Kerala woman’s destiny was shaped by three PMs, but justice remains elusive

Events such as ‘International Women’s Day’ may have become a ritual in India but justice can prove an elusive good for marginalised women, as attested by the story of an old tribal widow’s struggle to get back two acres of land that rightfully belongs to her.

Rami, a frail Irula tribal in her late eighties, still remembers the distant afternoon she got a coconut palm sapling under the Twenty Point Programme launched by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. It was the Emergency and tribal welfare was a priority. When planting the palm in her plot on the banks of the Siruvani near Agali, Rami fondly named it after Indira Gandhi. “It is still there but the land is no more in my possession,” says the mother of four farm labourers.

Rami’s two acres are now part of a 4.71-acre plot that houses a building that marks the ‘Bharat Yatra’ of former PM Chandra Sekhar in the 1980s. The building and the plot are now owned by a Trust associated with the late Chandra Sekhar. But how did her land end up with this Trust?

“In the 1970s, I took a small farm loan from the State Bank of India. I had pledged the land. I don’t remember the value of the loan. But after failing to repay it on time, I stopped visiting the farm,” says Rami. In early 1980, a local encroacher allegedly fabricated documents and sold it to Chandra Sekhar’s Trust, which ironically wanted the land to empower tribal women.

Loan written off

In 2008, the UPA government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh decided to write off 72,000 farm loans. Rami was a beneficiary and the bank returned her title deed.

Yet, she has not been given her land back, with Revenue officials claiming that they are unable to reach the current owners. She now plans to approach the Kerala High Court.