Barefoot lawyers bring food security to India's tribes

It was a deal struck almost 40 years ago by a poor, illiterate Indian farmer, driven by desperation after a drought wiped out his crops and left his family close to starvation.
The agreement: 10 acres of land, the size of four soccer pitches, for a mere 10 kg (22 lbs) of sorghum grains.
"My father-in-law pawned the land for food," said Kowasalya Thati, lifting the hem of her grey sari and stepping into the muddy field of rice paddy in Kottasuraream village in the southern region of Andhra Pradesh.
"When he returned the grain later, the land owners refused to give it back. They claimed it and we had no document to prove otherwise. For 28 years, we had to work on the land we once owned. Without land, we had nothing ... not even enough food. It's a miracle we got it back."
Kowasalya's family is one of hundreds of thousands who belong to India's 700 listed tribes who are at last gaining legal titles to the land they have lived on for generations, thanks to a legal aid scheme run by the Andhra Pradesh government with international advocacy group Landesa.
In the scheme, which is likely to be rolled out nationally, young people often armed with only a secondary-level education are drawn from mud-and-brick villages and trained as paralegals, then sent out to help people to understand their rights and secure title, or "patta", to their land.
For most tribal and landless families, that simple piece of paper means an end to a constant fear of hunger.
"Land is the most important factor of production," said Pramod Joshi, South Asia director of the International Food Policy Research Institute.
"It helps ensure food security for the poorest of the poor. It has been shown in many regions that if the poor have land, they are in a better position to feed themselves."
Despite a slew of "pro-poor" policies, India's economic boom has largely bypassed India's tribes, who make up more than 8 percent of its 1.2 billion population, living in remote villages and eking out a living from farming, cattle rearing and collecting and selling fruit and leaves from the forests.
Social indicators such as literacy, child malnutrition and maternal mortality in these communities are among the worst in the country.
Neglect by authorities and a Maoist insurgency in the tribal belt in central parts of the country have further exacerbated their plight.
But the biggest threat, activists say, has always been to their land. A lack of documents proving ownership of the land means that many are treated as criminals, exploited by wealthy land owners and money lenders, moved off their farms in illegal land grabs, or face extortion by officials.