellow poet and DMK member of parliament.
 
Salma joined the DMK and two years later, party supremo Karunanidhi offered her an assembly ticket from Marungapuri constituency in Tiruchirapalli district in 2006. Karunanidhi is a writer himself and had read her recently published novel on the inner lives of Muslim women, Irandaam Jaamangalin Kadai (The Hour Past Midnight).
 
In 2006, Salma’s political career seemed set for a meteoric rise. But today, disillusioned with party politics, she wants to quit and return to grassroots activism. “You cannot survive in this all-male world of politics without making compromises,” she said.
 
Why would an ambitious and skilled woman leader be embittered enough by politics to abandon all she has achieved?
 
In our five-part series on women in Tamil Nadu’s panchayat politics, we established how women like Salma have transformed (part 1) local governance while battling gender prejudices, financial constraints (part 2), casteism (part 3) and physical threat (part 4).
 
Many of these women deserved larger platforms for public work. But IndiaSpend investigations across six districts across Tamil Nadu showed that few of these achievers were allowed to move up the political hierarchy by entrenched sexism.
 
In the two decades since the 33% reservation for women in local governance, at least 18,244 women from general category, 6,408 from scheduled castes and 416 from scheduled tribes have become panchayat heads in Tamil Nadu, according to data from the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission. A total of 277,160 women leaders have held office across all levels of urban and rural governance–as panchayat ward members, union and district panchayat members, mayors and councillors in urban local bodies.
 
Hardly any of these capable women made it to significant positions in party politics, the state assembly or parliament. Why is this happening? IndiaSpend investigations showed that male-dominated party structures ensure that women face impediments every step of the way.
 
We will establish through personal stories how, instead of empowering women to take on bigger roles, parties actually work to limit their roles and discourage them from electoral politics.
 
15% women panchayat leaders would like to join mainstream politics
 
Despite the fact that Tamil Nadu has had a strong woman chief minister like J Jayalalithaa, few women have made it to positions of strength in the state’s politics.
 
Over the last 20 years, participation in local governance has infused a new sense of political consciousness and aspiration among women leaders. In the 32 women-led panchayats IndiaSpend surveyed in six districts of Tamil Nadu for this series, 30% women said they would like to contest the upcoming panchayat elections even when their seat was an unreserved one. Also, 15% women said they would like to enter mainstream electoral party politics if given a chance.
 
But there is resistance to a woman taking over what is considered a male domain, say women leaders. Salma had contested the assembly election but lost by 1,000 votes. “I would have won if the structures within the party that were supposed to build my campaign were supportive,” she said. “Instead, they actively worked against me. The sad truth is men don’t want women to share what they think is exclusively theirs.”
 
Born into a conservative Muslim family in Tuvarankurinchi as Rajathi Rokiah, Salma’s political career should have been an inspiration for young women dealing with oppressive traditions. As was the custom in her village, Salma had been taken out of school the moment she turned 13.
 
She was confined to a room along with her sister. They took turns to peer at the world outside through the one small window in the room. “After puberty, you lose the outside world. One by one, all my friends got locked up. That’s how it is for Muslim girls in my village,” she said.
 
Since there was no paper to write, Salma took to writing about her isolation and loneliness on the newspaper-wraps in which household groceries came. At 21, she was arm-twisted into a marriage to Malik, a political aspirant attached to the DMK. In Salma, a Channel 4 documentary on her life, she talked of abuse: “He once threatened to pour acid over me. I was so scared that I used to put my little baby’s face on mine while sleeping so I could be safe.”  
 
 
It was poetry that saved Salma. “I would stand in the wet bathroom and write. I had to hide paper and pen among my sanitary napkins because my husband destroyed many of my poems,” she said in the documentary.
 
In 2000, her mother sent some of her poems to a publisher in Chennai, and these became a collection called Oru Maalaiyum, Innoru Maalaiyum (One Evening, Another Evening) and were written under the pseudonym Salma.
 
Salma continued to work in anonymity till politics entered her life.
 
In 2002, Tuvarankurinchi was declared a seat reserved for women and Malik asked Salma to contest elections for the post of the town panchayat chairperson. “I was surprised. He had never allowed me to step out of the house. But it was an opportunity to work for women’s issues,” she said.
 
The 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution, that mandated a minimum 33% reservation of seats for women, scheduled castes and tribes in local governance, turned out to be her ticket to freedom.
 
Salma was popular among the women of her constituency. She travelled the world to share her experiences as a woman leader in local governance. Soon after came the first big break in politics and the subsequent events that left her disappointed.
 
The upper-caste, male exclusivity of the political space is a challenge for women trying to move up the hierarchy.
 
Once their panchayat term ends, women have no avenues for growth
 
So what happens to most women leaders when their five-year term in local governance comes to an end?
 
“They go back to where they came from–inside their homes,” said Salma.
 
A majority of women contest elections in panchayats from seats reserved for them and mostly vacated by their male relatives or other (mainly upper caste) male contenders. Our investigations showed that men view panchayat presidency as their domain, one which women must give up once their term ends.
 
“So many women become interested in politics by the time their term ends,” said Salma. “But they may never get another chance. On rare occasions where the husband is ready to concede the seat, people around ask: Why is he giving his wife another chance.’”
 
Dalit women panchayat leaders find it near impossible to contest general category seats because that might upset the precarious caste relations in the village.
 
Sharmila Devi, the dalit woman leader of Thirumanvayal panchayat in Sivagangai district, who solved the persistent water problem of her village, knows she cannot contest again even though she wants to. It is a given that unreserved seats go to dominant caste men.
 
“In the last elections, the Kallar caste cooperated with us, so we have to cooperate with them in the next election,” she said in a resigned tone.
 

Sharmila Devi, the Dalit panchayat president of Thirumanvayal, solved the persistent water problem of her village. Sharmila knows she cannot contest again even though she wants to. It is a given that unreserved seats go to dominant caste men.
 
Politics is not for ‘good’ women
 
For most women, the struggle begins at home where families find the idea of women in politics distasteful.
 
