Empowering underprivileged Dalit and Muslim women

Madhavi Kuckreja isn’t like anybody else. Oh, I know none of us is like anybody else, but Kuckreja really isn’t like anybody else. She’s a true radical. She’ll make you question all your preconceived notions, and you might want to have her over for dinner because she’s just so wonderful.

A Punjabi from Delhi who grew up in Kolkata, she comes from a privileged, upper-class background. For more than three decades, she has worked on empowering underprivileged Dalit and Muslim women in Uttar Pradesh. After studying in India and the US, she went to rural Uttar Pradesh in 1990 to do trainings for the Union ministry of human resource development’s Mahila Samakhya Programme. She began working with Dalit women in what she calls “very poor, dacoit-ridden, badlands kind of place. It was totally feudal, there were no telephones, and there were murders all the time.” She ended up staying in Chitrakoot and Banda until 2004, founding and growing her first organization, Vanangana, challenging stereotypes and building technical skills...............Read more

Source: livemint