reflections: best practices in women's empowerment in mahila samakhya- published by best practices...

8/8/2019 Reflections: Best Practices in Women's Empowerment in Mahila Samakhya- Published by Best Practices Foundation

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And the Way Forward

R E F L E C T I O N S


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And the Way Forward

he distinctive MS approach to building an effective grass

roots women's movement is to situate it in the larger fabric

of the institutions and processes within MS. Thus, MS is

not a movement of raging protests for a cause with popular

mobilisation against forces of establishment. Neither is it

designed as a cadre-based organisation like unions or political

parties. This is a multifaceted bottom-up movement with

components of learning institutions (MSK-KGBV), justice deliveryinstitutions (Nari Adalats), leadership development processes

(Panchayat Literacy Programme, Data Exhibitions),

consciousness raising processes, pro-active and re-active

collective actions against all forms and expressions of patriarchy,

systems of preparing the next generation (of adolescent girls),

and assimilating them (through the Kishori Manchas or the Bala

Sanghams), amongst a myriad of other initiatives coming from

women themselves. The most important features that distinguish

MS include: A horizontal management structure, in contrast to the

representational-bureaucratic structure (as seen in trade unions,

cooperatives or even SHG Federations), a strong human rights

based egalitarian approach in contrast to a clientelistic approach

(in trade unions-political parties and increasingly in SHG

Federations), a spontaneous, locally contextualised approach in

contrast to a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach.

The mass-based, moral, collective strength of the Sanghas and

Federations provide the backbone of the movement. They are

organised not with any service delivery intent but with the aim of

creating collective empowerment and a collective identity of

grassroots women. This empowerment manifests itself in

everything MS does, be it the MSKs, KGBVs, the Nari Adalats,

the Kishori Manchas, the Data Exhibition, or the Panchayat

Literacy initiatives.

This inquiry began with the fundamental question of effectiveness

of the MS model towards empowerment of women and girls

through education and related interventions, and the reasons

underlying it. The

primary success of

Mahila Samakhya lies

first and foremost in a

large, mobilisedconstituency of poor

women which has

provided the base for

many institutional and

other practices and

innovations over the

years and will continue to

do so in the future. The

second major success is

through the

demonstration of a model

for education for poor women which has been tried and tested

and has been shown to work better than traditional literacy-

numeracy models. The third has been the range of innovations

that have emerged to address women's and girls' needs,

designed in ways that are practical, many of which have been

reproduced across districts and states, and to that extent, are

robust, time tested and replicable. Fourth, though to a far lesser

extent than its potential suggests, is the impact on state policies

and programmes some of which have been designed based on

these innovations such as the KGBV and the NPEGEL. The

basic model and its philosophical framework combines strategies

such as mobilisation, capacity building, and awareness of rights

and entitlements which, in turn, have led to women's overall

empowerment. The MS programme has thus set the stage for

other national and international programmes aimed at women's

and girls' empowerment to imbibe and learn from.

The cross cutting framework examined three sets of impacts,

those related to building the women's movement, empowerment,

and education. To have reached this level of impact, a wide

range of strategies have been employed by MS across practices,

some common and others, specific to the practice and the local

context (Table 8.1). Refer to Annexure 1.5 for a brief description

of these strategies.

Strategies and Impact

R E F L E C T I O N S

T

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R E F L E C T I O N S A N D T H E W A Y F O R W A R D

Table 8.1:

