Ratnamma’s Fight: Patriarchy and Caste Conflict Around the Commons

[Chitra]

When MGNREGS was first launched in the Panchayat, Ratnamma was immediately active in operationalising it in the village of Bajjapura. She was at the forefront of overcoming hurdles in the creation of job cards and payment of wages, which often involved confronting local Panchayat officials. When opening people’s bank accounts was proving to be a problem, she mobilised people from the village to travel to the Panchayat office every day for 15 days to pressure the administration. Through such actions, Ratnamma managed to establish herself as a prominent leader within the village. This made her an obvious candidate for the role of Community Resource Person (CRP) with FES.

Being a CRP enhanced Ratnamma’s capacity to work for the community in several ways —As a result of increased access to information, Ratnamma learned how to carry out the proper measurement for MGNREGS work sites, thus ensuring that people received the full amount of wages. During a separate training, Ratnamma learned about the dangers attached to the misappropriation of MGNREGS job cards. In her own village, she was aware of how conflict over wages often led to job cards being torn up by angry husbands and cases of domestic violence. In order to safeguard women from such threats, she took up the responsibility of safe keeping all job cards in the village.

Education on commons has also led to many changes in the village. Following training on how to access revenue records and undertake mapping of common land, the residents of Bajjapura entered 4 acres of grazing land into the Panchayat asset register. Although this should have been 6, during the mapping process they found that 2 acres had already been encroached. In order to safeguard the commons against future encroachment, Ratnamma also facilitated the planting of saplings through funds leveraged from a separate project. In addition, Ratnamma also assists 7 SHG groups in the village and is a representative for SHGs at the Panchayat level. Owing to recognition for her work at the Panchayat and Taluk level, banks now give preference to Bajjpura for loans.

However, a long history of contention between Bajjapura and its neighbouring village, Iddulavaripalli, introduces many challenges to Ratnamma’s work (two villages that were partitioned a generation earlier along lines of caste). The latest dispute concerns encroachment of the burial ground by upper caste farmers in Iddulavarpalli, owing to which, residents of Bajjapura have had to resort to burying their dead in the village tank. After Ratnamma managed to get the issue published in the local newspaper, in a retaliatory gesture, the farmers in Iddulavaripalli barred her access through their agricultural lands. This in turn, prevented Ratnamma from reaching her own fields and taking up ground nut cultivation this year.

Despite the economic loss, Ratnamma’s spirit remains unwavering. “If you are not rowdy, people will not let you survive,” she explains. This is a learning that Ratnamma traces back to her childhood. With her own mother and father having passed away at an early age, Ratnamma was raised by her stepmother who had always advised her to put on a fierce front — “especially since there was no man in the house.” In this situation, ‘rowdiness’ stood for a way in which Ratnamma was able to strengthen her position in relation to the patriarchal structures around her and follow her sense of justice.

(This story is part of a larger collection titled ‘Stories of Wellbeing: Documenting Journeys beyond Income’, authored by Shivangi Anand and Chitra Sangtani with valuable contributions from Ranjit Mohanty)

[Khanjan]

Very inspiring! Looking forward to other stories from the collection.

[Author]

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