Women Farmers of Indias Deccan Plateau: Ecofeminists Challenge

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Women Farmers of Indias Deccan Plateau
Ecofeminists Challenge

• Rukmini Rao

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The Deccan Development Society (DDS)

• The DDS in Southern India has found an innovative
  way to deal with a fragile ecosystem, rising
  costs of agricultural inputs, an unforgiving
  pricing policy, and drought prone land. They
  give women more control over agriculture even
  though 99 of the women dont own their own land.
  They give loans.

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The Problems

• There is a caste system in Dalit that is akin to
  apartheid.
• The women do hard labor, and are at risk for
  sexual exploitation.
• They are often unemployed, landless, economically
  insecure, and poorly educated.

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Land and Loans

• If the women do have land, their lands are often
  follow due to erosion, droughts, and bad
  irrigation.
• They often lack access to credit with lenders
  charging 60-120 annual interest.

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The First Attempt

• The DDS was set up in 1983 by professional men
  and foreign aid organizations.
• The DDS had 200 employees when this article was
  written about half of which were locals.
• The DDS provides organizational and development
  support in improving the environment and peoples
  lives.

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Water and Livestock

• At first the DDS tried to provide electric water
  pumps to farmers but voltage fluctuations caused
  damage to the pumps and the poorest of wells went
  dry.
• An attempt to improve livestock also failed.

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Men

• Originally, the DDS also provided loans to mens
  groups, but they fell apart because of political
  disputes before elections, corruption, and
  quarrels over leadership

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The Second Attempt

• Sangams or womens groups did much better.
• The DDS now works only with women who suffer
  from the triple burden of caste, class, and
  gender (256).
• These women are self-selected and belong to
  different religious groups and sometimes
  different castes.

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• The women are able to work together because they
  can see the benefits of doing so.
• They are overworked and may be quite willing to
  allow others to take on the burdens of
  management.
• The DDS has helped over 5,000 women.

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A Case Study Edakulapalli

• In the village of Edakulapalli, forty-seven women
  got together and saved about 12 cents (US) a week
  to provide a pool of resources.
• Unfortunately, the group collapsed after a year
  due to problems with male family members,
  political leaders, and insensitive activists.

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• Despite the setback, soon two of the women
  started a new group with 36 members.
• Matching grants from donors were given to the
  group over 7 years to create a revolving fund.

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• This provided loans for clothes, food, and
  emergency relief.
• The loans helped the women and their families get
  basic health care, deal with seasonal food
  shortages, maintain adequate nutritional levels,
  and avoid illness.

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• The womens families no longer had to take out
  high-interest loans.
• Today a similar group that started with 1,200
  women has a revolving fund of 81,395 USD.

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The Land

• One of the big problems with the land in the
  region is that it is left fallow as big landlords
  often cultivate limited land areas.

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• This decreases employment opportunities and
  access to basic food, it also leads to soil
  erosion and eventually forces migration of
  landless farmers.

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• If people lose their land this can result in
  destitution which encourages bondage of small
  boys preventing their education, and early
  marriage for girls.
• The Edakulapalli women have created a program to
  combat this

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Creating Summer Employment and Improving Land
Quality

• The women are paid to remove stones, improve
  drainage, and create contour bands to prevent
  erosion which improves land quality on a 50
  subsidy from the DDS.

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• 23 USD loans are provided to 10 women to improve
  their lands.
• This generates 400 days of employment shared
  amongst the women in the group.
• The women are also given money with which to
  purchase farm equipment.

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• Some women lease land and do organic agriculture
  which improves land quality and the status of the
  women who become farm managers.

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• They have also created seed banks and are not
  subject to the control of the markets and
  multinational companies for seed, fertilizers, or
  pesticides.
• The banks may also help the farmers to regain
  biodiversity and thus crop stability.

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Protecting and Regenerating Productive Resources

• One problem in the community is the temptation to
  sell away land when times are hard.
• Usually this leads to more destitution and
  individual women do not have legal influence over
  land rights.

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• However, as a group, the women can influence the
  decisions of local men.
• Because the men can see that leased land can be
  made productive they are encouraged to keep
  theirs, especially as the women can help them
  secure loans.
• This ability provides the women with some power
  and status.

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Additional Income Generation

• This includes raising goats and selling milk and
  meat as well as vegetables and small businesses
  like tea shops.
• This has the result of increasing income and
  reducing debt.

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• Both womens basic needs and strategic needs are
  being met, availability of food and increases in
  power have gone hand in hand.
• Even upper caste men will treat the women more
  respectfully when they want them to lease their
  land.

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An Ethic of Care is Created

• Some women have developed community forestry
  resources, grown traditional medicinal plants,
  and created community grain banks.
• Elderly women are also hired and child care
  provided so that intergenerational care becomes
  the norm.

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• The women care for livestock and combine
  traditional wisdom with modern practices.
• For instance, they do Participatory Rural
  Appraisals planning for medicinal plantations,
  crops, and watersheds.

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Equity

• The women do wealth-ranking exercises publicly to
  provide for the most needy.
• Farming is organic.
• They are helping the least well off and the
  environment.

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Feminist Goals are Achieved

• The women can intervene in domestic disputes and
  support victims to achieve equitable decision in
  court.
• For example a rapist was punished for the first
  time in their village.

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• Workshops are held so that womens work can be
  seen as more valuable to the community.
• Strategies for change are developed and
  implemented in government.

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• They have even set up local radio stations and
  media groups to propagate alternative values.
• Positive advertising for minorities!

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Summary

• The government pricing policies and competition
  from multinational firms in combination with a
  strict caste system and gender inequities has
  left many Dalhit women and men in dire straights.
  They must deal with falling land quality
  resources, low education, health problems, and
  little power. Often these people are left
  landless and destitute due to high interest rates
  and droughts.

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Continued

• To combat this, the DDS was created. It has
  discovered that by empowering local women many of
  these problems can be overcome. Land leasing and
  improvement has generated income and stability.
  It has provided a forum for discussing and
  resolving gender and caste inequities.

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Questions

• What is the connection between this case and the
  core topics we have discussed in this class. What
  issues in the section on free trade are relevant
  to this case? Why? Why do you think this
  section of the course was called A Turn Toward
  the Local? How were the problems facing the
  Dalhit women of Southern India addressed by the
  DDS? How does this case relate to our discussion
  about our obligations to women, minorities, and
  the poor? How does it relate to our discussion
  of advertising, multinational corporations,
  consumption, production, and obligations to
  protect the environment?

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• If someone said that gender and class were
  irrelevant to income and wealth how would you
  respond? Draw on facts from this article in your
  response.
• Using one of the ethical theories you learned
  about in class set out a syllogistic argument
  evaluating this case. Consider an objection to
  one of the premises of your argument. Respond to
  the objection.