Strategy Federation Panchayat Data Nari Adalat ALP KGBV/MSK JJK/KM/BS

Literacy Exhibition

Movement Building

Consciousness raising

Building institutions

Pressure groups

Internal linkages

Outreach to women

Empowerment

Leadership skills

Building change agents

Running campaigns

Citizen participation

Political participation

Information on government

programmes

Monitoring local institutions

Building community supportand ownership

Economic activities

Education

Literacy and numeracy

Teaching methodology

Education on rights

Raising awareness on issues

Capacity building on

Democratic processes

Gender education

Life-skills

Vocational exposure

Broader Impact

Institutional linkages

Resource mobilisation

Advocacy

Strong Impact Medium Impact Low Impact

Strategies Used to Achieve Impact

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Building the Movement

Table 8.1 shows the interrelatedness of strategies employed

across initiatives with each and every one of them targeting and

strengthening the institutional base first, namely the sanghas and

federations. The largest and most wide reaching evidence of

impact is seen through these institutions of poor women. Thus,

the key movement building strategy employed was mobilisation

and consciousness raising towards building a collective identity of

sisterhood. The federations being the face of the movement, act

as pressure groups to advocate women's rights and challenge the

multiple manifestations of patriarchy. It is the forum that

articulates women's demands and negotiates with institutions at

higher levels to ensure that women can access their entitlements

and exercise their rights. In this context, leadership, networking,

negotiation and political skills of women are built as well as their

conceptual understanding and philosophy to represent the

movement externally. Internally, the federation functions include

identifying issues across sanghas, running campaigns and

fighting social evils and practices that are harmful to women, for

which skills to link to various aspects of the movement, and at the

same time to expand the movement, are built.

The federations provide women the basic capacity to run

institutions that are both democratic in their functioning as well asrobust in their management. They are democratic in a number of

ways from their structure where sangha representation ensures

basic accountability to women and their collectives, to their

participatory methods of running meetings, tabling agendas, to

carrying out collective action, building transparency and finally

holding government to these same standards. The management

structure is also designed in ways that women themselves can

sustain the federation, its activities and perform its functions and

do so in a manner that is transparent, needs based, efficient and

accountable first and foremost to its constituency - the women's

collectives. The functions, plans and activities themselves center

around women's needs. Their management capacities are built

with the intent of autonomy such that women can manage the

federation activities and functioning themselves, create and

execute plans, run contracts, submit proposals, raise and

manage funds. In several instances federations themselves are

managing other institutions, running the MSKs and Bal Shikshan

Kendra in Bihar, and the Shishu Vikas Kendra in Assam. The

federations and sanghas today have developed strong monitoring

capacities where internally they monitor the Nari Adalat, the

Mahila Shikshan Kendras, Bala Sanghams and externally they

monitor local institutions and services. In fact, the federation

plays multiple roles, acting as channels to mobilise young girls for

the MSKs, Kishori Manchas, as monitors to the Nari Adalat, and

as resource mobilisers and negotiators for sanghas to arrange for

literacy and education initiatives for women, to name just a few.

Finally, the federation is the key motor for growth of the

movement by building new collectives and spreading awareness

among women in new areas on their rights.

A second icon among practices that build the movement is the

Nari Adalat which is the epitome of an institution that upholds

women's rights and dignity. It is the one institution that in practice

is accessible to poor rural women and is able to implement laws

in favour of very poor women and ensure that they access gender

justice. Along with the federation, the Nari Adalat also acts as a

pressure group and organises campaigns on social issues and

practices that are harmful to women such as violence againstwomen, trafficking in Assam, devadasi dedication in Karnataka,

anti-alcohol movements in Andhra Pradesh and other parts of the

country. These two practices the Federation and Nari Adalat

build support and an enabling environment for women's

collectives by challenging and changing community norms and

patriarchal practices. It sets new standards and precedents both

for how women's issues are dealt with as well as for how new

laws are implemented like the Domestic Violence Act. Both these

institutions through creating a mobilised constituency who is

organised institutionally and in terms of a critical mass have,

through their collective action and through a long history of

achievement that has spanned two decades, empowered women

in multiple ways. Work with the adolescents also reaches out to

the next generation, raising consciousness and making them

aware of their rights and builds the second line of leaders needed

to take the movement forward.

Empowerment is one of the declared goals of MS, through all its

interventions. The impact of empowerment can be seen first at

the level of the individual woman and girl through increased

mobilisation capacity, leadership, managerial skills, capacity to

act as a strong advocate for the weak, and being able to apply

their agency to advocate for change in affairs of family,

Impact on Empowerment

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neighborhood and society. All the practices covered under the

study, has resulted in thousands of empowered women and girls.

