As protests against agricultural reforms catch global attention, India's neglected female farmers are seizing the moment to dust off their own long-standing demands — from land rights and farm credit to grains subsidies.
Hundreds of miles from the sit-in demonstrations near the capital, Ponnuthai said the protests were helping her and other female farmers gain recognition — spurring her local collective to draft new petitions for demands first made decades ago.
"The protests in Delhi have given us our identity as women farmers," Ponnuthai, who goes by one name, said from her home in southern Tamil Nadu state.