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Understanding the nature, forms and implications of structural violence against rural women in the context of agrarian distress
Donor: Ford Foundation
Project duration: December 2021 - June 2025
Team Members: Seema Kulkarni, Sneha Bhat, Vanita Tumsare
Aim and Objectives
This study brought together the discourses of agrarian distress and gender-based violence through the conceptual lens of structural violence. It examined the everyday violence experienced by rural women in the context of an agrarian crisis marked by landlessness, debt, migration, and ecological breakdown. Adopting a broad understanding of violence, the study included economic exclusion, institutional neglect, labour exploitation, and denial of recognition. By centring rural women's lived experiences, the study sought to make visible the often normalised and invisible forms of deprivation, exclusion, and violence embedded in agriculture and allied livelihoods.
Key Activities
Research
The research was conducted across seven districts, 18 blocks, and 74 villages in Maharashtra, Telangana, and Punjab. The data was collected through quantitative survey, focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, and key informant interviews. Dissemination and Stakeholder Engagement
The project placed strong emphasis on dissemination and engagement with stakeholders at district, state, national, and international levels. Recognising the importance of collaboration, dissemination activities were co-organised with state and national partners, enriching interpretation and facilitating collective pathways for action. District workshops were conducted in all the study districts followed by state workshops in each state, and two national workshops. The research team also shared findings at multiple national and international platforms, including co-organising a virtual session at the 69th Commission on the Status of Women. Photo exhibition on women farmers' lives have been organised at various events and venues.
Outcomes and Outputs
The study deepened understanding of agrarian distress as structural violence, highlighting its differentiated impacts across caste, class, land ownership, age, and marital status. It significantly increased visibility of violence against women farmers and strengthened collaborations with grassroots organisations. Outputs include district and state reports, multilingual poster series, photo essays, graphic stories, academic publications, and a consolidated study report. Publications could be found on SOPPECOM website.
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Amplifying voices of women cane cutters
Donor: Women's Fund Asia (WFA)
Project duration: December 2021 - May 2025
Team members: Seema Kulkarni, Pallavi Harshe, Aarti Bankar
Aim and Objectives
This project aimed to amplify the voice, leadership, and collective power of women sugarcane cutters in Beed and Hingoli districts of Maharashtra. Its primary objective was to build the capacities of women leaders across eight blocks to mobilise their peers, claim rights, and lay the foundation for strong, sustainable collectives of cane cutters. SOPPECOM has supported this process through leadership training, research and documentation to strengthen advocacy, and facilitation of a Union to represent women cane cutters in negotiations with government authorities.
Key Activities
Over the past three years, the project significantly strengthened the mobilization and organization of women sugarcane cutters across 80 villages in Beed and Hingoli. Women were informed about their rights and entitlements, leading to increased awareness and a stronger collective demand for accessing government schemes and services. This process laid a solid foundation for sustained grassroots organizing and advocacy.
Capacity building was central to the initiative. Eighty women leaders were trained to build networks, facilitate meetings, and lead local advocacy efforts. Through their leadership, the project directly reached over 2,500 women cane cutters. These leaders played a crucial role in spreading awareness about welfare schemes, mobilizing women across villages, and engaging with local governance structures. Women leaders also addressed broader local issues, including access to job cards, health benefits, violence, and children's welfare, despite resistance from families and labour contractors.
Health-focused interventions included the appointment of nearly 45 women to local health committees and the Aarogya Sakhi (Health Companion) initiative, under which 20 trained women provided basic healthcare support during migration, strengthened access to services and community-level monitoring. Economic justice efforts enabled women to track advance settlements, prevent wage losses, demand advances in their own names or in front of them, and ensure implementation of revised wage rates.
The project also made important contributions to policy engagement. It supported the recognition of women cane cutters as workers in their own right, enhanced the visibility of their issues, and improved access to entitlements. Engagements spanned from district-level dialogues to national and international platforms, strengthening accountability and influencing policy discussions.
The project achieved notable impact by influencing Government Decisions to ensure separate registration of women cane cutters in Maharashtra, a Suo Moto case in the Mumbai High Court, advancing global recognition of cane cutting as forced labour, and highlighting the structural drivers of high hysterectomy rates among women workers at national and international platforms.
