The Nari Adhikari Kendras, or women’s support organisations, that operate throughout the country, are doing their bit to alleviate the suffering of women in Madhya Pradesh’s Petlawad, in district Jhabua. These organisations get a variety of grievances from the women of the region, that range from domestic abuse to property disputes and cases of harassment, that are resolved promptly.
The idea behind these organisations is to work with women’s self-help groups (SHGs) and power the social and personal transformation of rural women.
Said Shivani Tomar, Transforming Rural India (TRI), Petlawad, Jhabua, “The Nari Adhikari Kendras have been set up to enable women at the grassroots level to act as volunteers and communicate their grievances up the chain.”
“We get a lot of cases of women who have been abandoned because their husbands take a second wife. We also get land dispute cases and those of domestic violence. Sometimes women are denied their right to property after the husband dies. We’ve got 14 such cases of which 12 have been resolved,” revealed Kalpana Muniya, Coordinator, Shakti Sankul, Petlawad, Jhabua, on the kind of issues that these groups work with.
“I have three children and my husband is there no longer. The neighbouring villagers used to trouble me. I approached the group with my grievance and the women promised to help me. We went to the Nari Kendra and then the panchayat. The errant people were threatened with action and signed a declaration promising to stop the harassment,” narrated one of the recipients of help from the Nari Adhikari Kendras, on the condition of anonymity.
At a time when the government seeks to leap women’s development to women-led development, these organisations are playing a pivotal role in ensuring that rural women are emancipated from their troubles. And district Jhabua’s Petlawad is a good example of how this model works with women at the grassroots.
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