How Kalawati Devi battled mafia to protect trees and electrify her remote village
To know the strength of a woman, meet Kalawati Devi Rawat. Kalawati is known as the woman who brought electricity to her remote village in the hills of Uttarakhand, writes BBC. It was in the early 1980s. Kalawati had just been married and moved to Bacher village which had no electricity. Kalawati found life difficult once it got dark.
One day, she led a group of village women to meet government officials at the district headquarters in Gopeshwar to demand that their village be electrified. But the authorities were unmoved. While trekking back to the village, the women came across some electricity poles by the foothills, apparently to be used to provide light for an official programme. Kalawati persuaded the women to carry the electricity poles and wires to their village, situated at a height of some 500 metres, on their shoulders.
The officials were furious and threatened to lodge a criminal case against the women. More and more women came forward, asking the police to send them to jail. Taken aback, the officials decided to connect the village to the power grid. This was Kalawati’s first victory.
Image: BBCSince then, Kalawati has not rested on her laurels. Over the past three decades she has taken on the timber mafia in the nearby forests and also campaigned against alcoholism among the men in her village. Drawing inspiration from the “chipko movement” of the 1970s – the green movement where protesters hugged trees in the hills of Uttarakhand to stop them from being cut – Kalawati mobilized the women to cling to trees to prevent them from being felled. It was not long before the women had a sizeable representation in panchayats and Kalawati’s struggle to empower rural women won her the Indian government’s Indira Priyadarshini Award in 1986. Over the years, she’s won other awards too.
“We’ve managed to get rid of alcoholism and many families have been saved. No one fells the trees now and people living in the forest have access to plenty of produce from the woods like spices and fruits,” Radha Devi, a member of the village council told BBC.
Image: BBCFor a woman who’s had no formal education, Kalawati has become a role model for many women in her village and over the years, she has also won respect from men. “Today we are benefiting from the forest produce. It has also become a major source of income for many living on the hills,” says Gautam Panwar. “Had it not been for her efforts, the society here would have disintegrated with forests depleted and men falling prey to alcohol,” says Vinod Kaparwan.
To stay updated with more positive news, please connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.