Rani Sathappan, the former president of K Rayavaram panchayat in Sivagangai district, was a reluctant entrant into rural politics. In 1996, she was persuaded by village elders to contest because they believed she came from the “right” family.
 
During her 10-year tenure, she made far reaching changes in her panchayat, including making it plastic-free. She went on to chair the Tamil Nadu Women Panchayat President’s Federation that was instrumental in lobbying for a fixed 10-year reservation term, and led the protest for a ban against liquor when the state government chose to withdraw it. She also led the team that lobbied with the former union minister for Panchayati Raj, Mani Shankar Aiyar, against the two-child limit for political candidates in Rajasthan, Bihar and Haryana.
 
Had she considered joining mainstream party politics? Rani smiled, looked at her husband sat across her in her living room in Karaikudi and then smiled again. “Nothing like that,” she said knotting her sari end.
 

Rani Sathappan served as the chair of the Tamil Nadu Women Panchayat Presidents Federation, where she lobbied for crucial state and national level policies. But her political career was stymied because her family found it unacceptable. For most women, the struggle begins at home where families find the idea of women in politics distasteful.
 
“Rani was one of the bright leaders from the first cohort of women presidents,” said Kalpana Satish who worked with her during her stint as a trainer to the federation. “She wanted to move up in politics. But her family would not allow her.”
 
Rani is now a trainer for Congress activists in Sivagangai district.
 
Parties need to actively find and promote women leaders
 
Jothimani Sennimalai, the former councillor of Gudalur west panchayat (Karur district) and the current spokesperson for Tamil Nadu Pradesh Congress Committee, too made the transition from local to state and national level politics.
 
“People think reservation in panchayats is a magic bullet that opens doors automatically for women,” she said. “The truth is that after panchayat every single door is closed for women–party hierarchy, state assembly, parliament.”
 
Her career trajectory illustrates why it is important for political parties to take affirmative action to identify, absorb and nurture women from grassroots politics.
 

Jothimani Sennimalai, the former councillor of Gudalur West panchayat and the current spokesperson for the Tamil Nadu Pradesh Congress Committee, is one of the few leaders to transition from local to state and national level politics. Her career trajectory illustrates why it is important for political parties to take affirmative action to identify, absorb and nurture women from grassroots politics.
 
At the end of her 10-year term (1996-2006) as a councillor, Jothimani was identified as a potential woman leader by the National Youth Congress in a nationwide talent search for young leaders. She had led a successful legal campaign against the sand mining mafia in Karur. In 2007, she was nominated to the national executive of the party where five of 10 positions are reserved for women, minorities, disabled and transgender persons. She was made the general secretary in charge of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and the North East. She contested the state assembly elections in 2011 and Lok Sabha elections in 2014, both of which she lost.
 
Even as early as 1977, the former chief minister MG Ramachandran (MGR) launched a special drive to recruit graduate women for the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and state assembly elections.
 
“That is how an ordinary school teacher like me joined politics,” said Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan, currently the deputy general secretary of the DMK. She joined the MGR cabinet as minister for small scale industries and subsequently served as a deputy minister of social justice in United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre in 2004.
 

Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan, the current deputy general secretary of the DMK, has had a successful political career as a minister in the state and central governments. Back in 1997, former chief minister MG Ramachandran’s special drive to recruit graduate women into his party brought Subbulakshmi, an ordinary school teacher, into politics.
 
The biggest stumbling block: Getting past district party chiefs
 
District units of political parties are a prime example of how reluctant men are to share political power with women. These units are the frontline of party structures and could be an effective recruitment avenue for women leaders. Headed by a district secretary, they are powerful because they supervise booth, panchayat and block-level committees and mobilise voters.
 
In Tamil Nadu, no major political party has a woman district secretary in 30 districts. The lone exception is the DMK which has four women as district secretaries.
 
“The district secretary is a powerful position,” said Salma. “Even a powerful woman leader like Jayalalithaa understood that men just simply cannot imagine working under a woman. So, she did not appoint a single woman (in that position).”
 
This is entirely possible, Jothimani explained. “The district secretary has frontline committees under him that can reach 250,000 voters within 30 days of campaign time,” she said.
 
All parties preach gender equality, rarely practise it
 
The Congress party has a rule that 33% of the district unit positions must be reserved for women but it has yet to implement it, Jothimani pointed out. This is the case with the left parties as well.
 
“We preach equality hence we should practice it. But we have no woman secretary and few women in district committees,” said K Bala Bharathi, the three-time Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPI(M)) legislator from Dindigul.
 
State committees are equally gender-skewed. Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan is the sole woman in the top echelons of DMK. The Congress has not reconstituted its top leadership committee in the last 15 years. And the CPI(M) has 10 women in an 81-member state committee, all of 12%.
 
Women leaders across parties stressed the need to reserve spaces for women, especially from Dalit and Adivasi homes.
 
“There should be at least 33% reservation for women right through the party hierarchy–booth, panchayat, block, district and state level,” said Jothimani. “In fact, I say let it be 50% reservation. That’s a fair representation.”
 
At the moment, the only place where women can be found in large numbers is the women’s wing of a party.
 
“We have petitioned for a minimum reservation of 30% positions for women and minorities at state and district level in CPI(M) in Tamil Nadu. The politburo has yet to decide,” said Bharathi with a laugh.
 
Currently, 52 countries in the world have voluntary party quotas for women in their party positions ranging from 30% to 50%, according to the Global Database on Quotas for Women.
 
Only 6-15% women candidates in elections
 
The natural consequence of gender imbalance at lower rungs of the party structure is that few women are fielded in elections and even fewer are elected as members of legislative assemblies.
 
Between 1996 and 2016, between 6% and 15% candidates fielded in elections were women. In the last state assembly elections in 2016, the AIADMK and CPI(M) fielded 12% and DMK, 10%. The Congress did not field any women candidates.
 

Source: Election Commission Of India reports for Tamil Nadu assembly elections 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016
 
Between 1996 and 2016, women MLAs accounted for 3% to 10% of the Tamil Nadu state Assembly.
 

