Mr and Mrs Jagannathan from Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu, who were recently awarded the ‘Right Livelihood Award’, have spent their lifetime working in Kuthur village having distributed land to over 13,000 poor Dalit women through their organization ‘Land For the Tillers’ Freedom’ (LAFTI).
“We want to do more work. We find our work very interesting. Our good work gives us inner strength. And this is why age is not a problem for us, as we continue to do our good work,” Krishnammal Jagannathan said.
The Right Livelihood Award was constituted by Sweden born Jakob Von Uexkull in 1980 “to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges faced by us”. This year, the award of SEK 2 Million (300000 USD) will be shared by four recipients. It is also known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’.
The couple’s journey began from 1952 when they became part of the Bhoodhan movement spearheaded by Vinoba Bhave, through which about 4 million acres of land were distributed to thousands of landless poor across several Indian states.
“We were fortunate enough to have worked under the guidance of Vinoba Bhave in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu”, says Sankaralingam Jagannathan.
“In 1968, my husband started the Association of Sarva Seva Farmers (ASSEFA) to help allocate fertile land to the landless poor,” Krishnammal said.
“It was in 1981 that we formed LAFTI in the village, to bring the landlords and landless poor to the negotiating table, obtain loans to enable the landless to buy land at reasonable price and then to help them work it cooperatively, so that the loans could be repaid,” she added.
Besides allocating land for the landless she also works for building good houses for the poor and providing employment opportunities to them.
“People in the area have been living in dilapidated huts since generations. We want to help them out. Building houses for them is also one of our priorities,” she says.
She has already helped people to build around 2000 houses, and plans to build around 5000 more houses in near future.
Women are always on their priority list in whatever work they do.
“Whatever houses I have helped people to build or whatever land I have re-distributed among the poor to benefit women was akways priority. Most men in these areas waste money on liquor and on other vices,” she says.
“Empowering women means empowering the whole family.
She then, takes care of every family member. Women have proved to be more responsible than men. I do not rely on men in these cases,” she adds.
Landlords in this area are known for having accumulated many acres of land flouting the Land Ceiling Act.
“Most of them have registered their land in the name of some Trusts, Monastaries or Temples. Recently there was a case of a landlord who enjoyed 109 acres of land by registering it in the name of a temple in Sri Lanka. We discovered that everything was false and the land had no links with any temple. It belonged to a local person,” she says.
“This is how the landlords have escaped the Land Ceiling Act in the area,” she laments.
LAFTI organises women in various villages of Nagapattinam and Thanjavur districts to find out such cases of illegal land ownership. The offender is taken to court, and after land is taken over by the administration, it is redistributed to poor Dalit women.
When asked about her obstacles she faces, she said her biggest obstacle is the lack of finance available to LAFTI.
For the last two months, she hasn’t paid a single penny to her 50 employees, “and yet no one is complaining”.
But with the award coming in, she believes things will change. “These awards helps us to collect funds for our projects,” she says.
She also faces “opposition from political parties who easily get influenced by the rich and use poor dalits as vote banks”.