Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

376 RAJESH RAMAKRISHNAN, VIREN LOBO AND DEPINDER KAPUR
were carefully designed, value-based and experiential training programmes.
However, these had been subsequently replaced by four to five
day training programmes of ‘Mahila Samoohs’, which had become more
or less mechanical exercises of information dissemination. Once it became
clear that the basic outlook of the WDP was changing, the NGOs’ leadership
could do little but fall in line, even as the work they were doing became
increasingly devoid of content. The government made its message
clear to the IDARAs by clamping down on them. In 1992, the salaries of
all IDARA functionaries were frozen. Those activist IDARAs who challenged
this in court were selectively victimised. IDARA budgets were cut
and in 1993 and 1994, no trainings or orientations were conducted. Information
about sathin jajams (meetings) was not passed on to IDARAs
to prevent their activists from attending. In the case of Bhilwara district,
citing the absence of a specialist and, therefore, irresponsibility of the
NGOs, all of the remaining staff were terminated and the DWDA took
over the IDARA. The government’s idea was now to reduce IDARAs to
reporting organisations, and to use them to publish newsletters and deny
them any proactive role. Some of the activists who quit the IDARAs were
re-employed as project directors to work in DWDAs in newly included
districts. The originally envisaged partnership between government and
NGOs in WDP had been replaced by domination by the government.
The IDS, Jaipur, was entrusted with overall monitoring and evaluation.
IDS, an autonomous research institution, and its women’s studies wing,
was actively involved in monitoring the programme. The gap between
field-level problems and the thinking of top-level functionaries of WDP
was also reflected in IDS evaluation, resulting in much soul-searching
among the activist-scholars of the women’s studies wing. Seeing the problems
and conflicts emerging between IDARAs and DWDAs, between WDP
as a whole and sathins/prachetas, as well as the adamant attitude of the
government, IDS decided to fully dissociate itself from the WDP.
UNIONISATION OF SATHINS/PRACHETAS
AND WDP’S RESPONSE
The change in orientation within the WDP led to an increasing workload
and tightened control over the activities of sathins and prachetas. The
WDP had earlier made them conscious of their status as women who