Draped in a blue pattu sari, gold chains round her neck and ears heavy with jewelry, 60-year-old Rangamma of Hothi B. village in Telangana’s Medak district nonetheless carries the quiet dignity of a lady who as soon as believed she had a stake in change. Seated on the low wall of a village properly, she opens her lunch field, tears a chunk of jonna rotte (jowar roti) and eats it with mango pickle underneath the noonday solar.

“We’re harmless, illiterate girls,” she says, recalling how they had been as soon as drawn into a brand new world of sanghams (voluntary village-level associations) and financial savings. “They informed us we may save, take loans, stand on our toes. So we believed and began saving — first ₹1 every week, then ₹5,” provides the mom of 4.

For over 4 many years, the Deccan Improvement Society (DDS) helped rework the lives of Dalit girls throughout Telangana’s arid Zaheerabad mandal (Medak). The agri-based voluntary organisation turned fallow land into meals, constructed houses, created seed banks, ran different public distribution programs and drew world recognition for its community-led mannequin. It was a narrative of transformation, and satisfaction. However now, that satisfaction has curdled into ache and suspicion. Ladies like Rangamma who helped construct the motion are elevating tough questions — about lacking financial savings, land offers and the shortage of transparency within the very establishment they helped construct.

Land, caste and a sangham

Past the spanking extensive roads of western Hyderabad, past the skyscrapers of the Indian Institute of Know-how-Hyderabad, and beside the Bidar-Hyderabad street is a inexperienced oasis — Pastapur village in Zaheerabad mandal. Speckled with two-storey homes, gabled roofs and farmlands, the village is simply one other affluent settlement in Telangana. However beneath its serene floor lies a narrative of battle, solidarity and simmering doubt.

On a vivid, sunny day, shaded by tamarind and neem bushes close to the village properly, a bunch of girls chat about sanghams, sorghum and sustainable farming — phrases which were a part of their lives because the Eighties. That is the land of the DDS, within the drought-prone Zaheerabad area.

“The motion of sanghams began in Bardipur,” says B. Jayappa (65), a resident of Medak and one of many preliminary joinees of the financial savings scheme. “I reached out to G.S. Gopal after the muse of our houses was wrecked by the higher castes in 1982. They blamed us for consuming peddakura (beef) and didn’t need us to construct houses near the temple.”

On the time, Gopal was a part of the IDL Rural Improvement Belief, a subsidiary of business explosives manufacturing unit IDL Industries Restricted. He would putter round on a scooter, engaged on improvement tasks in Medak — then the constituency of Indira Gandhi, who had simply gained the Lok Sabha seat. IDL had stepped into the image because the Centre had allowed 100% tax exemptions to corporates.

Gopal helped 20 villagers to band collectively and kind the primary casual small financial savings self-help group (SHG). The then State authorities pitched in with support of ₹5,840 per home, and with IDL’s assist, 16 homes had been constructed. “These homes nonetheless stand,” says Jayappa.

By 1983, the Deccan Improvement Society was formally born. It introduced collectively hundreds of marginalised girls within the area, making a voluntary affiliation centered round sustainable and equitable improvement.

Financial savings, loans and livestock

At a time when day by day wages had been ₹2 a day, villagers started saving ₹1 per week — a humble however radical act of collective empowerment. The pooled cash enabled members to borrow for livelihood wants.

“Twenty years in the past, we began by saving ₹5, ₹10 and ₹50. Then we’d borrow to purchase goats for ₹1,600 or buffaloes for ₹4,000. No matter we earned, we deposited again with DDS so we may borrow once more. Then the sangham closed,” shares Nagamma, a frazzled grandmother from Dannavaram village who was simply 20 when the motion started. She had two daughters and a son at that age. “I nonetheless don’t have land. However I’ve fingers,” she provides with a touch of satisfaction.

One of many first funding companies to recognise the position of girls, financial savings and sorghum, and step in to help DDS was Germany’s Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World) in 1989. A significant turning level got here in 1995 with the Fourth World Convention on Ladies in Beijing, which positioned gender equality on the worldwide improvement agenda. For DDS, which had already ticked containers on gender justice, Dalit empowerment, dryland agriculture and seed sovereignty, this introduced a rush of worldwide funding.

DDS started working with hundreds of Dalit girls, selling sustainable agriculture, reviving native greens, establishing grain banks, and rejuvenating fallow lands. It created certainly one of India’s earliest community-run different Public Distribution Programs (PDS), the place as a substitute of rice, millets — the meals grain of the area — had been distributed village-wise.

DDS provided ₹4,200 per individual to show fallow land productive and develop millets over a three-year interval. The harvest was distributed regionally with DDS subsidies, utilizing a five-point poverty scale to find out eligibility. This created seed sovereignty within the area as 574 acres got here underneath cultivation and spurred meals safety rooted in native traditions. Jonna rotte (sorghum roti), a staple for individuals in Telangana, Maharashtra and Karnataka, returned to the desk.

However whereas the mannequin thrived in principle, cracks began appearing in its follow.

