Primary Stakeholders

Primary Stakeholders

ADATS' beneficiaries are 1,257 village level Coolie Sangha Units (CSUs) which are membership based organisations of 55,109 small and poor peasant families — agricultural labourers, migrant workers, self-employed artisans, and small farmers who do not themselves employ wage labour.

Except when responding to rare emergencies, ADATS does not work with the individual poor, within the conventional social work or charitable mode, in any patronising manner.

Since the Coolie Sangha is a membership driven organisation with a strict internal structure and discipline, membership figures tend to fluctuate. Not all the families/villages are active at all times. As on 31 December 2022, 9,276 families are active Members in 432 functioning Coolie Sangha Units.

As on 31 December 2022:

Villages Active Members Inactive Members Non CSU Families Total
Functioning CSUs 432 9,276 18% 14,852 27% 4,383 8% 28,511
Dropped CSUs 479 17,291 33% 2,538 5% 19,829
Non CSU Villages 346 6,769 16% 6,769
1,257 9,276 32,143 13,690 55,109

Though only 7% of the households are women headed, without any adult males in their families, 43% of the membership stands in the names of wives, mothers and daughters. This is one of many indicators of women's position within families; their representing respective families within the Coolie Sangha. In part, it could also be tokenism.

Even worse, it could indicate a waning of relevance. Perhaps many men feel that the Coolie Sangha is not all that important a factor in their lives and they couldn't bother participating.

Demographics Active Members
Male Headed Households 8,662 93%
Women Headed Households 654 7%
CSU Membership in Men's names 5,324 57%
CSU Membership in Women's names 3,952 43%
Pre-school (< 6 yrs) 100 0%
School Age (6 to 17 yrs) 11,934 18%
Youth (18 to 25 yrs) 8,880 13%
26 to 40 yrs 19,189 29%
41 to 65 yrs 20,523 31%
Senior Citizens (> 65 yrs) 6,296 9%

In spite of about half the membership being SC and ST, the Coolie Sangha is a broad unification across caste and community as can be seen by a uniform ethnic cover across different categories

Category Active Members Pop & Ethnic Cover
SC 3,005 32% 44,758 7%
ST 1,384 15% 20,304 7%
BCM-A 1,626 18% 30,404 5%
BCM-B 3,139 34% 47,631 7%
General 122 1% 3,944 3%
Total 9,276 100% 1,47,041 5.8%

The geographic spread of the Coolie Sangha is across 5 Taluks (Blocks) of Chickballapur district in Karnataka

Taluk Functioning CSUs Active Members
Bagepalli 129 3,220 35%
Chickballapur 70 1,465 16%
Chintamani 106 2,282 25%
Siddalaghatta 84 1,509 16%
Gudibanda 43 800 9%
Total 432 9,276 101%