Kamala Markandaya began writing novels while India was simply at the beginning of newly won freedom. The struggle for women in agriculture is her will to assert the identity, which forms an essence of womanhood. As agriculture evolved to create a multiple identities for women in the society, there is a need to study the threats faced by the Indian agricultural system. It is well known that women in India are high levels of involvement in agriculture production and dependence on agriculture for livelihoods. Globally, agriculture is a key element in the identities of rural people. Many of the struggles for recognition begin with land and agriculture, which takes on multiple meanings. For women, land means more than a few paddy fields; it means her recognition as an individual. While earlier women were labelled as homemakers, now they are categorized as producers.
Kamala Markandaya in her first novel, Nectar in a Sieve, critiques the tale and misfortunes of a peasant couple, Nathan and Rukmani of a South Indian Village. The research on the novel explicits that women’s involvement in agriculture is very much important for economic growth and poverty reduction. As a tenant farmer, Rukmani vividly works hard in agriculture to establish her
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Through Rukmani, the narrator the novelist describes the ill effects of industrialization upon the placid rhythm and calm beauty of a village which is symbolic of rural India. The disasters that fall upon the peasants “are the result of the combined impersonal forces of nature and industrialization.” “The advent of tannery creates sordidness, loss of traditional values and social degradation. It brings vices, social filth and moral debasement in its wake. Thus the village is violated in the name of progress by the building of a tannery, owned by an Englishman and its busy industrialism smears the peaceful countryside with its soiled