Outputs
The project produced a diverse set of communication and awareness materials to amplify the voices and issues of women cane cutters. These included IEC materials such as pamphlets, posters, and flyers on rights, health services, and wage calculations, along with booklets on schemes like MJPJAY and migration experiences. Creative outputs included the Moli newsletter series, photo stories (Through Her Lens), graphic story booklets, and videos such as Horpal and the Aarogya Sakhi film. A 7-episode Marathi podcast series highlighted key challenges across the sugarcane labour cycle. Infographics and study-based booklets from Beed and Hingoli further strengthened evidence-based advocacy and outreach.
Way Forward
The next phase will focus on scaling health and economic alternatives, institutionalising Aarogya Sakhis, and piloting livelihood pathways to reduce distress migration.
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Towards Brown Gold Reimagining off-grid sanitation in rapidly urbanising areas in Asia and Africa
Project duration: October 2020 to September 2024
Donor: Instituted of Development Studies, Sussex, UK
Team members: Seema Kulkarni, Pallavi Harshe and Prakash Ransing
Aim and Objectives
This multidisciplinary research project sought to design inclusive, sustainable, and community-led sanitation solutions for off-grid towns across Ethiopia, Ghana, India, and Nepal. SOPPECOM led the India component, focusing on sanitation in Nanded through the lens of marginality. The study documented how social, economic, and spatial inequalities shape access to sanitation, foregrounding the experiences of slum residents, migrants, women, and sanitation workers. Alongside constraints, it identifies community-driven strategies and collective actions that point to more equitable and sustainable sanitation pathways.
Key Activities
The study was conducted in the Nanded Waghala Municipal Corporation across 42 neighbourhoods where the CLTS programme was implemented, including in-depth analysis in four selected areas. It involved focus group discussions and 46 key informant interviews with residents, migrants, sanitation workers, officials, and community leaders, along with site observations and photo elicitation, guided by critical feminist and anti-caste perspectives.
In addition, workshops were organized with sanitation workers and slum residents to strengthen community engagement and validate findings. The study findings and outputs-such as reports, policy briefs, and visual materials were disseminated through municipal-level workshops involving the Municipal Commissioner and other stakeholders, including events held in Nanded and at a policy workshop at IIT Bombay, as well as presentations at national and international meetings.
Outcomes and Outputs
The study showed that dysfunctional sewerage, unsafe faecal sludge management, and the persistence of manual scavenging disproportionately burden marginalised communities-yet communities exercise agency through self-provisioning, negotiation, and collective action. Outputs include a policy brief, a zine, a blog on participatory visual methods, three short documentaries, and an animation film. The work has re-centred sanitation as a social justice issue, influencing dialogue among policymakers, administrators, and scholars. Several peer-reviewed articles based on the study are currently in progress.
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Supporting livelihood of single women in Covid-19:
Aim of this programme (supported by American Jewish World Service (AJWS)) was to provide support to for livelihood to rural women during pandemic. Support was provided to 500 women to establish kitchen gardens. Support was also extended to a group of women for fishery. An exploratory study about livelihood opportunities for young women in rural Maharashtra was also done as part of this project. |
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Building leadership of women farmers:
This project - supported by Association for India's Development - focused on building capacities of grassroots women leaders through a extensive training and capacity building activities. |
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Women and land rights programme:
In this project supported by SwissAid India, the focus was on capacity building followed by an action programme. SOPPECOM in collaboration with Women's Studies Centre, ILS Law College provided training and support to organisations working in Marathwada, working on issues of land rights of women from suicide affected households. |
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Climate change from rural women's perspective:
With a focus on understanding climate change and its impact from rural women, especially women from vulnerable groups, this project included a consultation in Vidarbha region and field level study in Marathwada and Konkan. |
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Impact of Covid-19 on samllholder farmers:
The aim of this project was to understand how the pandemic had affected small and marginal farmers and labourers. The study was done in three countries - India, Morocco and Algeria |
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Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability (T2GS):
T2GS was part of 'Transformations to Sustainability' (T2S) research programme developed by the NORFACE and Belmont Forum. (https://t2sresearch.org/) T2GS project focused on studying how people organise around groundwater in places where pressures on the resource are particularly acute. Focusing on groundwater practices - of knowing, accessing and sharing - this research combined qualitative ethnographic methods with hydrogeological and engineering insights to explore the knowledges, technologies and institutions that characterised these initiatives. The study was done in 7 locations: Morocco, Algeria, Tanzania, Chile, Peru, USA, and India. |
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Hydropower Development in the context of Climate Change (NWO-CCMC Project) Exploring conflicts and fostering cooperation across scales and boundaries in the Eastern Himalayas. |
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Impact of sanitation intervention of women’s health:
A quasi-experimental study in Bihar. |
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Study of women farmers’ collectives.
