A few years ago, Anubhuti, the anti-caste, intersectional feminist nonprofit I founded to support the development of marginalised communities, was nominated for a National Award. Winning would have brought significant credibility and funds to the organisation. My team and I spent hours on the application. One of the steps in the process was a visit from the award’s seven-member jury, who wanted to learn about our programmes and how we work, and to evaluate whether we deserved the award.
As someone from the Ghisadi nomadic tribe, I know the struggle of reaching such a stage, and so I did not expect the jury to have representation from NT-DNT, Dalit, Adivasi, or other marginalised communities. It is still rare for people from our communities to hold such positions, given the systemic barriers we face in accessing education, jobs, and social impact spaces such as conferences, panels, fellowships, and juries at national and global levels. These spaces often demand networks, connections, and social capital. We are expected to hold expertise at the grassroots, yet we are rarely invited to the table where decisions are made, even as we become trainers, writers, or researchers. It took me 35 years to learn the language of the sector well enough to present my ideas in a way that would be readily accepted.
So I was not entirely surprised that every jury member was Brahmin-Savarna. They were unfamiliar with any regional language and knew minimal Hindi, which further strained the visit.
I sensed that their understanding of our pain and struggles was more theoretical, shaped by Western literature rather than a direct exposure to ground realities. They had come to learn about our work, but at times it felt that they were there to offer guidance. When I would try to explain how our programmes are shaped by the lived experience of NT-DNT communities, the conversation would shift to them advising me on designing and implementing programmes we had already been running for years. Our expertise wasn’t being fully recognised. This may come across as defensive to some in the sector, but it is really a request to understand that the leadership stress of someone from the grassroots cannot be equated with that of someone from a resourceful background.
Forty percent of my staff belong to street-performing and tent communities, and all of them are Dalit or Adivasi. I found it difficult to convey to the jurors the depth of discrimination, injustice, and mental health strain my team carries. And there seemed to be little awareness among them of the possibility that they had arrived with a preconceived bias.
This is not how equality is built. People from dominant castes need to spend time on the ground; engage with how work actually unfolds at the grassroots; and hold their own expertise, shaped by social capital, education, and privilege, a little more lightly.
This was not an isolated incident, but it reinforced what I’ve known for years: The development sector needs people from marginalised communities in conferences, panels, fellowships, juries, and other decision-making bodies. I know this is not a new thought. But I don’t think the sector fully recognises what it loses by keeping us largely at the grassroots and treating our lived experience as anecdote rather than as essential knowledge that should shape policies, programmes, and decisions.
Yes, it is still about caste and class
People from marginalised communities carry the entire weight of grassroots intervention in the social sector. But when we try to grow beyond it, as intellectuals, trainers, writers, or researchers, we have to jump through many hoops. Even applying for something as simple as a fellowship means squeezing what we have achieved into an ‘acceptable’ language and framework, which diminishes our lived experience.
Our strategies, our processes, and what we have created, whether literature, structures of work, or the ability to build a team, become secondary. A business mindset takes over—a regressive notion of ‘scalability’ in which success means speed, instant results, and outcomes, expressed in complicated language that leaves us feeling further marginalised.
The already dominant castes grow more powerful, and people from marginalised communities are made to feel more vulnerable in several ways.
I have seen this happen repeatedly. Whether it is the people interviewing us, conducting field visits, reading our forms, or serving as jurors and selectors, not one of them has been from my own NT-DNT community or any tribe. Only once in a while have I seen someone from a Dalit or SC community. The circle of decision-makers thrives on dominant solidarity, specifically a Brahmanical one, with its own ecosystem and network that is enormously difficult to enter. This is another form of Brahmanical patriarchy that continues to exploit the disadvantaged.
The already dominant castes grow more powerful, and people from marginalised communities are made to feel more vulnerable in several ways.