However, empowerment in the context of MS has another

dimension - collective empowerment. In all the institutional

processes within MS, there is clear evidence of empowered

collectivities of women and girls, ready to take on the world on

their own terms. In some cases like Nari Adalats it has taken the

shape of an institution (of justice delivery), while in the case of the

Kishori Mancha, we see an empowered collective of young

adults, who by their shared understanding and actions are the

hope for the movement in the future. The Panchayat Literacy and

Data Exhibition initiatives simultaneously generate individual

women leaders, besides developing a great collective strength

capable of engaging and challenging institutions of power and

authority.

This individual and collective empowerment has been

accomplished through a combination of practices, innovations

and strategies implemented with the intrinsic support and

presence of the federation. The campaigns, pressure group

tactics to uphold women's rights, and intervention on social issues

wherever sanghas require support have been shown to result in

the voices of women being heard. The Nari Adalat is the only

forum for gender justice that provides rural poor women an

opportunity to raise their voice against injustice and discrimination

against women. Simultaneously, women have successfullyfought and exercised their rights to entitlements on health,

education and other social issues through the federation, Nari

Adalat and the Kishori Manchas. These institutions along with

educational initiatives like the MSKs and KGBVs have resulted in

the emergence of strong articulate leaders as change agents.

These leaders have then challenged existing power relations

externally by putting pressure on local institutions of governance

as well as internally by becoming part of these institutions.

The two initiatives that have facilitated the engagement of women

leaders with local government, namely the Panchayat Literacy

and the Data Exhibition both increased women's political

participation but more importantly these women have brought into

the panchayats a more transparent and accountable mode of

functioning, learnt through the federation. The PLP fosters

leadership both for individual and collective action in local bodies

and Gram Sabhas respectively. The greatest impact on

leadership is seen in the Panchayat literacy initiative, where in

one stroke, women are made aware of their entitlements and their

roles and responsibilities vis--vis Panchayat, and at the same

time, they develop the confidence, and governance skills to

become effective leaders in the Gram Panchayat. All these

initiatives have helped women access resources, and at the same

time expanded women's base of information and therefore their

spheres of influence through collective action.

Impact on Education

Lessons Learnt

Education is indeed broadly defined in MS as evidenced by the

range of strategies that go beyond mere literacy and numeracy.

These include information and awareness on rights and social

issues, gender education, life-skills, vocational exposure to non-

traditional trades and knowledge of government programmes.

The strongest impact on education is witnessed in the Adult

Literacy Programme and the initiatives with adolescent girls. The

distinguishing feature of the ALP, unlike other literacy drives, is

first the leadership and democratic citizenship skills it provides

women. The relevance of the ALP is firmly established for

women when they are able to use these skills to become more

effective in their roles either as Nari Adalat judges or as monitorsof government programmes or as panchayat leaders. It is this

wide applicability of the literacy skills that has sustained the

interest of women in the ALP, retained them more than typical

literacy initiatives and has led to greater demand for education in

some cases. The MSKs and KGBVs provide poor, rural young

girls a second chance to enter the mainstream, widening their

future horizons and choices. In concrete terms, education in MS

is providing the women and girls with an array of weapons that

make them confident, skilled, reflective, analytical, vocal, and

organised - capable of applying the agency and leadership of

women to its fullest extent. MS does it with a creative

combination of functional literacy, panchayat literacy, legal

literacy, leadership development, Kishori Mancha, among otherelements.

A movement of this nature with its vast complexity and with

innovations that are constantly expanding and evolving into new

terrains requires an inquiry that goes beyond just a one time

assessment. However, some clear lessons learnt and a vision for

the future emerged from these case studies.