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Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India.
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Women and land rights in Maharashtra: towards evolving an agenda for research and action.
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Developing an
agro-eco region based approach for characterization of wastelands
and their potential for enhancing livelihoods of marginalized
rural population in the ongoing land based developmental
programs in the region. |
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Action Research on Multilayer Planning and Management of Water Resources in Bharar River Sub-basin, Chhattarpur District, Madhya Pradesh. |
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Sanitation vulnerability: women’s stress and struggles for violence-free sanitation, Phase II |
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Sanitation vulnerability: women’s stress and struggles for violence-free sanitation, Phase I
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Forum was involved in ‘Preparing for a Right to Water and Sanitation Campaign in India’ in collaboration with WaterAid, India. The aim of the project was to establish Right to water and sanitation as a legally enforceable and justiciable right in India. The project period was 2012-2015.
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“Moving from Understanding Conflicts to Resolving Conflicts” – this is the second phase of the Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts (Forum to be brief) which began from May 2008 and is supported by Arghyam, Bangalore. |
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Water for growing cities: understanding informal water distribution systems in an urban slum of Pune (2011-12) |
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Decentralized Water Governance and Women's Empowerment: Building capacities of women water leaders in the irrigation sector in Maharashtra (2009-2011) |
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Gender Equity Gauge: Mapping social and gender inequities in the water sector in South Asia: Phase 1.(2009-2010) |
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LiveDiverse: Sustainable Livelihoods and Biodiversity in Developing Countries, a collaborative, European Union supported project. For details see: www.livediverse.eu |
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Comprehensive study of 'Impacts of investments in watershed projects' supported by National Institute of rural development (NIRD) is in progress . The study covers 65 micro watersheds implemented under desert development programme (DDP) from the state of karnataka sanctioned during 2002-2005. |
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Report on State of Panchayat Raj in Goa and Maharashtra in collaboration with NR Management Consultants India Pvt.Ltd, New delhi |
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Watershed Research and Policy dialogue in Collaboration with Gujarat Institute of Development Studies (GIDR), Ahmedabad and Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development (CISED), Bangalore supported by WaterAid India and Ford Foundation. |
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Water, poverty and gender: understanding the interface and drawing policy implications (2008 ) |
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Situational analysis of women water professionals in South Asia (2009) |
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Livelihood
Project supported by JRD Tata and Thelma Tata Trust. |
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Social movements
around water in India: Study hosted by SOPPECOM with support
from IWMI-Tata Water Policy Programme. This study focuses
on the social context of water issues like collective action
response to managing demand for water, promoting water saving
technologies. It is a compilation of seven case studies
from all over India on social movements around water. The
study aims to look at the political opportunities which
facilitate and constrain the collective action.