Source: Election Commission Of India reports for Tamil Nadu assembly elections 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016
 
“Parties claim that they can’t find enough women candidates,” said Salma. “What about the thousands of women who are in grassroots politics? What about the women in the women’s wing of parties? How are all these women so invisible?”
 
Shortage of women leaders: A myth created by parties
 
This myth of this shortage of women candidates is laid bare in a new study by Stephen D O’Connell of IZA Institute of Labour Economics which examined the effect of gender quotas in local bodies on the supply of women candidates for assembly and parliament elections in India. The study concluded that constituencies that are exposed to an average of 3.4 years of gender quotas at the local level have an additional 38.75 female candidates running for parliament–an increase of 35% between 1991 and 2009. For state assemblies, an additional 67.8 female candidates were running for office in constituencies with an average exposure of 2.8 years of quotas.
 
Other women candidates who ran for state assemblies were primarily those with prior exposure to local government, according to the study. Women who ran for national parliament were those who had contested but lost in state assembly elections. The study concluded that women are keen to move up in politics.
 
No party support, so women contest as independent candidates
 
Most women, however, noted the study, run as independent candidates because parties are reluctant to give them tickets. The number of women contestants in Tamil Nadu has increased from 144 in 2011 to 311 in 2016. The number of independent women candidates contesting rose from 63 to 97 in the same period, according to data from the Election Commission.
 
But women who are incorporated into major political parties have a greater chance of winning than independents, according to O’Connell’s study.
 
Rani Muniyakanu, the former president of the Vaduvanchery panchayat in Nagapattinam district between 1996-2006, who fought a long legal campaign against the sand mafia in the region, contested state assembly elections on an independent ticket in 2011. She lost in those elections and soon after joined the Congress.
 
“It is difficult to win as an independent candidate but getting a ticket from a political party is very difficult too,” she said.
 

Rani Muniyakanu, who fought a long legal campaign against the sand mafia, contested state assembly elections on an independent ticket in 2011. She lost in those elections and soon after joined the Congress. Political reservations have created a new pool of women leaders who contest elections mostly as independents, studies pointed out, but they are less likely to win than contestants of political parties.
 
The other excuse political parties give is that women are not winnable, said some of the women interviewed. Rajeswari, the Dalit president of Kuruthangudi panchayat in Sivagangai district, was popular for her work and was promised a ticket from Manamadurai constituency but refused at the last minute by the AIADMK in the 2016 assembly elections.
 
“They said the man had a better chance of winning,” Rajeswari said, the disappointment evident in her voice.
 
Jothimani’s party fielded her from Karur constituency in the state assembly elections in 2011 and general elections in 2014; she lost both. In 2016, she decided to contest from Aravakurichi, a constituency she was more familiar with, and started a pre-election voter outreach campaign. The party denied her the seat and she protested publicly against this.
 
A 2010 study on the glass ceiling in politics in the United Kingdom noted that that women (and ethnic minorities) fielded by the Conservative Party were less successful in elections because they were put up in unwinnable constituencies, largely as a window-dressing measure.
 
“Party structures think that, if denied, women won’t fight back,” said Jothimani. “That is a perception I wanted to change when I protested publicly.”
 
Women don’t have enough funds to fight elections
 
A political career needs substantial financial investment–especially around election time–and few women can afford that. Meagre honorariums for women panchayat leaders barely cover their everyday expenses at work, which often eat into their personal household finances. Finding a continued pipeline of finance to move higher in the political hierarchy is rather difficult for grassroots women leaders, especially those from Dalit and Adivasi communities.
 
Jothimani’s 22-year-long political career has largely been funded by her mother. The family owns agricultural land. Most women do not have control over their family finances and, in the absence of their family’s support, find it impossible to enter and continue in politics.
 
“A district secretary, an unpaid position, needs at least Rs 70,000 to Rs 1 lakh a month to carry out his duties. Where do grassroots women leaders find that kind of money?” asked Jothimani.
 
Women leaders IndiaSpend spoke to believe that there needs to be a centralised financing mechanism for political party work to sustain women and marginalised groups. The financing model of the Left parties, according to women leaders, is a better alternative.
 
“MLAs and MPs in Left parties do not take their salaries home. They have to give it back to the party, which is then used to pay full-time office bearers,” says Bala Bharati.
 
Salma recalled ploughing Rs 5 crore into the 2006 elections. “The party only gave a small amount. I had to raise the rest myself,” she said. In 2016, when she wanted to contest again, the party again refused to help her raise any finances.
 
Campaign finance is the sole reason that Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan stopped contesting elections. “When I wanted to contest assembly elections after my stint as a minister in the central government in 2009, election expenditure had shot up to Rs 5 crore. Besides, there was a new practice of giving money to the voters to get support. So I opted to do party work instead,” she says.
 
Sexual exploitation is another problem in politics and there is no redressal mechanism. “Political parties do not follow the Visakha guidelines on sexual harassment,” Salma said.
 
Leaders like Jothimani, though still struggling financially, see the need to change the perception of politics as a career choice for women. When she decided to contest elections in 1996 at the age of 21, she remembers how relatives tried to convince her that it was a wrong choice for an educated woman. Twenty-two years later, people are still trying to convince her to get a “proper” job, she said.
 
“In this patriarchal system, where men hold power and are reluctant to share it, they have very cleverly convinced women that politics is not for them. We need to stop buying into this idea,” she said.
 
This is the last of a five-part series. You can read other stories in the series here:
 
Part 1: The Triumph Of Sharmila Devi And Tamil Nadu’s Women Leaders
Part 2: Meagre Funds, No Salary: How Tamil Nadu’s Women Leaders Still Succeed
Part 3: Why Muthukanni, A Dalit, Had To Build Her Own Panchayat Office
Part 4: Tamil Nadu’s Women Leaders Live, Work In The Shadow Of Violence
 
(Rao is a co-creator of GenderinPolitics, a project which tracks women’s representation and political participation in India at all levels of governance.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post Why 277,160 Women Leaders Remain Invisible To Tamil Nadu’s Political Parties appeared first on SabrangIndia.

