Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Bhandari, local communities of participation, Delhi, 01/11/09
Family Background
Forty-six year old Dr Mala Bhandari lives in Noida with her husband (retired defence personnel), a college going son and a ten-year old daughter. She is the coordinator of a women network, which is engaged in numerous non-profit activities in Delhi and Noida area of Uttar Pradesh. She is actively engaged in motivating women into becoming an active productive social resource for their respective communities and is critical of those who tend to fritter away their time in mindless socializing. She is effectively utilizing her academic background as a Sociologist and subsequent doctoral research on women in order to awaken them to becoming resources for community development.
Domain Specific Questions
After a brief stint in a non-profit organization in Delhi, she networked with a few like-minded women to launch SADRAG in 2004 to bring problems faced by women professionals to the limelight and to stimulate research on them. The SADRAG board meets face-to-face about once in two months or as required in order to organize events and activities.
Mala actively participates in meetings organized by other women’s groups in Delhi and Noida. In the past, she has coordinated round-table discussions on issues of concern to women professionals ranging from sexual harassment at work to glass ceiling obstructing their professional development, financial independence, and women in the BPO industry.
The two main projects she is currently coordinating are to prepare nearly 250 street children (6-14 years) belonging to migrant families for formal education at six centres in Noida (Ugta Suraj meaning rising sun) and organize a networking platform for women professionals (NOPYID). The entire coordination of Ugta Suraj is carried out through mobiles and tele-networking among all the personnel. In fact, our interview was constantly interrupted by numerous calls, which Mala was receiving on her mobile from project personnel in the field at the centres and other women’s organizations. Meetings are coordinated and information is disseminated via mobiles. Cheap and good telecommunication facilities (facilities of free calls within their network of ten members by Reliance network) have made coordination simpler and effective without requiring Mala to physically monitor the centres on a daily basis.
She explained that the success of their program is assessed by the response they have begotten from the communities they are working in.. Ugta Suraj is based in centres located in spaces owned by the village panchayat and the successful relocation of children of migrant families into formal schools and their receipt of continued support from the community, is for her an explicit indicator of their success.
To promote a sense of community and actively network with other women’s organizations nationally and internationally, Mala is totally dependent on emails and the Internet. SADRAG has a website which enables them to map their activities and reach out beyond the face-to-face networking opportunities and create virtual communities amongst those who want to contribute and actively participate in SADRAG. During the course of our interview with her, time and again she categorically emphasized the glass ceiling women professionals constantly face in their career growth and the need to acknowledge contribution in India.
Mala is actively involved in compiling useful information about resources, news-items, forthcoming meetings and events, upcoming conferences on women related issues through an e-newsletter (bi-monthly) for their listserv. Although this has become infrequent more recently as Ugta Suraj is preoccupying her. She is a firm believer in the positive role of fostering communities and networks among professional women, as these would enable them to overcome any feelings of isolation and discover a commonality of purpose.
Most of her work is carried out of a room in her flat, and she feels the need to employ a fulltime coordinator and physically locate themselves in an office in the community. Typically a day for her begins with knowing and coordinating activities with her staff and network members on the phone and if necessary making visits to the centres and attending meetings. In the afternoons and weekends, Mala likes spending time with her ten-year old daughter and taking care of her family. For these their organization requires more projects and funding support. She pointed that this was the greatest challenge before her as a coordinator as the professional growth of their network critically depends on their securing financial assistance.
She elucidated the critical role Internet and telecommunications are playing in both her personal and professional life. These advances enable her to merge the two: her son helps her learn new technologies and she admitted that her capacity to access and use the Internet has broadened her thinking and her vision in an incomparable manner. She is able to virtually network and learn from the information available to her readily on the Internet without loosing energy and needing to physically move. She distrusts virtual communities such as Orkut and not wanting to subscribe to them. For her Internet has changed her attitude towards the world profoundly yet she fears it can be invasive of her privacy as well. It’s a double-edged sword depending on how one uses it..
Dissatisfied with her own achievements as she feels she and the network have much more to work and achieve in the coming years. She regards herself as a feminist working to liberate women while not being anti-family either. With constant job-transfers of her husband and responsibilities of her children’s upbringing she confessed, “I have not fully bloomed as I should have.” Nevertheless she asserted, “I am a fighter and don’t give up so easily.” Mala is a determined to make her mark in community and get more involved in her work. Five years into the future, Mala envisages major changes after her daughter would be independent and her son would have settled into a career. This would give her freedom to actively pursue her passion for women’s development. She dreads loosing trust and support in the community at Noida. She hopes by getting funding for research and community projects her network would have become larger and they would achieve their goals.