Future of the Movement

MS has played the role of initiator, nurturer, facilitator, planner,

executor, fund mobiliser, capacity builder, a developer of linkages

for Sanghas, Federations, and their institutions. However, in aspan of 20 years, federations are already emerging as the future

of MS, in many ways. The important lesson learnt is that the

separation of the two institutions, while retaining a mutually

reinforcing complimentary relationship, needs to be crafted

through a process of serious discourse. It is evident now that the

federations have begun to see themselves capable of doing many

things that MS was doing earlier. However, the clarity on the

institutional separation between MS and federations and retaining

this mutually reinforcing relationship has become all the more

challenging. Other international experiences such as that of the

Slum Dwellers International described later may provide some

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insights in this regard. The process of this separation must start

with a capability analysis of the two institutions and future desired

capability sets, and then plan a roadmap towards that goal.

Ways to Institutionalise Best Practices

The best ways to institutionalise select innovations and best

practices within the mainstream will require judicious planning.

The two examples illustrating this lesson are the Nari Adalat,

which still run on the back bone of MS-Federation and have

become an accepted practice within the community and the

development administration. On the other hand the KGBV-

NPEGEL experiment has been institutionalised across the board

in all the states without the MS backbone, resulting in very clear

dilution of MS' core strengths and objectives. The critical lesson

learnt is that while seeking all the avenues of mainstreaming the

practices, it is important to retain their core strengths and

attributes. This would imply that the institutionalisation process

should clearly have within its guidelines a role for MS or MS type

institutions, and MS itself would have to gear up to perform this

task at state and national levels. Institutionalisation therefore,

needs careful analysis and crafting of the advocacy messages

that both promote and safeguard an MS practice, as well as the

replication processes and tools.

Gender Education for Men and Boys

Engaging men and boys as a part of the movement,

empowerment and education programmes, is still a matter of

great debate within MS, in relation to the level of investment, and

even about whether this should be a concern for the women's

movement at all. This is viewed by several as a mission drift.

However, there appears to be a general consensus that engaging

boys and men is important because the demand has emerged

from the sanghas themselves. The initiatives of the three

southern states on gender education for men, have been

implemented to create an enabling environment for women's

participation and to that extent furthers the goals of the

movement. Since MS, its institutions and practices are extremely

process intensive, time intensive, and human resource intensive,

how much of these resources can it spare for engaging men and

boys? Here strategic thinking is necessary to respond to the local

need and demand voiced by the sanghas, as to what would be

the most cost- and time- effective way of engaging men and boys

without watering down the mission of MS. Another option would

be to innovate the mechanisms for working with men and boys

but let the responsibility for replication lie outside MS.

Lateral Networking and Bonding

Lateral networking and bonding of MS Federations across the

districts and most importantly across the states has enormous

untapped potential to make it a nationwide movement of

grassroots women, and adolescent girls and a force to reckon

with for all gender related issues. The potential lies in national

and international visibility, cross learning, additional sources of

funds, organisational consolidation, and universalisation of

practices across the board to the desired extent.

Visibility

MS and its institutional practices documented here have proven

to be extremely effective in their goals and objectives. However,

these achievements remains mostly confined to the MS World

and are not known to the larger development community.

Visibility and advocacy on the basis of concrete evidence is thekey to larger credibility and legitimacy of the movement. While

the present work partially fulfills this gap, systematic tracking of

activities and results through improved monitoring systems -

designed and implemented with the full participation of sanghas

and federations - are needed to show the world the potential

benefits of these models. Armed with this information, both

qualitative and quantitative, advocacy can then be crafted into the

movement in a holistic and systematic way, directed towards the

state and civil society at large.

The evidence of effectiveness and impact of the programme,

being informed by a best practice methodology, was witnessed

mainly among the icons of the practices but not necessarily

across the board. Very few federations, for example, have

reached the status of full-fledged autonomy but a large number of

federations are in the process, with the bulk of them already

having registered as independent entities. The conceptual clarity

on autonomy of the Andhra Pradesh programme, being the

forerunner in building autonomous federations, is not seen in

other states. In this context, a great deal of strategic thinking and

sharing across states is required for federations to actually

Forward Looking Strategies:

Sustaining MS in the Future

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practice more broadly at state and national levels. With a toolkit

now already in place for replication, the Nari Adalat is well

positioned for both national and global advocacy. Gender justice

being a major need of poor women and courts being unaffordable

in most countries, this model has vast applicability and relevance.