For proceedings of the inception workshop of the project click here. |
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STRIVER Project: Strategy and methodology for improved IWRM - An integrated interdisciplinary assessment in four twinning river basins. (2006-2009) For details see |
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Water Rights as Women’s Rights? Assessing women’s
empowerment through decentralized water governance in Maharashtra
and Gujarat. A study done along with Utthan, Gujrat and
TISS, Mumbai. (2006-2008) |
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Hindola:
Assessing extent and nature of desertion in Daund taluka
and Ghole road ward of Pune city. A study done along with
the Women’s Studies Centre, University of Pune (2005-2008) |
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Women
and land rights in Maharashtra: Exploring the facilitating
and constraining factors in achieving resource rights. (2008) |
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Assessing
empowerment: Documenting efforts of two organizations: Asha
and Matruschaya (2008) |
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Action
Research for Organising Educating and Training farmers for
Participatory Irrigation Management Minor 7- Mula Irrigation
Project, Chanda Village, Tal. Newasa, dist-Ahmednagar, Maharashtra
– Ford Foundation |
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Scaling
up farmer participation at higher distributary level forming
15 WUAs, federation and motivating them to take more responsibilities,
equitable distribution of water women participation GOM,
Ford Foundation |
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Technical
Assistance to Samaj Parivartan Kendra, Nashik, in PIM in
Ozar Village, Dist-Nashik on Waghad Irrigation Project,
Nashik GOI/GOM, Ford Foundation
(1988-90) |
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Forming
WUA on minor irrigation tank in Sangli Dist – Maharashtra,
USAID ISPAN (1996) |
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Preparing
Manual for Maharashtra State for PIM, GOM/ GOI (1997) |
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Suggesting
Amendments in Irrigation/ CAD Acts of States in Indian for
proving legal beck up for PIM in India, All states/ GOI
(1998) |
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Biomass
Assessment Study of Radhanagari (Kolhapur district), Miraj
(Sangli district), Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources
(New Delhi) and MEDA, Pune (2000-01) |
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Energy
Study of Ambegaon (Pune district) and Malshiras (Solapur
district) IREP blocks, Maharashtra Energy Development Agency
(MEDA), Pune (2000-01) |
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Study
of the Status of Small Water Harvesting Structures in a
Sub-Basin in Udaipur Region, Society for Promotion of Wasteland
Development (SPWD), New Delhi (2000-01) |
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Maharashtra
Energy Development Agency (MEDA) (2001-2004) |
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Biomass
Assessment Study of Murbad (Thane district) and Sangameshwar
(Ratnagiri district) Tehsils Ministry of Non-Conventional
Energy Sources (New Delhi) and MEDA, Pune (2001-02) |
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Co-management
of Water and Energy: The case of the Tembhu Lift Irrigation
Scheme (TLIS) in South Maharashtra and Co-management of
Surface water and Groundwater: The case of the Ozar WUAs
in Nashik district, supported by the International Water
Management Institute (IWMI), Colombo Sri Lanka (2002) |
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A study on Tail-ender
Deprivation In Irrigation Commands supported by the Planning
Commission and the Wageningen University, the Netherlands
(2002) |
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Gender Rights
and Alternative Resource Use: supported by Winrock International,
India (2002-03) |
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Making solar
water heating systems mandatory: A phased programme, its
impact and requisite changes in byelaws sponsored by Maharashtra
Energy development Agency (MEDA), Pune.(2003) |
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Capacity Building
and strengthening WUAs in Minor Irrigation Local Sector
Indo-German Co-operative – Preparing training manual
from Training, GOM/KfW,
(2003-04) |
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Water and Gender
Thematic Activity - India Water Partnership, New Delhi,
India (2003-04) |
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Study of Aga
Khan Rural Support Programme(AKRSP(I)) supported PIM projects
in South Gujarat, supported by AKRSP(I), Ahmedabad (2003-2004) |
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The study of
socio-economic benefits, rural development and employment
generation in the area of wind power projects in Satara
and Sangli districts of Maharashtra sponsored by Maharashtra
Energy development Agency (MEDA), Pune (2003-04) |
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Strengthening
of WUAs- Preparation of Training Manual for supported by
Minor Irrigation Programme, Maharashtra(2003-4) |
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Watershed Development
in India: Network for Advocacy, Research and Capacity Building
- International Water Management Institute (IWMI) Anand,
Gujarat (2004) |
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Mainstreaming
Rights of Deserted Women - A livelihood study of deserted
women from Sangli district, Maharashtra with Women’s
Studies Unit, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
and Stree Mukti Sangharsha Chalwal, Kasegaon, Maharashtra,
India (2004-05) |
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Capacity Building
of farmers, NGO and Irrigation officers in PIM, Volumetric
Supply of better water management GOAP (2005) |
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Watershed Development
and Dirnking Water: Foresterin and IWRM Prespective in Dryland
Regions in India- Water Aid India, New Delhi (2005-06) |
