Some participants desired that the mentoring centre be shifted to the dalit hamlet. No one questions it.” However, another person argued, “This practice of residents having to remove their slippers before entering the dominant caste hamlet is causing indignity to children of dalit families who are attending the Centre located in other hamlet”. A village resident, when asked, remarked, “It has become part of culture here. Everyone from the dalit hamlet is required to take off their footwear/ slippers before they entered the other hamlets. Inequality: During the Walk, we also noticed that the residents of the two caste hamlets have imposed a practice upon residents of dalit hamlet. During the conversation, one of the village-volunteers said, “As the middle caste hamlet had the most workers (27), the mentoring centre was established there”. We found that the Village had three hamlets: one which was exclusively of a dominant caste (name: Naidu) the second one had residents exclusively from a middle caste (name: Aasari) and the third one was a Scheduled Caste hamlet. During the visit, we organised a participatory transect walk with our project team and a few villagers. The project also had a mentoring centre for school-going children to build trust with the community. In February 2020, I visited a village in Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu, India as part of a project, which aimed at making 90 female garment workers in that village aware of their rights and entitlements.
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