Having innovated such a solution, the onus for its spread now

rests squarely with MS. The federation once it has a state or

national identity can well play this advocacy role.

The success of the Mahila Shikshan Kendras lies in the girls

getting varied inputs in the form of life skills, gender education,

literacy and vocational exposure. Life skills such as cycling or

karate allow greater mobility, but more importantly increases their

freedom of physical expression. These elements which were

earlier built both into the KGBV and NPEGEL model have been

reported by several respondents to be steadily compromised to

the point where in many states MS is no longer willing to run

these programmes. Having got its innovations mainstreamed into

the larger system, the MS National Resource Group has a

defined role to play, which incidentally is written into the

guidelines and involves monitoring the functioning of the KGBVs

and providing conceptual inputs. The guidelines also specify MS'

responsibility to run the KGBVs in its operational areas. The

same is true for the NPEGEL where MS is expected to play an

identical role as per the guidelines. This puts MS in a unique and

influential position of being able to ensure that these

mainstreamed programmes remain true to the originalinnovations, and the recommendation is that MS strategise how

to position themselves so that they are able to play this oversight

and quality control role.

However for the NRG to effectively play this advocacy role it

needs to be armed with both evidence and resources, which at

this moment it does not have. One possible strategy would be to

conduct a state by state comparative analysis of KGBVs run by

MS, those run by the state, and the original MSKs, to see what

elements have been retained and what has not, by the state run

KGBV programme. Using this evidence, MS could then more

effectively play an on-going policy role, (this being already written

into the KGBV guidelines) to intervene sharply in KGBV

programme implementation and thus ensure that the most

essential elements leading to women's and girls' empowerment in

its prize innovation of the MSK does not get lost in the echelons

of bureaucracy. Additionally, in non-MS areas, MS has a dual

role to play of working with civil society institutions and the

women's movement to embed the KGBV back into the

movement, the key success ingredient of the MSK. These

research and advocacy roles will need separate dedicated

resources and possibly could be placed in the institutional bases

of the state and national resource centres currently being shaped

and formed within MS.

achieve the status of autonomy. Lessons learnt from people's

organisations that have grown nationally and internationally like

the National Slum Dwellers Federations (NSDF) can inform this

transition to autonomy. The Society for Promotion of Area

Resource Centres (SPARC) helped start people's organizations

like Mahila Milan and the NSDF and within the first few years,

quickly changed its own identity from an institution that mobilised

the poor to that of a support organisation. These people's

organisations then grew autonomously spreading across many

cities, becoming a national presence, and then across nations to

become an international force, outgrowing its mother institution by

leaps and bounds. Likewise, Mahila Samakhya too, would have

to change its own role towards becoming more of a support

organisation and less of an implementation agency. In turn, the

federations will need to develop a unified independent collective

identity apart from MS and build the voice and visibility of the

movement at state, national and international levels. Such a

vision can only evolve through peer learning and horizontal

exchanges among federations at various levels, particularly state

and national levels. Thus, the time has come for federations from

within and across states, to meet to ignite the movement's next

avatar and build their own mission and vision. This, in turn,

should bring women's voices into decision making arenas beyond

the local level, and towards challenging larger structures and

power relations. Only a process that radically expands the vision,

scale and spheres of influence of the movement can force a shift

in the roles of both MS and the federations to bring about realautonomy. In simple terms, the institutions of poor women will

now have to take the lead and the reins of the movement into

their own hands.

