ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two organisations involved in these movements, both based in Maharashtra state of western India, and examines in particular the role of rural women and the formation of an alternative developmental perspective. It has developed close relations with the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW), the womens organisation linked to the Communist Party of India. Members have also been active in anti-caste and anti-communal campaigns. Environmental movements have been locally organised, usually covering a group of villages where people are affected by harmful development; farmers movements are large popular movements covering many districts of a state and mobilising in hundreds of thousands for major campaigns and rallies. The farmers movements criticise all rich peasant/poor peasant divisions as tending to weaken peasant resistance. Stri Mukti Sangharsh has been part of a broad platform of progressive womens organisations in the state. It joined the campaign led by Shetkari Sanghatana women to organise all-women panels for district council elections.
