While the world continues to split people into groups, there is a small but persistent group of people who rise above it, redefining themselves and those around them.
These are the people who refuse to allow others define who they are, their responsibilities in society, and what they can and cannot do.
This spirit is best exemplified by the work of strong women who, in the face of adversity, have redefined and transformed the lives of many other women.
We'd like to pay tribute to some of India's remarkable women.
Dr Rani Bang
Dr Rani Bang is haunted by the memories of a baby breathing her last due to a lack of medical resources, even after forty-something years. For her, this was a wake-up call to solve one of the country's most important issues: the poor's lack of access to adequate healthcare.
Dr Bang had an unpleasant memory of meeting Rai-bai Dabole, a widowed landless labourer who had come to her seeking treatment for her infant daughter's diarrhoea and pneumonia. Dr Bang had instructed her to take the infant to the nearest hospital because the child was in severe condition. The baby died two days later.
Since then, Dr Bang and her husband, Dr Abhay Bang, have dedicated their lives to improving the social and educational conditions of people in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra's tribal district. They founded SEARCH (Society for Education, Action & Research in Community Health), a grassroots health organisation, together in 1986. This Padma Shri award-winning pair is also noted for their groundbreaking research on how pneumonia, not diarrhoea, was the leading cause of death in children under the age of five. Their findings not only had an impact on the ground, but they also influenced the World Health Organisation's drug manufacturing strategy.
Chetna Sinha
Nearly 200 kilometres from Pune, the town of Mhaswad in Maharashtra's Satara district has a unique bank that offers rural women loans as low as ₹15! The Mann Deshi Bank, founded in 1997 by Mumbai-based Chetna Sinha, provides financial assistance to rural women, empowering them. Through 140 field facilitators, the bank and its eight branches have so far empowered over 3,00,000 women.
Sinha realised that rural women's social empowerment was largely dependent on the economic options available to them. This bank is her attempt to close the gap. She created the bank with a ₹600,000 share capital and the help of local women. The bank built its own successful model to engage these women, from micro-credit plans ranging from five years to one day to granting loans as low as ₹5,000 to offering them the flexibility to pay on a daily basis. The bank also offers a daily loan option, with EMI repayments starting at ₹15. According to the bank, around 15,000 transactions of this nature occur on a regular basis.
Deane De Menezes
Deane De Menezes received the prestigious Queen's Young Leaders Award at the age of 24 for her excellent effort, 'Red is the New Green.' The project's goal is to eliminate the social stigma associated with menstruation, as well as the economic and gender disparities that fuel it.
De Menezes and her team have been breaking period stereotypes and supporting safe and healthy choices through various menstrual hygiene awareness sessions across Mumbai's schools, institutions, universities, hospitals, and organisations. They have been developing cheap menstrual hygiene products for impoverished girls and women, as well as placing sanitary vending machines at various locations, in addition to increasing awareness in rural areas.
They've also placed incinerators with each vending machine for safe disposal and destruction of menstrual waste, looking ahead and guaranteeing that the spent pads don't hurt the environment. The initiative focuses on alternative hygiene items such as tampons, menstruation cups, and other goods to reduce menstrual waste, in addition to manufacturing and disseminating knowledge about the usage of sanitary napkins.
Trisha Shetty
In 2017, the Mumbai-based non-profit SheSays, led by Trisha Shetty, launched the #LahuKaLagaan campaign, which campaigned for the repeal of the sanitary napkin fee. As word of the campaign spread across the country, other organisations jumped on board. The government eventually repealed the government's 12 per cent sanitary napkin levy in 2018.
This is not the 21-year-old social activist's first victory; she has been pushing for equal rights for women on a variety of forums, including the United Nations, since 2014. The necessity for the NGO arose in 2014, when she realised that, despite the great prevalence of violence against women, there was little discussion regarding the survivors' rehabilitation. Each experience of abuse, whether it belonged to a woman or a member of the LGBTQ community, was important, and the organisation arose to meet the demand for in-depth on-the-ground reform, according to Trisha.
Dr Rukmini Rao
Dr Rukmini Rao was founded Saheli Resource Centre for Women in Delhi in 1981 to provide social, economic, and legal support to women who are victims of domestic violence. The increased incidence of dowry fatalities was one issue that really enraged her. She assembled a group of like-minded individuals to do all necessary measures to assist women hounded for dowry and to eliminate all future chances of similar fatalities. As a result, they pushed for nearly seven pro-women bills. Domestic abuse legislation and a law prohibiting the pornographic presentation of women are among these laws.
Now, Dr Rao is the chief driving force behind the Gramya Resource Centre for Women, which works to support and uplift rural women in Telangana’s Nalgonda district—while also operating the SAKHI centres in the region. Her key focus now is to get social justice for India’s women farmers, who barely get any benefits or returns for putting food on the nation’s tables.
Also Watch: Our Country Is Being Run By Women: Dr V Rukmini Rao, Social Activist
Maya Vishwakarma
Maya Vishwakarma, dubbed the 'Padwoman of India,' describes herself as a 'standing example' of the devastating consequences of the taboo and stigma surrounding menstruation on Indian girls and women. She was born into a family of agricultural labourers in a village in Madhya Pradesh's Narsinghpur area and did not have access to sanitary napkins until she was 26 years old. Later in adulthood, she developed a number of health problems as a result of this, prompting her desire to correct the situation.
Despite financial constraints, she pursued her education and earned a post-graduate degree in Biochemistry from a Jabalpur university. She then worked as a researcher at AIIMS Delhi before moving to the United States to work as a cancer researcher in the field of leukaemia. Throughout it all, her personal health concerns drew her back to the cause in her home nation, which was still waiting for a solution.
She founded the Sukarma Foundation in 2016, with the goal of raising awareness about menstruation, promoting the significance of using sanitary napkins, and dispelling the stigma and myths around it. In addition, the organisation produces low-cost sanitary napkins that are distributed to women in the country's most rural areas. Based on this foundation, Vishwakarma is now working to make telemedicine available to the rural areas of Madhya Pradesh.
Sonal Kapoor
Sonal was living her dream with a position in the advertising industry. The 23-year-old loved her job at the time, but it was an on-the-ground assignment that revealed her true calling.
She visited a slum and had to deal with the realities of life. There was this 36-year-old mother who had six daughters and was expecting a seventh. She noted that one of the kids, a seven-year-old girl, was unable to walk or sit correctly. After much persuasion, her mother finally revealed that the youngster had been sexually assaulted at a local brothel. After hearing the traumatic story, Kapoor was unable to return to her previous job. Since then, she has been battling child trafficking.
She established the Protsahan India Foundation in 2010 with the goal of ending child abuse through breaking the intergenerational cycle of child abuse and poverty in both urban and rural India. The charity takes a holistic approach to healing, assisting, and protecting survivors and endangered children via art and education. Sonal, 36, is currently a member of the Delhi Commission of Women's expert committee on anti-child trafficking. More than 19,000 children have been saved and rehabilitated by the foundation in the last twelve years.