Each initiative also requires separate advocacy and visibility for

greater reach and to impact on the larger community, for instance

the Nari Adalat. The genesis of the Nari Adalat has been through

MS in the Education Department whose objective is education

while its own mandate of gender justice is not the best fit. This

mismatch reflects in the initial investment and then subsequent

cuts, in the capacity building of the Nari Adalats, the one practice

whose very functioning and survival depends on women havingupdated information on the law. Therefore for replication as well

as for sustainability, a clear advocacy strategy targeting the

Women and Child Department, where there is a better mission fit,

would greatly enhance both the reach and sustainability of the

Nari Adalat. Synergies with the WCD in Gujarat and Karnataka

already serve as precedents to mobilise the much needed

resources required to spread and sustain the model. Such an

investment across states in the Nari Adalats, would require new

strategies starting with greater investments in impact and

outcome evaluation to feed into advocacy efforts to replicate the

Strategies and Dilemmas of Institutionalisation

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hands of poor communities. The power from an innovation like

the data exhibition gives the community direct access and control

over public goods, services and entitlements. While social audits

of the government agencies and programmes are a civil society

mandate, getting the state to officially recognise the data

exhibition as a legitimate method for civil society to employ in the

social audit process would require publicizing the exhibition.

Like the KGBV institutionalised model of the MSK innovation,

there is an inherent risk of dilution or in the worst case, of

innovations being replicated only in form and not in substance.

To retain the spirit of MS which essentially breathes life into the

initiative, it must be recognised that some initiatives can

essentially be replicated and institutionalised by civil society only.

Thus, for innovations like the data exhibition it would be important

to distinguish between advocacy efforts aimed at the state and

those aimed specifically at civil society but seeking only official

sanction of legitimacy. Therefore, innovations of this nature

would require concerted networking and alliances with civil

society.

This is also true for the federations where advocacy is required

with both state and civil society. With state agencies like P&RD,

greater conceptual clarity, strategic thinking, and advocacy may

be required with respect to synergy with their federations, which

are focused primarily on livelihoods and credit. The MS model of

a rights-based federation is radically and fundamentally differentfrom credit based federations which are growing in popularity with

strong state support, as well as through the active intervention of

banks and micro-finance institutions. These agencies have the

explicit goal of improving livelihoods of families. However, their

federations, primarily economic in function, lack a women's

perspective, do not deal with social issues - like health or

education or property rights or gender - from a rights based

perspective and therefore fall far short of the goal of real

empowerment of women. Synergies and divergences between

the MS federations and credit based federations which address

the same population, namely poor women, need to be analysed

and clear strategies forged to expand the movement across both.

MS federations, for instance, in Andhra can and do act as

resource experts to credit based federations providing them the

social perspective they desperately lack. Alternatively MS and

their federations can advocate for their own rights based model to

be supported by government. This would also require strategies

of comparative impact assessments of MS federations and credit-

based federations, clear guidelines for replication of rights based

federations in the form of toolkits, and finally advocacy to

replicate the model itself. For federations to better service their

own functions as well, simplified version of these guidelines in the

form of vernacular pictorial toolkits would facilitate both the

growth and sustenance of federations. For building federations,

While MS has instituted a localised, process-driven, evolutionary

approach to Kishori Sanghas, the national government's new

programme SABLA, that begins to unfold later this year,

continues with the disjointed approach of providing vocational

training, life-skills training and mid-day meals in one package.

This event based approach denies the girls the basic strength of

the creation of a social force of girls to apply their own agency to

engage in changing their future. While the MS approach is

anchored in creation of the Kishori Mancha as the backbone of a

series of interventions with adolescent girls, the government's

approach still considers training as the critical change process, an

approach tried many times over, with little success. Therefore

MS has a unique opportunity to advocate with WCD for athorough revision of its approach. The guidelines of SABLA are

being framed at this moment and if MS is to take advantage of its

vast and varied experience with this model it could play a major

role in shaping these guidelines.

