Abha Bhaiya

JAGORI, India

http://www.jagori.org

Abha Bhaiya is one of the founder members of Jagori, a feminist organization set up in 1984 in Delhi. She has been active in women's movements in India for more than 30 years. She has been working on a range of issues including women's socio, political economic rights, the status of single women, women's right to health, bodily integrity and well being, sex and sexualities, against militarization, fundamentalisms and increasing erosion of civil rights to the poorest to food securities and livelihoods. Her major contribution has been in the field of feminist training methodologies with an extensive experience of conducting feminist trainings for multiple constituencies and in many different country context.

Bhaiya's association with organizations dealing with very different, though ultimately interconnected, issues over the past three decades is also indicative of the range of her vision. She is the founder-member of Nishtha, a Himachal Pradesh-based NGO that works on rural health; a member of FREA, a documentation/research centre in Mumbai; a member of Ankur, an educational centre for women and children in New Delhi; founder-member of Olakh, a women's resource centre in Gujarat; and is also founder-member of Mahila Samakhya's national resource group.

She has worked consistently to shape the feminist movement and in the process has also been shaped by the movement. She and her peers have evolved a more holistic view of what development or sustainable development could be defined as. Bhaiya has also worked out a beautiful synthesis between the movement at the ideological plane and the involvement of women in the movement at the practical level. She has addressed through this the realities of the rural marginalized women.