K Muthukanni (center), the president of Madhavakurichi panchayat in southern Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, was voted to power by six of the seven hamlets. But this was the beginning of her troubles, a story all dalit presidents narrate–of not being allowed inside the panchayat office, of being prevented from hoisting the national flag or carrying out her duties.
 
“They just would not allow him to work,” she said, her voice ringing with rage. “He was not allowed inside the panchayat office. One time he went in, he was locked in by those monsters. The poor man had to sign cheques while standing on the road. I wanted to end this indignity.”
 
An active member of Pudhu Vaazhuvu, a state government microfinance programme, for the last 17 years, Muthukanni contested in 2011 from a seat reserved for scheduled caste candidates. As is the general practice in most parts of India, such seats are almost always contested by men.
 
Muthukanni, hugely popular among the women of the panchayat, was voted to power by six of the seven hamlets. But this was the beginning of her troubles, a story all dalit presidents narrate–of not being allowed inside the panchayat office, of being prevented from hoisting the national flag or carrying out her duties.
 
On her first day at work, she was verbally abused by Maravar men. But Muthukanni fought back. She shifted her panchayat meetings to a community library in the neighbouring hamlet of Venkalapoddal. It was attended in huge numbers by women but boycotted by Maravar men.
 
Assured of the people’s support, she lobbied with India Cements, whose flagship plant is at neighbouring Shankarnagar, for corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds to set up a new panchayat office building. With a Rs 50-lakh grant, she set up a swanky, air-conditioned panchayat office in Madhavakurichi.
 
That building is a testament not only to Muthukanni’s efforts to reclaim her community’s dignity but also to her commitment to the idea of social justice. “This office is open to all. Anyone can come and meet me and talk to me,” she said.
 
The last two stories in the IndiaSpend series on Tamil Nadu’s women panchayat leaders focussed on how they battled gender prejudices and sparse resources to bring a better quality of life to their villages. In this story, it becomes clear that even though the 73rd Amendment of the Constitution created institutional spaces for women from the marginalised groups like dalits and adivasis, they still have to deal with entrenched caste beliefs, discrimination and harassment.
 
Dominant castes control the election process
Dalit and adivasi women in panchayat politics have to negotiate three kinds of oppression–rigid caste structures within the village, patriarchy within and outside their families and feudalism, where they are in a dependent economic relationship with the dominant caste in the village.
 
Among these women too, those who rank higher in the caste hierarchy have the advantage of economic and social mobility brought by political organisation. Women of the Pallar sub caste, dominant in southern Tamil Nadu, and Parayar sub caste, dominant in the north, have the backing of Pudhiya Tamizhagam and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK). They have the powers to resist land-owning castes such as the Mukkalathors (collective name for three dominant castes Thevars, Maravars and Kallars), Gounders, Vanniyars and so on.
 
Arunthatiyars (also called Chakkiliyar/Sakkiliyar) are lower in the caste hierarchy and suffer at the hands of the powerful castes in whose farms they work. They are also discriminated against by the Pallars and Parayars.
 
Of the 76 sub castes among the state’s scheduled castes, it is primarily the Pallars, Parayars and Arunthatiyars who contest elections.
 
Caste oppression begins with the election process where the dominant castes directly sponsor candidates for seats reserved for scheduled caste women. A katta panchayat, one comprising men from landed communities, picks a woman candidate, usually a daily wager Arunthatiyar who works on the farm of one of these landlords. These women are expected to be pliable, and once elected, take the back seat while their sponsors take charge.
 
George Dimitrov, a lecturer at Gandhigram Rural University near Dindigul in central Tamil Nadu, who has documented dalit women presidents in the district for his PhD thesis, found that nine of its 25 dalit women presidents had been sponsored by katta panchayats. Of these, seven are from the Arunthatiyar community and the other two from communities even lower in the caste order.
 
Once the katta panchayat decides, the women have no choice but to contest. They often have to borrow money from the local money lenders on interest for contesting elections, pushing them into further debt and feudal dependence.
 
Angammal (37), a daily wage labour from the Arunthatiyar community, was forced to contest by the Gounders of the Appipalayam panchayat in Dindigul. Her predecessor, Selvi, had been chosen in this manner but she had begun to resist the dominance of the Gounders once she took office so the panchayat stopped backing her. They banked on Angammal being more pliant.
 
“Arunthatiyar women borrow anywhere between Rs 30,000 and Rs 3 lakh from the local money lenders to contest elections, an amount they neither have nor afford to pay back,” said Dimitrov.
 
In areas where Pallars or Parayars contest elections, dominant castes often sponsor an Arunthatiyar woman to create a further divide within the dalit block. Podhum Ponnu, the president of R Vellodu panchayat in Dindigul, is still angry with the Arunthatiyar woman who contested against her in the 2011 elections.
 
“I have good relations with everybody in the village except the Arunthatiyars,” she said. “What is the need for her to take the support of upper caste people? They do this to divide us,” she said.
 

Podhum Ponnu, the Parayar dalit president of R. Vellodu panchayat in Dindigul district, is angry with the Arunthatiyar woman who contested against her. In areas where Parayars/Pallars contest elections, dominant castes field Arunthatiyar women to create divide and resentment within the dalit block.
 
The dominant castes retain the job of the vice president for themselves, it has been observed. As joint signatories of panchayat cheques, they are in a position to create roadblocks when dalit and adivasi women leaders assert themselves. They also ensure that a bulk of state funds are diverted to areas they are invested in.
 
When powerful village lobbies ‘auction’ panchayat leadership
Seats are also illegally ‘auctioned’ by katta panchayats to retain control of village politics, it is reported.
 
“Katta panchayats usually meet in the middle of the night in the village temple to decide on the next president,” said Dimitrov, who has witnessed such bidding in Dindigul and Madurai during his research. “If more than one candidate decides to stand for the election, an auction is called and bids go upto Rs 5 lakh.”
 
In the case of seats reserved for scheduled caste, especially women, this ‘auction’ takes another form: The katta panchayat sponsors a pliable candidate and asks for bids to decide who gets to control her actions once elected.
 