The uniqueness of the Kishori Mancha and the Bala Sangham

models lies in the inclusiveness of this model which extends

beyond school-going girls to include drop outs and those children

not in schools. For starters to ensure that SABLA is inclusive,

would imply that it not be placed within schools. Further to

ensure that empowerment of young girls is the goal, the means

namely the rights-based approach of mobilisation, gendereducation, legal awareness, and life skills that challenge gender

stereotypes, would need to have a central place in the guidelines.

MS could therefore advocate for movement building strategies of

its initiatives to be built into the SABLA programme.

For MS innovations on governance like the PLP and the data

exhibition, which have national relevance and applicability,

dialogue with the Panchayat and Rural Development Department

(P&RD) on social audits and the methods used would not only

help spread these types of innovations, but place the power of

monitoring local bodies through social audits squarely in the

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instead of targeting state agencies a better strategy would be to

build the demand for the MS model from below. Publicity about

MS federations could potentially increase access for women from

SHGs and other federations to institutions like the Nari Adalats,

which would then generate demand from women themselves.

Networking between MS federations and other federations would

be a key strategy to build visibility, legitimacy and consensus at

the grassroots as the relevance of these innovations begin to be

felt by groups outside MS.

The future looking strategies for each practice all weave a

common picture.

The need for rigorous and strategic research on the impact ofMS models and the key elements contributing to impact, to

feed into advocacy, along with clear cut communications and

policy dialogue strategies at state and national levels aimed at

increasing the visibility and legitimacy of the movement.

The need for horizontal exchanges and peer learning among

federations to enable them to build a strategic vision, mission

and a unified, collective identity of their own. Such a

mechanism if woven into a larger strategy of building

federation identity state-wide and nationally, could lead to a

completely new and dynamic phase of the movement that can

grow outside the MS umbrella.

The need for MS to develop outward looking strategies both

with government and civil society to take the next steps

forward to expand the reach and spheres of influence of the

movement and in doing so, redefine its own role. MS has

already started this process in the form of the State Resource

Groups and the National Resource Group but would need to

play a proactive role in creating the opportunity now for the

federations to create their own identity and for that identity to

shape the role of these resource groups based on its own

needs.

MS' role also would have to expand at various levels. Within

each state, MS state offices would need to reach out and

advocate to other state agencies to establish the legitimacy of

their practices and to set precedents for collaboration - like state

offices in Gujarat and Karnataka have done with the WCD andthe Nari Adalats. Each state office would also need to play a

strong role in establishing the identity of federations at the state

level and build their capacities to take their rightful place at the

table in key policy and decision making arenas both within state

and civil society fora. Nationally a very clear cut advocacy

strategy, building on these state precedents and lobbying, based

on findings collected through MS' new results framework, would

n

n

n

be an important step towards establishing legitimacy and building

visibility. To play these roles, several options can be considered.

The national office could be strengthened. Alternatively the

National and State Resource Centres of MS would have to be

structured to either play this role or to strategically anchor the

advocacy role currently assigned to the National Resource1

Group.

Internationally and nationally MS would have to strengthen the

role that the federations will have to play in the national and

global women's movements to ensure that the voices of

grassroots women influence these spheres. For a concerted

advocacy strategy a closer synergy would be required betweenMS states and national offices and simultaneously between

federations within and across states.

Thus, as MS withdraws, autonomous federations will need to play

not just their implementation role of sustaining the movement but

also adopt new roles as the wider environment changes. They

too will have to evolve solutions to emerging issues that can be

replicated in other federations. For sanghas and federations to

explore new arenas and innovate new solutions, a role played

thus far by MS, they need to have the space to experiment, which

could take the form of an innovation fund. Such a fund could be

run by every state where federations can apply for support to

experiment on new ideas, followed by peer exchanges towards

replication of these innovations.

