FROM MILLETS TO MISTRUST, A HARVEST GONE SOUR

For over 40 years, the Deccan Development Society helped transform lives in Telangana's Zaheerabad mandal, turning fallow lands fertile and empowering Dalit women through sanghams, savings and seeds. But today, the same women who built the movement are demanding answers: What happened to their years of deposits? Who sold their land? How did a movement rooted in collective trust begin to feel so distant, so opaque? As faith frays and misgivings grow, Serish Nanisetti traces the unraveling of a once-iconic grassroots model

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Draped in a blue pattu sari, gold chains around her neck and ears heavy with jewellery, 60-year-old Rangamma of Hothi B. village in Telangana's Medak district still carries the quiet dignity of a woman who once believed she had a stake in change. Seated on the low wall of a village well, she opens her lunch box, tears a piece of jonna rotte (jowar roti) and eats it with mango pickle under the noonday sun.

"We are innocent, illiterate women," she says, recalling how they were once drawn into a new world of sanghams (voluntary village-level associations) and savings. "They told us we could save, take loans, stand on our feet. So we believed and started saving first ₹1 a week, then ₹5," adds the mother of four.

For over four decades, the Deccan Development Society (DDS) helped transform the lives of Dalit women across Telangana's arid Zaheerabad mandal (Medak). The agri-based voluntary organisation turned fallow land into food, built homes, created seed banks, ran alternative public distribution systems and drew global recognition for its community-led model. It was a story of transformation, and pride. But now, that pride has curdled into pain and suspicion. Women like Rangamma who helped build the movement are raising difficult questions about missing savings, land deals and the lack of transparency in the very institution they helped build.

Land, caste and a sangham

Beyond the spanking wide roads of western Hyderabad, beyond the skyscrapers of the Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad, and beside the Bidar-Hyderabad road is a green oasis Pastapur village in Zaheerabad mandal. Speckled with two-storey houses, gabled roofs and farmlands, the village is just another prosperous settlement in Telangana. But beneath its serene surface lies a story of struggle, solidarity and simmering doubt.