Rural women are being empowered to heal their animals. Shyamola Khanna meets two young women who made this possible

WHEN the diminutive bespectacled young woman and her friend first broached the idea to the village women of Noofamamidi in Andhra, the villagers giggled among themselves. "The small one speaks our language but she's obviously not from these parts."

"She talks like those mad people preaching revolution."
"Who is she to tell us to elect some 'sensible' women to become vets for the village?"
"No woman has ever looked after sick animals - how can we do it now?"

The women had seen the jean-clad Dr Sagari Ramdas and Dr Nitya Ghotge work tirelessly to bring near-dead buffaloes back to life and health. But now the two docs were asking them the village women to do the same.
The two young vets were quite used to reactions like that. But their dogged determination and crystal clear vision, coupled with their quietly insistent voices were not to be ignored so easily. After another hour or so of bantering in Telugu, the doctors' ideas began to take root. The villagers might not be completely convinced but at least they were listening.

Breaking Barns
Dr Sagari Ramdas and Dr Nitya Ghotge have been steadily chipping away at many established gender stereotypes in rural Andhra and Maharashtra. Since 1992, Anthra, an NGO started by the two friends, has been actively involved in bringing in women from these states into animal husbandry and traditional veterinary practices. The villagers in Medak district and Nookarai and Noofamamidi in the East Godavari district, among others, were finally convinced to send women from their villages to train as para vets, going against the conventional belief that only men could cure animals.

Apparently, in rural India, healers have always been men. According to tradition, all knowledge of medicines and herbs would be transferred to a son and not to a daughter. While working with healers, Nitya and Sagari learnt that the sons of the same medicine men were no longer interested in carrying on with the tradition. The vets reminded the men that the women had already been working with the ailments of poultry and were doing well. Why could they not be entrusted with healing the other animals?

There were the usual objections - medicines would lose their potency and efficacy in the hands of a woman, the animals would not heal because it was not the done thing for women to be healers, etc! But over six months, the doctors' persistence finally paid off. The healers formed a group and agreed to teach the women chosen by the doctors.