Somanna

Somanna is a leader of the Jenu Kuruba, a particularly vulnerable tribal group of Mysuru district, who has worked for decades for the rights of Adivasi families. He was named for the Padma Shri in 2024 in the field of social work, from Karnataka ^[1].

From bonded labour

He was born on 1 June 1957 and lost his father at two ^[2]. He left school after Class 4 to support his mother and worked as a bonded labourer for a farming family until 1978, when Karnataka enforced the law abolishing bonded labour ^[2]. That year he joined the Dalit movement ^[2].

Organising Adivasis

In 1981 he co-founded the Budakattu Krushikara Sangha, a tribal people’s organisation in H. D. Kote, and led it for ten years ^[2]. He later became president of a state forum of indigenous peoples ^[2]. He took part in campaigns such as Save Western Ghats and the struggle for the Forest Rights Act ^[2].

With the organisation DEED he helped tribal families take their case to the Karnataka High Court, which in 2009 ordered the rehabilitation of 3,418 families displaced from protected areas ^[2]. He also helped secure about 6,000 acres of farmland for some 1,500 families displaced from the Nagarhole and Bandipur national parks and dam areas ^[2]. He has helped 19 settlements win community forest rights and about 300 families individual rights, and has pressed for housing, roads, water, schools, pensions and ration cards in some 125 tribal hamlets ^[2].