In April 2006, Bihar Mahila Samakhya Society came into being. This has been a high point in a journey that started over a decade ago. The education of women and girls has been central to national discourse for over a century. Several enabling interventions in the form of special courses, separate schools and so on came into being. However, it was only in the decade of the 1980s that the roots of continued gender disparities not only in education but in society at large came to be debated and addressed. The growing women's movement raised fundamental questions of the ineffectiveness of development initiatives for women since independence.

The result of the continued engagement with the state policies resulted in positive outcomes such as legislative provisions to protect the rights of women, the laws on dowry, rape, domestic violence, reservations in Panchayat bodies, and quotas in the allocation of funds for women in development projects and so on. Despite the increased focus on women in development initiatives, the problems of women's marginalisation and disempowerment continue to remain.

The roots of Mahila Samakhya are embedded in the National Policy on Education, 1986, widely regarded as a landmark in the field of policy on women's education in india. For the first time, official policy recognised the fact of persistent gender imbalance in education and the continued marginalisation of women and girls. It recognised the need to move away from mere provision or improvement of education infrastructure.

From its inception, MS has sought to conscientise and enable women to examine the roots of their marginalisation and try to pull those roots out, wrote a socail commentator. It is a daunting task only to be attempted through group solidarity and support, especially because the MS programme targets the poor rural women coming from the most marginalised communities the ones with the leasr voice.

In Bihar, MS has evolved into an empowering federation of women's collectives. It is another milestone along the path equality, justice and prosperity for all women and their families.

Sister Sabeena, SPC