Tribal woman shows the way

Shamnapur (Medak): At least six per cent of Telangana population is Girijans. In essence, one in every sixteen persons is a Girijan. Not so long ago, they used to beg the landlords for work.

August 21, 2005, was a turning point for the Girijans of Kocheru Lambada Tanda in the limits of Shamnapur panchayat when the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, along with the then Chief Minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy, handed over 30 acres of land to 20 lambadas belonging to the tanda under Indira Prabha scheme. Banothu Gujiri, Devili and Mudavat Ramji were among the 20 persons who were allotted land at that time.

All these people have been eking out living by rearing sheep on the slopes of hills. They thought their lifestyle would change with the allotment of land. However, there was hardly any change in their lives as they do not know how to cultivate the land which was full of rocks and thorny bushes.

Moreover, there was no irrigation facility. After more than a decade, now Banothu Gujiri is busy selling vegetables like beans, tomato, bottle gourd, chilli and coriander leaves in the Medak Ryot Bazaar pocketing Rs 600 of day’s earnings.

When asked, Gujiri narrated her long struggle with the land and how the MNREGA works changed their lives. Once they were given work under MNREGA, they started clearing the land and launched cultivation. They dug bore-wells in the land and have been using pipes to irrigate their fields.

The Girijans now cultivate sugarcane and several varieties of vegetables in the land. Banothu Gujiri does not leave an inch of land in her three acres. She raises a wide variety of vegetables including beans, tomato, bottle gourd and chilli in half acre and lady’s fingers and leafy vegetables in another half acre in addition to sugarcane and maize in one acre.

She also raises teak trees around the field. Gujiri never relies on others to sell her produce. She hires an auto rickshaw to take the produce to the Medak market which is ten km away once a week. Gujiri claims that she has been earning Rs 500 per day exclusive expenses by selling vegetables. She said that she earned Rs 80,000 by producing 50 tonnes of sugarcane per acre last year.

Several members of the same village including Mudavat Ramji, Pulya, Banotu Devili and Lambadi Ranja are also following her footsteps. They are earning Rs 3 lakh per annum by cultivating paddy, maize and vegetables in their land. Now they need not beg the landlords for work. Gujiri said their hamlet lacked basic amenities like roads, toilets and others. If they are provided to our hamlet, we would make it a clean village, they said.

By Shyammohan