Women take the law into their own hands: South Indian lawyer Chitra Balakrishnan has been helping the rural poor get a handle of their rights.

In 1945, Mahatma Gandhi wrote of his dream for Indian Independence as `the kingdom of God on earth'. `Politically translated, it is a perfect democracy in which inequalities based on possession and non-possession, colour, race, creed or sex, vanish. In it land and state belong to the people, justice is prompt and cheap and there is freedom of worship, speech and press--all this because of the self-imposed law of moral restraint.' He wrote further, `My notion of democracy is that in it, the weakest should have the same opportunities as the strong.'

Nearly 50 years on, in India and in many parts of the developing world, the state's role in protecting citizens' human rights is coming under stress. Private actors such as multinational corporations are increasingly taking over the state's regulating role and becoming the arbiters of a new socio-economic order. There is reason to fear that the state's withdrawal is already harming the weakest in our societies--indigenous people, the poor and women. As a result, a growing number of popular movements have been seeking to use the law to defend and promote human rights.

In recent years I have been involved in a women's legal literacy programme in my home state of Karnataka in the south of India. The idea behind this non-governmental initiative was that poor rural women could use information about their legal rights to transform their lives and those of their communities. The programme collaborated with both the government and local NGOs.

According to the 1991 Census, Karnataka has a population of 44,977,200 (India's population has now touched a billion). Some nine million of the State's population belong to `scheduled castes and tribes'--the most economically and socially backward groups in Indian society. There are 960 women for every 1,000 men, a figure which is higher than the national average.

Karnataka has pioneered constitutional guarantees of local self-government, and it was also one of the first states to reserve a third of the seats in its gram panchayats (village councils) for women, scheduled castes and tribes, and backward classes. As a result, 45 per cent of gram panchayat members are now women.

Our programme conducted legal training workshops for collectives of 30-50 women every two months over a period of about 18-20 months. We covered ten districts of the state. Our legal awareness team consisted of six people, with people from our partner NGOs, government offices and other socially committed lawyers joining us in different districts. Over five years, we worked with about 1,000 women, a fraction of the population of the state, but through them the information rippled out to a much larger number. Since the participants often represented several villages and were frequently members of panchayats they took the knowledge they gained back to empower their communities. We also conducted paralegal programmes for the staff of the NGO partners that we worked with.

As we travelled through various villages and hamlets, we had ample opportunity to learn about the intricacies of rural women's lives and their struggles. There were also many moments of shared joy and achievement. We met the same groups of women regularly, and our workshops provided an important secular space for them to articulate what was deepest in their hearts--their pains and frustrations, their experiences as daughters, widows, deserted women and so on. In the process, the women's sense of self-worth grew--and so did ours, as legal educators.

More important still, the women began to make use of the information we had given them about the law and their rights. For example, a woman named Hanumakka from Ranebennur village in Dharwad District had learnt that no one can be arrested without being shown a warrant. Using this information, she was able to prevent another woman being illegally arrested. Mallamma of Kudligi in Bellary District inspired agricultural workers in her village collective to strike when they realized that they were receiving wages far below the legal minimum. They only won a marginal wage increase, but the experience showed them that they could change their lot through collective action.

Our work threw up several challenges. One is how to speak about rights in a social millieu that is highly unequal. In India, as in many other parts of the developing world, democratic practice on the ground has not kept pace with the remarkable strides that the law and the language of rights have made. It is difficult for oppressed classes such as the women and the poor even to accept that they have rights as citizens.

The other major challenge is that the legal system, which we are suggesting they should access, is all too frequently remote, corrupt and full of delays. We have had to point out the limitations of the law--and this has led to confusion, doubt and frustration, both for the women and ourselves.

These challenges prompted us to search for ways in which we could help the mainstream legal system to become more approachable and people-centred. This has led us to set up a new group of lawyers offering legal services for the needy. We also disseminate information about law and rights through workshops, and plan to conduct socially relevant legal research, which will empower marginalized sections. In doing this, we are aware of the power equations in the lawyer-client relationship and the need to find procedures which will make the client own the process of lawyering.

Constructive people's movements need to go on side by side with legislative change--in fact, one reinforces the other. It seems more and more evident that it will be the issue of transparency and accountability that will bring the urban and rural masses together.

One inspiring example of this is the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan, a grassroots people's movement in rural Rajasthan. Recently, one of its initiators, Aruna Roy, was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for the Sanghatan's outstanding contribution to social change.

The movement began with organizing people around issues of minimum wages and access to fair price shops. It then moved on to setting up public hearings at which corrupt officials were compelled to account for funds allocated for village upliftment. In many cases, the officials returned amounts that they had embezzled. The Sanghatan itself has set high standards by opening its own accounts to public scrutiny. More recently, its candidates in gram panchayat elections limited their expenses to less than Rs800 (about [pounds sterling] 13) per candidate: something unheard of elsewhere.

The Sanghatan's most important contribution has been to spearhead a move for legislation on the people's Right to Information, which has led to new laws in several states. The movement is an interesting example of a rights movement leading to legislative and policy changes.

Such initiatives rekindle hope and reaffirm the words of Margaret Mead: `Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.'