Vasanthamani Mohanraj
Fifty-year old Vasanthamani, who has studied up to the seventh standard, is a farmer for as long as she can remember. She is the treasurer of Velmurugam Mahila Mandal. She has three acres of rain-fed land, which has a borewell.
Since 2009, she had been trying to get electrical supply for this piece of land and her attempts were not successful. In June 2017, she attended a capacity building meeting facilitated by CORD. The resource person Pradeep Kumar, a senior official in the Consumer Forum, guided the farmers on how to approach the problem. She and others managed to get the electricity connection under the Tatkal scheme by paying Rs.3 lakhs.
She is very happy that she is not totally dependent on the rains now. She has a hen and a cow and uses pheromone traps and other inputs. She supplements her income by making paper covers, sold to nearby shops.