TN: How a woman panchayat president changed lives of a Sylvan beauty

Tamil Nadu now has India's lowest fertility rate-lower than Australia, Finland and Belgium

Nestled in a sylvan valley in northwestern Tamil Nadu and surrounded by forests, the village council, or panchayat, of Sittilinghi struggled to bring to state attention the infirmities obscured by its natural beauty.

There were few roads between the 40 villages governed by the panchayat. There was no health centre. There weren’t enough schools–so girls dropped out and married before 18.

That began to change in 2011 when a soft-spoken, mathematics graduate and former hospital administrator was elected panchayat president in a seat that was not then reserved for women. In the five years since,