ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the complex relationship between right-wing vigilante activities, illegal livelihoods, and the flow of credit among women activists. The Shiv Sena Mahila Aghadi wants to give a unique platform, emotional and economic, to the Sena women. The riotous Shiv Sena movement in Maharashtra, western India, swerved from violent regionalist politics into pan-Indian Hindu nationalism in the 1980s. The all-party leaders, men and women, were unable to locate an Aghadi leader who had the political maturity to develop and implement a complex economic scheme. The women leaders would merely act as links between the bank and the poor women. Employed' women in the Bombay slums invariably performed low-skill, manual jobs which put them in a weak position in the labour market. According to Kabeer, conflicting ideas arise over the impact of micro-credit societies on women's empowerment because programme evaluations are based on differing models of power, especially in the context of gender relations.