Balamani Veeman of Kudikulam panchayat in Madurai district was auctioned off, despite her protests, to the local Thevar landlord Karuppasamy, the Indian Express reported in November 2006. Balamani would then have to sign contracts for works in the panchayat and hand over all the “earnings” (a euphemism for bribes) from panchayat works to Karuppasamy.
 
When brought to their notice, district authorities nullify such ‘auctions’ but rarely punish those responsible.
 
The practice came to light in 2001, according to this October 2001 report in Frontline, and it continues to-date. The most recent case was reported from three villages in Paramattivelur taluka in Namakkal district, for the 2016 panchayat elections, which have since been postponed.
 
There are historical cases of Pappapattti, Keeripatti and Nattermangalam villages in Madurai district and Kottakachiyenthal in Virudhunagar district, where the local dominant castes blocked dalits from assuming power for ten years between 1996 and 2006. They ran a parallel system that flouted every principle of democracy without being held accountable.
 
When the marginalised castes resist, the dominant castes use a very high handed structural tool–Article 205 of the Tamil Nadu Panchayats Act–to discredit them and have them dismissed.
 
The tyranny of Article 205
Muthammal (68), the president of Veerappanaikampatti panchayat in Harur block of Dharmapuri district, is still traumatised by the sustained harassment at the hands of three local Vellalar men during her tenure between 2011 and 2016. These men were the vice president, the panchayat secretary and the chairman of the district panchayat (the highest tier of rural local governance).
 
Muthammal, a Parayar, owns 15 acres of land and her family members hold good positions in civil service, police and judiciary. In spite of this, she faced the axe of Article 205, which gives the district collector power to dismiss the panchayat president.
 
Muthammal recalled that she refused the demand of vice president Murugan for a share of his “commission”, an aphorism for graft, from panchayat funds. The secretary, a government functionary whose job is to keep records and accounts, then fudged accounts over a long period, Muthammal alleged.
 

Muthammal, the dalit president of Veerappanaikampatti panchayat in Dharmapuri district, had her financial powers suspended under Article 205 of Tamil Nadu Panchayat Act, for standing up to the dominant caste panchayat functionaries.
 
Dalit women presidents are disproportionately affected by the use of Article 205, which gives the district collector the power to remove/suspend elected panchayat presidents.
 
“One time, I had signed a cheque for Rs 14,000 which he changed to Rs 22,000. The bank manager detected it and alerted us,” she said.
 
Accused of corruption during the annual audit, Muthammal’s powers of signing the cheques were suspended by the district collector under Article 205.
 
“Not just me, five other scheduled caste presidents from Harur block–two of them women–had been charged under Article 205 and their powers suspended,” she said, hinting at casteist collusion.
 
Women, as we reported in our 2017 series on Tamil Nadu’s women leaders, appear to be disproportionately affected by the use of Article 205. In the five years between 2011 and 2016, 42.5% of panchayat presidents dismissed were women, according to data we obtained from the Directorate of Panchayat and Rural Development; 30% of these were dalits.
 
Activists have been demanding that the posts of vice president be reserved for scheduled castes and women in panchayats where the president’s post is already reserved for these groups to avoid such conflicts. The Tamil Nadu Women Panchayat President’s Federation has been demanding the repeal of Article 205 for several years.
 
The state is yet to act on these demands.
 
Muthammal’s powers were restored only after she pleaded her case with the commissioner of the Directorate of Panchayat and Rural Development at Chennai. Other presidents had to go to the court to get their powers restored.
 
The double whammy of caste and patriarchy
Reservations for dalit women are often seen as opportunities for male relatives to realise their own political aspirations. This is especially true of those with several years of political activism with the Dravidian parties–the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Panchayat politics, for these men, is a good opportunity to access power in party organisations that are highly competitive and dominated by upper castes.
 
Women are persuaded to contest, despite little interest, by male members of the family. And if the women start showing real interest in their work, they are threatened and abused.
 
Muthumariammal (32) of T Puthupatti panchayat in Dindigul was persuaded to contest in 2011 by her husband Perumal, a daily wage worker. Though she was politically aware, she was expected to hand over all control to her husband.
 
When she started showing signs of resistance, Perumal became oppressive and even confiscated her mobile phone. After three years, Muthumariammal filed for divorce and took back control of her chair.
 
But unlike her, most women have no choice but to navigate between their roles as wives, homemakers and leaders.
 
Dominant caste women who become panchayat leaders struggle with patriarchy too. But then they are spared the kind of oppression dalit women are subjected to.
 
‘We want the dignity of the office but live in fear’
The two-decade old chronicle of dalit and adivasi women panchayat leaders in Tamil Nadu is at once a story of oppression and resistance.
 
Kalpana Ravindran (42), the president of the Vadakapatti panchayat in Harur block, is a Parayar who was harassed by the Vellalar secretary.
 
First, he asked her to stay out of panchayat affairs. When she resisted and sought the block development officer’s (BDO) intervention, he began fudging accounts to discredit her, she alleged. When the misappropriation of funds came to light, block and district officials accused her of incompetence and corruption.
 
“Maintaining the accounts is the secretary’s job, so why was I blamed?” she said in a voice filled with despair.
 

Kalpana Ravindran still struggles with the mental agony of the discrimination and harassment she faced at the hands of her dominant caste panchayat secretary after she refused to hand over the entire functioning of the panchayat. Dalit women presidents, when they resist the dominant caste clout over the panchayat, are often implicated in cases of corruption and misappropriation of funds, to discredit them.
 
Her five-year term between 2011 and 2016 has left her scarred. “All I wanted to do was learn when I got the chance. But these people made sure that I lost face in my own village. For many days after that, I did not step out of my home. I would sit and cry for hours after my husband left for office,” she said, adding that she still finds it hard to socialise in her village.
 
A dalit or adivasi woman leader ought to be addressed as thailaivi (leader) in Tamil, just as a male leader is called thalaiva. But quite often she is addressed with casteist slurs such as “Ei Sakkilichi” (You, Sakkiliar woman).
 
When Thulasimani of Koombur panchayat in Dindigul insisted on sitting on the president’s chair, the entire village would sneer at her for her “arrogance”, she recalled. “Thulasimani is thimiru pidichava (a woman with a swollen head). How dare she sit in front of the Gounder men?” was a common refrain.
 
