ABSTRACT
I faced an interesting conundrum as I began research on the Mahila Samakhya program or MS (as it is commonly called), a Government of India-initiated rural women’s empowerment initiative. The source of my puzzlement was the shifting manner in which program staff introduced MS in different situations. For instance, at a meeting with Block Office2 administrators in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Meena Rani, a program representative, introduced MS as “a [program] of the Human Resource Development Ministry of the Government of India . . . that attempts to empower women, raise their awareness and make them self-reliant.”3 However, just a few days prior to this meeting, Meena Rani had introduced MS as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) to a group of village women she was attempting to recruit as program participants. When these women asked her what they would receive from the program, Meena Rani responded that they would only get information, knowledge and support: MS was a sanstha (NGO), and not a sarkari (government) program that distributed things.