First, there is a kind of internalised discomfort with ideological discourse rooted in the Constitution, in Shahu-Phule-Ambedkarite activism, and in a grassroots feminism carried forward by figures such as Savitribai, Akka Mahadevi, and Mukta Salve. People like us have put in enormous efforts to create room for this, but it simply isn’t a priority for those who hold power.
Second, the development sector only ever talks about representation, that there should be some Dalit and Adivasi presence, but not about reservation. When it comes to building reservation-like principles into policy, priorities, and the structure of our own organisations and movements, the space is extremely limited.
Third, the suffering of marginalised communities is the only way we are allowed to exist. I, Deepa, am allowed to talk about my sorrow and anxiety. But when I want to talk about a module, a concept, the content, or the research, there is little opportunity. Our work gets reduced to ‘community-based’, as though it is relevant only at the grassroots, when in reality these are global conversations, and people need to be able to engage and learn from them at that level. I see very few people with lived experience being able to move beyond conversations about pain and grief into a professional standing built on that experience.
Fourth, within nonprofits and movements, the highest positions, such as team leader and convener, are largely held by people from dominant castes.
So why does this happen? Why can’t the people who have the lived experience act on their own recommendations, claim their own place, and hold their own power?
What it takes to enter these spaces
Creating a place for myself was extremely tough at the beginning, and I still face challenges.
You are evaluated on whether you can write and speak in a certain way. Coming from a nomadic tribe, my own vocabulary differs from what these spaces expect. It took me 35 years to be able to adapt.
There are no mentors for us. When I began to understand my cultural roots more deeply, I realised that my food, language, rituals, and belief systems, all of them non-Brahmin, had simply been labelled backward and superstitious. When I learned to articulate them properly, I understood them as forms of feminism, democracy, and collectivism that are 2,000–2,500 years old.
In these spaces, I had to take a stand and define my own role. The moment you take a stand, you mainstream the questioning of everything said about you until then. If you are growing an organisation, you must actively construct examples and a narrative of grassroots team-building. Every part of that is a challenge, because it takes money, connections, and social capital, and I had none of these. Without such privileges, the system requires you to build your own legitimacy through fellowships, awards, and funding.
When we finally reach this stage, we can move the needle towards justice and inclusion, because that—and not a performance of inclusivity—is what we are committed to.
The cost of exclusion
A failure to build structures that enable grassroots participation has real costs:
- The sector stays the same. If the participation, leadership, discourse, and narratives of marginalised communities are not included, the sector will keep functioning as it always has. Power will continue to be dependent on caste, class, Western exposure, and sit with those who speak certain languages and hold certain resources. Marginalised communities will keep performing like puppets, appearing to move, laugh, sway, and sing, while the strings are never in their own hands.
- Rights and autonomy won’t reach the grassroots. If the obstacles to entering these spaces are not removed, the rights, liberty, and autonomy we are fighting for will never reach the ground. Most grassroots organisations struggle just to keep their offices running, and none can be assured of five years of guaranteed funding. As rights-based organisations are hit harder than ever, the sector must build support for them from within. When one organisation shuts down, it affects every worker and community member connected to it.
- Intellectual property keeps being violated. Content connected to nomadic and tribal communities carries enormous intellectual and cultural weight, yet these communities are constantly mined for data, case studies, and experiences without permission. Even when consent is obtained, the power dynamics leave people feeling unable to say no. Once something is said, anyone can reproduce, resell, or reconstruct it without asking.
Inclusion in the development sector cannot stop at inviting marginalised communities to share their pain. It must mean giving them seats on juries, panels, and boards; compensating them for their knowledge; and letting their expertise shape policy and practice. The sector asks us to carry the grassroots, but the decisions are made elsewhere. Until that changes, the strings stay in other hands. Our knowledge is not anecdote. It is the foundation of any work that claims to be about justice.
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Know more
- Read about how social problems are shaped by complex power dynamics, and how power mapping can help in understanding these complexities.
- Read about Jyotirao Phule’s critique of caste and hierarchy.