The Gounder men would drop into her house in the Arunthatiyar colony at all hours to demand that various problems be fixed. But they would never step into her home.
 
“This is why I would go to the panchayat office daily though it is 6 km away. There, I am the president. At home, I am an Arunthatiyar,” she said, her voice choking with emotion.
 

Thulasimani of Koombur panchayat in Dindigul was called ‘Thimiru Pidichava’ (a woman with a swollen head) for daring to sit on the president’s chair by the Gounder men. Dalit women presidents, who ought to be called thalaivi (leader) are subjected to casteist slurs often, more so when they insist on demanding their constitutional and political rights.
 
These microaggressions are used to force women like Thulasimani to quit while warning future dalit and adivasi women leaders to comply or be harassed.
 
“My heart is completely broken. I will never contest again,” said Thulasimani.
 
P Krishnaveni, the panchayat leader, who featured in our 2017 series, survived a near fatal attack in Thalaiyuthu panchayat in 2011. She was eulogised as ‘Veeramangai’, a brave woman, by the media in Tamil Nadu.
 
But few know of the trauma she suffers living among her attackers and seeing them escape the justice system. “Sometimes I feel so angry I want to kill them all. I have suffered so much because of them,” she said.
 

P Krishnaveni, the former president of Thalaiyuthu panchayat, was called ‘Veeramangai’ (brave woman) after survived a near fatal attack for daring to take a stand against the casteist and corporate forces in her village. But few realise the trauma she lives with even to this day. Dalit women presidents often live with considerable trauma and fear, even while realising that the role of the panchayat leader gives them the dignity that they never got before.
 
Though the state fails to provide safeguards to vulnerable dalit and adivasi women, it also expects them to discharge their constitutional duties and fulfil the requirements of the 73rd Amendment.
 
P Singaram (57), the president of Kumarapalayam panchayat in Salem district, was forced to stand for elections by the district administration because she was the only eligible woman candidate from the scheduled tribe community at the time.
 
Weary of routine harassment by upper caste men, she sought to resign her post twice but was asked by the district administration to continue. The third time, she was made to sign an agreement stating that she would continue in her role for ten years between 2006 and 2016.
 
“I did not earn anything and all my money was spent on travel to make these complaints to the administration,” she said. “I begged them to release me. But they said the reservation is for ten years and I cannot leave because there is no other ST woman in this panchayat.”
 
Dalit women leaders IndiaSpend spoke with said they wanted the empowerment the job brought, but their tenures were full of fears and insecurities.
 
Rajyalakshmi (name changed to protect identity) took us inside her house, bolted the doors, moved her chair close and whispered the story of her travails.
 
“I don’t want anyone to carry any of what I am saying to the powerful men in this village. I am not safe. My five years were full of conflict with the Vanniyar vice president,” she said. “This job gave me the dignity I could never have as an ordinary dalit woman. But my husband says he will hang himself if I contest again.”
 
Contemporary dalit writer Bama wrote of dalit women powerfully in her book Sangati: “Our women have an abundant will to survive however hard they might have to struggle till their last breath. Knowingly or unknowingly, we find ways of coping in the best way we can.”
 
This is the third of a five-part series on women panchayat leaders in Tamil Nadu. You can read the first part here and the second part here.
 
Next: Murder, Assault, Threats– Tamil Nadu’s Women Leaders Live In The Shadow Of Violence
 
(Rao is a co-creator of GenderandPolitics, a project which tracks women’s representation and political participation in India at all levels of governance.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post Why Muthukanni, A Dalit, Had To Build Her Own Panchayat Office appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Rajanikandham, the dalit president of Nachangulam panchayat in Tamil Nadu’s Sivagangai district, has no assets. The state pays her an honorarium of Rs 1,000 a month, and she often ends up paying out of her pocket to visit the district collectorate for panchayat work. Having no fixed income affects dalit and adivasi women presidents disproportionately since they have to do a full-time constitutional role at the expense of their wages and employment.
 
Ask Rajanikandham, a dalit daily wage worker, who heads the Nachangulam village panchayat in southern Tamil Nadu’s Sivagangai district. Her husband too earns daily wages and the couple have three children, one of whom is disabled.
 
A state-run, guaranteed rural job scheme like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is critical for poor families like these but as a panchayat head, Rajanikandham is not allowed to profit from it.
 
“I hold an office, I have power and prestige but no income. I get no salary from the panchayat and I can’t work for wages under MGNREGA because I am panchayat president,” she said. “All I have are three goats I got under a government scheme.”
 
In Tamil Nadu, panchayat presidents–an elected full-time constitutional role–are not paid any salaries. The only other states in India that do not pay a salary to its rural elected representatives are Maharashtra, Gujarat and Odisha.
 
Panchayat presidents in Tamil Nadu are paid an honorarium of Rs 1,000 to cover travel expenses and an additional Rs 100 for attending a meeting twice a month.
 
Compare this to the earnings of a member of the state’s legislative assembly (MLA)–after a recent 100% hike, he/she receives a basic monthly salary of Rs 1.05 lakh, apart from the several perks and pensions. The last time Tamil Nadu revised its honorarium for panchayat officials was in 2012, when it was hiked from Rs 300 to Rs 1,000. And the meeting fee was raised from Rs 50 to Rs 100.
 
This Rs 1,000 is barely enough to cover the panchayat head’s expenses for the mandatory weekly meeting at the block development office (BDO) or the regular trips to the district collectorate to lobby for extra funds for development projects and procure information about different government schemes.
 
In the first part of our series, we saw how Tamil Nadu’s women panchayat leaders were changing the face of rural governance. In the second part today, we investigate the financial challenge they face every day, especially dalit and adivasi women leaders: How to raise money for poorly funded development projects even as they struggle with poverty at home.
 
This is a problem male panchayat leaders face too but the honorarium system puts even greater pressure on women from marginalised communities. Like many working women, they also have to deal with social and familial pressures as they struggle to bring in extra resources for the panchayat. Unlike men, they cannot spend long hours away from home, lobbying for funds with the male-dominated network of higher officials.
 