However, to build an enabling policy and programme environment

for its work, it is insufficient for MS to advocate its work with

government alone. It will need to widen its base of support and

broaden its constituency with like-minded civil society institutions

as well as with the women's movement. Thus, another major

sphere of influence to be targeted is civil society, national and

international, linked to the women's movement including feminist

groups working on the DV Act, violence against women, social

issues, and on empowerment. Such a dialogue with the larger

women's movement can inform their advocacy initiatives on the

grassroots women perspectives on these issues. For instance,

advocacy of feminist groups related to the DV Act for policyintervention and implementation can be informed by how

grassroots women view and use this act. The global feminist

movements' stand against decentralisation, for example, is now

necessarily being countered by advocacy efforts of international

grassroots women's networks like the Huairou Commission

(Purushothaman et al., 2010). MS with its rich experience would

be able to add tremendous value to advocacy initiatives both

1 Currently the MS structure is managed by the National Programme Office and the StateProgramme offices. However, it is planned to have state resource centres and a nationalresource centre that takes responsibility for research, advocacy, and training. The NationalResource Group is currently assigned the role of advocacy and monitoring of governmentprogrammes like the KGBV and NPEGEL.

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nationally and internationally, on a range of issues including

women's concerns, governance, by bringing the voice of

grassroots women into these arenas.

Groups working on literacy and education could be potentially a

strong ally for MS, provided they understand the conceptual

underpinnings of its educational initiatives. Specifically, the

concept of education for empowerment and the central role of

community mobilisation in making the educational intervention

relevant to poor women, needs to be clearly understood.

Alliances with civil society institutions working with women's

groups from a rights based perspective would be ideal but even

those working with sanghas and federations need to know and

appreciate the difference between a rights based federation and

issue based federations (created specifically to address issues

such as credit, natural resource management, disaster

management, livelihoods and so on). Many organisations

working with the broad objective of women's empowerment could

benefit from the MS approach. Interactions with these

organisations will help expand the spheres of influence of MS and

build consensus for long term policy and advocacy for this model.

Therefore to capitalise on gains from two decades of work the

most fundamental need at this moment is for MS itself to take on

several new roles, the first being to capture these lessons from

experience on how to empower women, girls' - and their

collectives, and become a repository of knowledge and

assistance for the nation. This is vital to reach the vast numbers

of poor women in India alone who require the same opportunity

afforded to the 8,00,000 women MS has reached thus far, a mere

drop in the ocean.

Final Reflections

A second crucial role for MS lies in advocacy for replication of its

most robust methodologies with other institutions, state or civil

society. The evidence needed for this advocacy is on the results

and effectiveness of the models vis--vis others that do not have

an empowerment focus. It can be generated by improved

tracking systems for MS practices, and by investing in additional

evaluations once those systems are in place. Being situated

within the government, the programme runs the risk of mission

drift or being slowly diluted by steady budget cuts or in the worst

instance, being wiped out entirely through policy changes, a fate

suffered by many government programmes in the past.

These complementary roles of research and advocacy fill a

pressing requirement of the movement today, that of visibility,

reach and legitimacy. Despite its track record and the obvious

relevance in women's lives clearly established by evidence

provided throughout this compendium, the programme still has

very little visibility nor does it have the recognition it richly

deserves. To summarise, providing the proof of concept through

impact assessments and other types of evaluation, guidelines for

replication through toolkits, wide publicity, advocacy and lobbying

with decision makers is now the need of the hour.

Decentralisation as a trend has been accompanied by the

devolution of resources and by a parallel trend of the growth of

community based institutions. At higher levels the separation of

institutions of state and civil society has been seen as vital, wherethe state implements and civil society acts to provide the checks

and balances by monitoring government. At the very local level

however, the concept of self governance has emerged where

government does not have the capacity to implement all

government functions alone but needs the support of the entire

community. In this localised context, a mobilised community is

the one pre-requisite to prevent elite capture and to that extent

the sanghas and federations have a vital role to play in both

governance and development. Two decades of work with

grassroots women and many innovations later, the relevance of

MS' valuable experience can significantly inform women's

movements, educational initiatives and larger grassroots

movements, nationally and globally. The MS federation model has

much to offer the world as a real model for empowerment and for

women to exercise their agency.

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