The committee has twenty-two members: Tamil women in saris, Muslim women in hijabs, one chair who rotates every six months so that no single community holds the seat for long.

They meet in the village hall on the first Sunday of the month. The agenda is ordinary and that is its strength: the broken standpipe, the bus route that no longer reaches the school, a rumour that needed correcting before it spread.

"Men's committees talk about the big things and nothing changes," one member observed. "We talk about the water, and the water gets fixed."

Ordinary problems are also where division usually starts. When a shared resource fails, each community quietly suspects the other of taking more than its share. Fixing the standpipe is peace work, even when nobody calls it that.

In two years the committee has resolved a long-running dispute over well access, restored a school bus stop, and set up a small emergency fund that any member may draw on regardless of community.

Two neighbouring villages have asked for help starting their own.