“For women, taking a day out and travelling to the district collectorate periodically and spending an entire day there is difficult,” said Rajeswari, of Kuruthangudi panchayat (Kalaiyarkovil block) in Sivagangai district, who belongs to the Parayar community. “They have to answer so many questions from their families and society. We are often asked, ‘What is the need to go out so often and come back late?’”
 
Women leaders also have to deal with insults and slander for being out of their homes and travelling. “Earlier, posters of women (leaders) would be put up in villages calling them ‘characterless’ for staying out late for panchayat work. Things got a bit better after the state government gave strict orders to district collectors to ensure that only women attended meetings and not their male relatives,” said G Uma, assistant professor in the gender department at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), who has researched on women in Tamil Nadu’s panchayat governance.
 
Yet, when women had to choose between a regular salaried job and the power to make a change, IndiaSpend found many opting for the latter.
 

Tenmozhi, the president of Sitilinghi panchayat in the reserved forests of Tamil Nadu’s Dharmapuri district, gave up a job offer from the state’s electricity board to fulfil her constitutional role as an elected representative. When women had to choose between a regular salaried job and the power to make a change, IndiaSpend found many women panchayat presidents opting for the latter.
 
Tenmozhi, a maths graduate from the tribal Malayali community who featured in our series last year, declined a job offer from the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board because she was just elected the president of her panchayat and wanted to set the agenda for change.
 
50% of dalit women panchayat heads are daily wage workers
 
The state bars panchayat presidents from holding a paid employment or any job that receives government funding, such as employment under MGNREGA, to avoid conflict of interest.
 
But consider what this means to women whose families survive on daily earnings. In our survey of 32 panchayats headed by women in six districts of Tamil Nadu, we found that dalit and adivasi women came with almost no assets and meagre family incomes.
 
Six of the 12 dalit women we interviewed were daily wage workers with no assets at all. The other six were slightly better off, owned between 1-5 acres of lands. Two of the three adivasi women lived in a one-room tenement, and subsisted on either daily wage work or collecting forest produce. In contrast, women from the dominant castes such as Thevars, Gounders and Vanniyars had family ownership of lands ranging from 10 acres to 30 acres.
 
For those who worked in private jobs, there were other kinds of problems. Dalit women panchayat leaders from the Arunthatiyar community, who mostly earned their living from daily wage work on farms owned by dominant castes like Thevars and Gounders, had a particularly difficult time managing with meagre resources.
 
Taking time off their daily wage work to travel on official business to various district and block offices means loss of the day’s wages, which is not compensated in any form by the panchayat.
 
To add to all this, a panchayat leader is expected to serve refreshments for visiting government officials. Often, they are also expected to refuel the vehicles of the visiting government staff.
 
“A visiting engineer who prepares plans and estimates for civil works or a visiting deputy BDO (block development officer) often demands that the president pay for their fuel. These lower level bureaucrats have fuel limits set by the government,” said IGNOU researcher Uma.
 
IndiaSpend saw these problems first hand when we visited a panchayat where a block-level official insisted that the president arrange refreshments despite our protests. She ended up spending Rs 300 out of her pocket.
 
In Dindigul district, George Dimitrov, a lecturer in Gandhigram Rural University, who has researched and documented all the 25 dalit women presidents, found that 11 women from the Arunthatiyar community worked as daily wagers in the farms of dominant caste landholders. A lack of salary affects their autonomy and makes it difficult for them to resist the demands of their employers.
 
Saroja heads the Kakkadasam panchayat in Krishnagiri district but it is her husband who actually controls it. For her, MGNREGA is more than just work. “I wanted for this term to end soon so I can go for MGNREGA work. I feel like a slave in this household,” Saroja said. “MGNREGA work gives me the freedom and a community of women I can talk to. This job has snatched away my freedom without giving me any real power.”
 
Tamil Nadu’s neighbouring state, Kerala, pays its panchayat leaders Rs 13,200, the highest in the country. Telangana has recently revised the salary to Rs 5,000 while Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have revised it to Rs 3,000.
 

Source: Data collected from state panchayat raj department websites
 
Mobilising resources: How women manage despite odds
 
As we reported in the first part of this series, women leaders were going beyond their assigned duties–such as provision of drinking water, sanitation, streetlights, road repair–to invest in services which have been neglected by their male predecessors.
 
But mobilising extra funds is difficult because of how Tamil Nadu’s panchayat finance is structured. The panchayat has three revenue sources:
 

 
Own revenues, over which panchayats have complete control, constitute only 10% of the total revenues, as per our analysis. These are mainly from the taxes that panchayats can levy on their residents–house tax, profession tax, water tax, advertisement tax and some licenses and fees.
 
In a micro study of three villages in Tamil Nadu, Anand Sahasranaman of Institute of Financial Management Research (IFMR) Trust estimated that this own revenue is usually sub-optimal: It makes for only 0.15% to 0.2% of the total village income.
 
Rates of house tax–the largest source of own revenues–have not been revised in many years and are kept flat irrespective of the size of properties. Poor households actually end up subsidising rich ones. If panchayats were to increase their tax collection to even 2.5% of village incomes, their own revenues would increase by 15 times, calculated Sahasranaman’s study.
 
The state government has also abolished matching grants to the house tax collected, an incentive for better tax collection.
 
Panchayats, thus, have to depend on devolved grants and pooled assigned revenues, which form two-thirds of the total revenues.
 
Based on the fourth State Finance Commission (SFC) (2012-2016) recommendations, the state government designated 10% of the state tax revenues as grants to urban and rural local bodies in the ratio of 42:58. Gram panchayats are assigned 60%, the highest among the three tiers of rural governance.
 
But even while the state government increased the SFC grants, ‘untied funds’ that can be used freely, from 8% in 1997 to 10% in 2012, it imposed a more complex system of bureaucratic approvals on them. For instance, 10% of the SFC grants due to panchayats are now reserved for Infrastructure Gap Filling Fund, which is under direct control of the district collector.
 
