In Velpur, the first woman sarpanch in 42 years takes the chair
Lakshmi Boddu, a 38-year-old Dalit weaver, won the seat with a 312-vote margin. Her first act in office: a public ledger of every paisa spent on the village pond.
Velpur, Nizamabad district, Telangana
Also in this issue
Politics from below
From panchayat ledgers to MGNREGA delays — the political lives of India's villages, reported from the ground.
In Velpur, the first woman sarpanch in 42 years takes the chair
Lakshmi Boddu, a 38-year-old Dalit weaver, won the seat with a 312-vote margin. Her first act in office: a public ledger of every paisa spent on the village pond.
After three failed monsoons, Vidarbha cotton farmers quietly switch to millet
The shift is not a government scheme. It is happening in two-acre parcels, on the advice of grandmothers, against the explicit warnings of input dealers.
A 14-village federation in Marathwada is quietly rewriting the rules of groundwater
No NGO. No app. A handwritten register, a community well-meter, and a rule that nobody irrigates sugarcane without the gram sabha's vote.
Wages delayed 217 days. A district in Jharkhand keeps showing up to work anyway.
In Khunti, the muster roll is full and the bank accounts are empty. The labourers have started keeping their own register.