PRM, ‘Panchayat RAJ Movement’ is a NGO based on the east coast of India. It was set up in 1989 to address the issues of sustainable agriculture in the landless farming communities of the Dalit people who are the most marginalized people within India and the ‘caste system’

The ‘caste system’, is evident all over India and like the different classes in Europe is a way to separate the rich from the poor and maintain that divide and predates 400 bc. It has only been in relative recent history that real efforts have been made to bridge these divides. In 1950 India first began the process of recognizing the major social problems the caste was having on the poorest communities the Dalit’s. Today traveling around India especially within the Dalit communities it is hard to imagine the constitutional change India made over half a century ago has had any impact. People still live in slum conditions seemingly banished from basic human rights and reliant on external aid to survive. If impact is measurable then I really cannot imagine how hard pulling together, a life, family and community would have been prior. These divides within the classes have paralyze and imprisoned the Dalit people through out history it is so engrained in the way of life that the prejudices are still the masters.

Mr Jeevanandham the founder of PRM has been pioneering sustainable and ecologically friendly farming systems for over 20 years within the example village we were shown some apparent and possitve outcomes. He took us on a tour of one of the projects PRM works with in the Pudukkattai district of Tamilnadu. The Dalit community on the out skirts of Andakkulam set up the WOFM ‘woman’s organic farming comity’ with the aid of PRM directly after the tsunami in 2003 in a move to help empower the Dalit people.

On the 24th of December 2003 this small farming community, although 1.5 km from the sea, was submerged in 15ft+ of salty sea water. Even though the water came and went in just ten minutes it caused devastation all over the world, destroying then dragging back out to sea anything and everything it could. The immediate damage to the community was shattering and the aftermath had huge disabling consequences on this community.

The Dalit are nearly all landless people and rely on leasing or renting the land they live on. In this instant the WOFC pay rent in the form of agricultural produce to the Temple. As a marginalized people their voice is hardly heard with in the local government, the Panchayat. Getting aid and tackling major social problems is arduous and is often a futile waste of time. The government provided the Dalit farmers, after several months, minimal aid in the form of 4000rs and 2 sacks of rice. This was hardly enough to feed and rebuild a community who still had to scrape together the money to pay their rent.

Directly after the tsunami the lands had become saturated in salt and were un- farmable, the Dalit farmers were informed by government scientists it would be 5 years before farming would be successful again, another blow. PRM saw the despair as an opportunity not only to help bring these people out of what a seemingly hopeless situation, but also use this as a chance to create something using the sustainable farming models they had developed to help empower the people.

PRM’s immediate focus was to help the farming Dalit community to clear the farming lands of the sand and Debary. This led onto the introduction of new sustainable farming methods. PRM worked with WOFC to develop organic fertilizers pesticides and composts that would reintroduce the valuable nutrients needed to make farming successful. Previously the community had been fully dependant on costly chemicals. The new low tech process that use readily available raw materials not only has a initial financial saving but also in time will enable the community to enter into a potentially more lucrative organic market.

PRM have created hope in a community were there was none, In one of many conversations with the people of the village one woman said “PRM helped to give us the confidence we had lost to make these changes, now the people now have plans and ambition”.

We were shown around the village and homes of the Dalit farmers who gave demonstrations of their work; unwanted fish, an array of local plants, cow manure and urine, milk, raw sugar the unusual list of ingredients for the various potions goes on… Really though, the most exciting thing to see was the glowing pride the people had. It is a humbling experience seeing people with honour and pride not only manage to live of almost nothing, but bring them back from utter devastation.