Every panchayat in Tamil Nadu gets a uniform SFC grant of Rs 3 lakh (revised down from Rs 5 lakh after enhanced revenues from the 14th Central Finance Commission in 2015) and an added grant based on the population. A panchayat of 2,000 population gets anywhere between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 8 lakh annually from the devolved SFC grants.
 
This finance architecture, while being the same for all panchayats, affects those headed by women more.
 
Large development projects require massive capital outlays, which materialise after lobbying for a number of years. Tenmozhi, as we reported in our earlier series, had to lobby with the Centre for two years for a Rs 30-crore grant to build a bridge connecting 5,000 people from seven villages.
 
‘I had to struggle for everything’
 
Lobbying demands time, effort and access to officials of the district collectorate. Women have a tougher time investing in these.
 
Rajeswari of Kuruthangudi panchayat is popular in her district for her skills in mobilising funds for various schemes. But for a Parayar dalit, it did not come easy. She recounted her story:
 
“I had to struggle for everything–ration shop, school, library. We have no funds to build these. Most of the big scheme funds as well as NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) funds are handled by the assistant director of panchayats. We need to regularly show our face to get funds. Men go directly to him, sit with him for a long time and ensure funding. We can’t.”
 
Rajeswari has been able to manage the time and expenses for travel because of a supportive family and a husband who holds a government job. But this is not the story of other dalit and adivasi women presidents.
 

Mazharkodi Dhanasekar (left) of Melamarungoor panchayat is from a dominant caste, and her family owns 15 acres of land. She spent Rs 1 lakh of her own money to build toilets under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Leaders such as Prema (centre) and Rajeswari (right), dalit presidents of Kurthangudi and Silakkapatti panchayats, have to lobby hard for funds. This takes time, effort and access to officials–easier for their male counterparts.
 
Even self-employed women like Prema, the president of Silakkapatti panchayat in Sivagangai district who runs a small general store in her village, has a tough time because shutting shop means loss of business.
 
Other important sources of funding like MLA and MP funds and funds from district and block panchayat unions (additional tiers of local governance) need political access to male-dominated networks. This, women leaders said, is hard work especially for first-timers. Although panchayat leaders are not supposed to be affiliated to political parties, such affiliations are now common and, often, determine funding.
 
Manjula, who heads Mallachandaram panchayat (Thally block in Krishnangiri district), managed to get public works worth Rs 26 crore sanctioned. This included a brand new high school building, several roads, and a ration shop. It is not lost on her that this was possible her husband is a member of the district unit of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).
 
“MLAs as well as district and block chairpersons prioritise party loyalists. Here, if you are from the AIADMK, there is greater chance of getting more funds,” she said. “Also MLAs allocate certain amount for each block so they can fund only a few panchayats. So we have to be seen constantly when they are in their constituency to get attention.”
 

Manjula, the president of Mallachandaram panchayat in Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri district, managed to get public works worth Rs 26 crore sanctioned. It is not lost on her that this was possible her husband is a member of the district unit of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Leaders who are party loyalists have better chances of getting funds allocated from members of legislative assembly and parliament.
 
Mazharkodi Dhanasekar, the feisty president of Melamarungoor in Sivagangai district whose campaign against open defecation we featured in our last series, had to spend Rs 1 lakh of her own money to build toilets under the Swachh Bharat Scheme. As a member of the dominant Maravar community, a subcaste of the Thevars, whose family owns 15 acres of land, it was easier for her.
 
“I could do it because we are financially well off and my husband did not object,” she said. “Many women neither have the money nor the independence. We need more funds to build necessary infrastructure.”
 
Women leaders are bullied by upper-caste employers
 
Since 2006, panchayats in Tamil Nadu have seen greater bureaucratisation, with increased government control and shrinking autonomy. Autonomy over funds that are necessary for routine maintenance works, such as repair of streetlights, have been tightened. Lower-level block officials are now assigned to exercise greater control over the panchayats.
 
“Earlier, the BDO was only advising the presidents. Now the deputy BDO has greater control,” said Kalpana Satish, who has trained women panchayat presidents and worked with the Federation of Women Panchayat Presidents. “Panchayat presidents cannot sign cheques without their permission. Even for untied funds, presidents have to make a proposal and send to the BDO and wait for his approval.”
 
As per Tamil Nadu Panchayat rules, presidents can spend upto Rs 600 for repairs to hand pumps and Rs 7,500 for motor pump maintenance without an approval from engineers. Presidents are allowed upto Rs 2,000 at a time or Rs 5,000 a year for urgent public works without any technical approval. This is grossly inadequate, said women leaders.
 
“Everyday there is some problem with pipelines, motors and their maintenance. Is Rs 2,000 enough?” asked Thulasimani (30), the dalit president of Koombur panchayat in Dindigul.
 
Thulasimani has often been the target of casteist attacks from the upper-caste Gounder men because she dared to sit on the president’s chair.
 

Thulasimani, the dalit president of Koombur in Tamil Nadu’s Dindigul district, has often been the target of casteist attacks from the upper-caste Gounder men. Presidents are allowed upto Rs 2,000 at a time for urgent public works without any technical approval. Since 2006, panchayats in Tamil Nadu have seen greater bureaucratisation, with increased government control and shrinking autonomy. Lower-level block officials are now assigned to exercise greater control over the panchayats.
 
“When we get calls from people, especially upper castes, to repair a motor pump, we don’t have the time to wait for estimates and approvals. We have to repair then and there,” she said. “Sometimes we get credit, but many times we even have had to borrow at an interest from moneylenders.”
 
Despite all these structural challenges, women are delivering beyond the basic services and this is not because of the system, but in spite of it. Tamil Nadu’s finance system for local governance is a classic example of how systems are designed without envisioning the roadblocks they present to the most marginalised groups.
 
This is the second of a five-part series on women panchayat leaders in Tamil Nadu. You can read the first part here.

(Rao is a co-creator of GenderandPolitics, a project which tracks women’s representation and political participation in India at all levels of governance.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post Meagre Funds, No Salary: How Tamil Nadu’s Women Leaders Still Succeed appeared first on SabrangIndia.