COIMBATORE: An urban woman driving a sleek car is a common sight, but a woman driving a tractor does make heads turn. As many as 45 women from the rural belt of Coimbatore have surprised one-and-all by driving roaring tractors to plough the fields. These women are all set to change the profile of women in this conservative city.The women, in the age group of 25-33 and hailing from Pollachi, were trained in driving tractors by the Mahindra Tractor company. Over 500 women have licenses for tractors and 14 actually own these vehicles in Tamil Nadu.Interestingly, in a particular incident, a woman drove her ailing grandmother to the hospital one late night in a tractor, as no alternate transport was available.P Vallinayagi, 30, first heard about the training programme through her Panchayat leader. She initially rebuffed the idea.“How could women drive tractors, and why do women actually need to get trained in such skills?” was her first reaction. But after she actually attended the three-day training programme, her mindset changed completely. “Being behind the wheels of a tractor is not easy. But it’s a rejuvenating feeling, as one breaks into the so-called male domain.” Her husband is a software engineer in the Gulf and she stays with her in-laws managing their agricultural land. “Till now, I had to hire people for ploughing. But now I can confidently plough and manage the field on my own. I am planning to buy a tractor of my own,” she said.When she first told her husband about her experience, he was apprehensive, as it was a “big deal” for women to drive tractors, but later he took it sportingly.Mahalakshmi Vijaykumar (28), is busy trying to find a job as a driver-for-hire. “I never thought I would drive a tractor,” she said. “It is definitely easy to drive and gives that macho feel. I can drive any vehicle now. Per hour I can earn `80, while per day my earning touch up to `500. The men in the villages are out, and so the women can chip in and help,” she said. After a few of us took the lead, the other women in our area also want to learn how to drive a tractor, she added.V Somasundaram, area manager, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Mahindra company, said that the first such programme in TN for the company started in August 2008. “It revealed their immense potential and also instilled high degrees of self-confidence in the women. We studied the entire cycle, from ploughing to harvesting and realised that except for ploughing women had an active role to play in all the other phases. So we why not initiate women into driving tractors. There is a waiting list of 120 women who want to learn driving from Pollachi alone,” he said. “We have a list of their names and whenever someone wants a driver for hire, we recommend these women, who are very forthcoming,” said Somasundaram.
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