A Gentle Transition

With Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal, Dr Ramesh Awasthi and Dr Manisha Gupte have empowered hundreds of marginalised women and children in a cluster of villages in Maharashtra

- Rachna Tyagi

What would you call two bright, talented and well-qualified city pigeons who left their cushy jobs, moved to a village 180km from Pune, and started living among the villagers? Loony? Perhaps. Brave? Likely. Determined? Most certainly. In 1987, Dr Ramesh Awasthi and Dr Manisha Gupte moved to Malshiras in Pune district, spent five years there, and started Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal (MASUM).

The organisation works with marginalised women in about 20 villages in Pune and Ahmednagar districts of Maharashtra and has, through community participation, made them capable of standing up for their own rights and fighting for the rights of others. “Every programme is ‘rights-based’,” says Gupte, a microbiologist and sociologist. “We are not there to do charity. People are not beneficiaries, but active participants in the process of social change.”

MASUM currently has six programmes, which relate to women’s right to emotional and physical health, to a life free of violence and discrimination, to political participation, to economic empowerment, and two programmes for youth and child rights.

“We are only the agents who are there to bring about a consciousness that life can be much better if there is an equal, democratic society with no violence, disparities or discrimination,” says Gupte, 61.