How Ruth scripted an alternative

BANGALORE: Tucked away in a bustling marble market in Bangalore is the nondescript office of Ruth Manorama.

While one person hits away at an old typewriter, there is a more contemporary effort on at a computer to collate information on the various groups of people she’s helping.

As the burly social activist steps into the sparse room adorned with posters of BR Ambedkar, arms reach out to wish her for getting the Right Livelihood award, also known as the alternate Nobel Prize.

“It is a credit to the slumdwellers,” says the 54-year-old. The 11th Indian to get the prize, Manorama was rewarded for her decades-long commitment in help empowering Dalit woman (she’s been working with slum women since she was 23). She shares the prize with an American and Brazilian, and plans to spend the Rs42 lakh prize money to build a resource centre for women in the city.

“We want slums to be cleared. But slums are people, don’t evict them without giving them proper shelter,” says the Dalit Christian.

“I don’t look at women’s issues as just health and hygiene. They are to do with economic status and discrimination, and not just in the case of Dalits; it happens to upper caste women also,” says Manorama, citing the example of an upper caste Pune medical student who sought her help to marry a Dalit boy.

“If apartheid can be eliminated in South Africa, the scourge of casteism can also be ended in India,” she adds.

Manorama now joins the likes Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan and Ela Bhatt of SEWA to get the award from the Stockholm-based foundation.

“She has contributed to Dalit activism nationally and has campaigned against caste and class discrimination at the international level,” says J Backianath, of the Karnataka State Slum Dwellers Federation (KKNSS), who conducts training in over 700 slums in the city of Bangalore.