In the article titled ‘Where There is a Wheel’, Sainath, the writer, reports an important social movement that took place during 1992-94 that stunned the people of Pudukkottai district in Tamil Nadu.

There was an organization named ‘Arivoli lyakkam’ which led the female literacy movement in Pudukkottai. These Arivoli activists learned ‘cycling’ so as to enable themselves to spread the message of literacy among rural women in the interior. Once the activists learned cycling, they, in turn, taught their neo-literates cycling. These neo-literates, neo-cyclists trained women in cycling, all over the district. During this period Muthu Bhaskaran, an Arivoli activist, wrote a famous song to encourage the rural women to learn cycling. The song is intended to call upon the womenfolk to learn cycling.

The song conveys a simple message and when it is sung in Tamil, the mother tongue of these rural women, its meaning is easily understood. It only calls upon the woman to set in motion her own wheel of life. Until then, the woman could not move out of the house, because her ‘mobility’ depended on her being able to find money to go by bus. Going by bus also depended on the permission of the menfolk. The woman needed the help of her menfolk even to sell the agricultural produce which grew on her land. This way the woman could not break the male-imposed barriers. Once she learned cycling she got the freedom to move to any place she wanted and the freedom to do any work she wished to.

This song invites the woman to learn cycling and set in motion the wheel of her life. Here, the ‘wheel’ refers to ‘progress’. So, it tells the woman to learn cycling and be responsible for her own progress.