Nari Bikash Sangha: Towards Empowerment

The idea of Nari Bikash Sangha (NBS) emerged in 1985 as an intervention from a group of economically vulnerable women to reach out to others in similar situations. Gradually, the NBS began to acquire other roles in an economically and socially backward region of West Bengal. Its spontaneous inroads into natural resource management, political participation, better community relations, etc. with the clear idea of rights and responsibilities were evidence of its growing strength, and capacity and ability to create a new social space for women in the region. Its example also demonstrates the fact that in a given situation, individual empowerment of women is better achieved through a collective process, where the individual draws her strength and power of self-assertion from a strong collective and sense of solidarity. Social heterogeneity, ethnicity, political ideological differences and cultural diversity tend to get subsumed under the pace and pressure of a collective empowerment process. The paper attempts to document this process through the words of NBS women.