“We received seed cash to domesticate the land and deposited a part of our earnings with DDS. We gave 25% of what we earned, they promised so as to add 75% and provides it to us in instances of want. We dug wells, constructed watersheds, picked stones and even contributed ₹210 for a sangham store,” Rangamma says. “However after I requested concerning the ₹3,000 we had deposited 20 years in the past, the financial institution stated my identify wasn’t even within the joint account guide. On the police station and Mandal Income Officer’s workplace, they taunt us by saying that DDS has more cash than the federal government.”

Did the sangham members ask for the cash? “Sure, we did. We had been informed it’s protected. However later, whoever requested for cash was dismissed,” she sighs.

Divya Veluguri, government director of DDS, confirms the complaints. “We’ve got initiated a course of the place financial savings are being returned following verification of data held by each DDS and sangham members. Most often, the mortgage quantities taken had been increased than the deposits. That is documented each at DDS and in sangham ledgers. Thus far, we now have issued notices in 30 villages, inviting members to reclaim their deposits.” But discontent runs deep.

The primary man and the cash

“Satheesh didn’t let anybody query his functioning,” says Jagannath Reddy, a resident of Mogudampally village in Medak who labored with DDS from 1986 till his sudden dismissal in 2009.

The person on the centre of each reverence and resistance was Periyapatna Venkatasubbaiah Satheesh. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Satheesh had labored with Doordarshan in Hyderabad earlier than he joined DDS in its early days. He would go on to steer the organisation for 4 many years till his demise in March 2023.

From establishing balwadis (pre-schools) and mobilising girls’s teams to pushing for meals sovereignty and sustainable farming, Satheesh formed the organisation’s philosophy and attain. Below his management, DDS grew to become a nationally and internationally recognised mannequin for grassroots improvement and millet revival. Over time, the establishment builder grew to become the establishment itself, incomes the sobriquet ‘Millet Man’.

“The problem was at all times cash. The SC Company was serving to Dalit farmers. The DDS helped purchase 40 acres of fallow land for ₹1.3 lakh. As soon as the land grew to become cultivable, the sangham needed to purchase the land for ₹50,000, paying ₹10,000 a 12 months. However DDS offered it to a Hyderabad purchaser at ₹1 lakh per acre. I used to be dismissed for placing such concepts into the heads of the villagers,” Reddy says.

“From the time he arrange balwadis and labored with farmers to the day I used to be dismissed from my job, I noticed Satheesh change,” he provides.

Sangham members allege the sale of acres of land through the years in Kuppanagar, Mansoor, Bapanpalli, Raipalli, Yelgudo, Metlagunta, Cheelamamidi, Yedulapalli and different villages.

“The balwadi lands are owned by DDS with clear titles to DDS. Whereas a few of this land has been offered, it was completed after following the due course of, together with notification in newspapers, competing bids and sale thereafter,” says Veluguri.

As of March 31, 2012, DDS had property price over ₹2 crore and a separate account for international contributions. Its donors as soon as included Misereor (Germany), Canadian social justice organisation Inter Pares, Danish humanitarian organisation The Swallows, Dutch improvement financing establishment Hives and UK charity Christian Assist.

However by 2025, its donor record had shrunk to simply two Indian and two international companies. Twenty-eight companies had stopped funding. Brot für die Welt, one among the many first to help DDS, ended its affiliation in 2022. Altering norms underneath the Overseas Contribution (Regulation) Act after 2014 additionally tightened the screws on NGOs generally.

A turning level and a reckoning

“The ladies have misplaced cash. They don’t have a pacesetter. What’s the level of getting such a well-known organisation when it doesn’t do justice to its members? The ladies saved ₹2,500 to ₹3,000 some twenty years in the past. At the moment, land was priced at ₹4,000 per acre. Now, the identical land prices ₹40-₹50 lakh,” says Shaikh Ahmed, secretary of the Human Rights Discussion board, which carried out a fact-finding mission within the villages.

On February 13 this 12 months, nearly two years since Sateesh’s demise, lots of of girls marched via the streets of Pastapur, holding placards and demanding the return of their financial savings earlier than squatting down in protest outdoors the DDS workplace — the very workplace that they had helped construct and which had as soon as been the fulcrum of their lives. An establishment that had empowered them, giving them a voice and autonomy, had now turn into the one they had been elevating their voices in opposition to.

DDS, as soon as the toast of improvement circles, is now struggling to retain the belief of its earliest supporters.

But, it had as soon as heralded change in probably the most profound approach — by empowering Dalit girls, serving to them reclaim dignity, land and livelihoods in deeply caste-stratified villages.

When these 16 houses had been in-built Bardipur with IDL’s assist in the early Eighties, higher caste villagers had tied a slipper to the village neem tree — a warning to not rent Malas and Madigas, each Scheduled Castes communities. “In the event you do, we are going to beat you with this,” that they had stated. Now, 40 years later, the slipper is gone.

“Due to the plantation work, sanghams and SHGs, divisions in society have disappeared to a big extent. Discrimination persists solely in some villages, and amongst a number of,” says Jayappa.

However at the same time as social partitions break down, one other wall — that of silence over cash and land — looms giant. The ladies who as soon as discovered energy and solidarity via the sanghams at the moment are left ready, voices raised as soon as once more. This time, not for change, however for solutions.