Reclaiming diversity, restoring livelihoods

The article traces the mobilisation of rural women in the drylands of Andhra Pradesh, India, to preserve the local biodiversity in order to combat the advent of cheap rice through the Public Distribution System which effectively wiped out their consumption of nutritious grains, pulses and vegetables. The authors chronicle the history of the movement under the aegis of the women sanghams of the Deccan Development Society and report that the women farmers have set up an innovative and highly successful decentralised community-management system for producing, storing and distributing coarse grains. They contend that the dalit (low caste) women have taken control of this variant of the government Public Distribution System and that the local food security, community resilience and biodiversity have also been dramatically enhanced by the process.