Volunteer activism for women’s rural development in postcolonial India: the case of Dr Krishnabai Nimbkar

Abstract

The presentation focuses on the reconstruction work carried out by women for other women in the first two decades of postcolonial India. My examination of the development activism of Dr Krishnabai Nimbkar (1906–1997) explores her efforts to enhance the health, education and economic opportunities for rural Indian women. A medical doctor by training, Nimbkar engaged in social work in the late colonial period and subsequently emerged as an expert on women’s welfare in the 1950s. In this capacity, she worked closely with and for the postcolonial state’s community development programme, as well as attending conferences of the Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW) in Toronto (1953) and Colombo (1957). In 1955, she assumed the role of Honorary Secretary of the recently established Bharatiya Grameen Mahila Sangh, an organisation affiliated with the ACWW.

This presentation, by focusing on the voluntary work of one activist-turned-expert, seeks to address two sets of inquiries. It analyses the nature and content of Nimbkar’s volunteer activism for the development of rural women and the ways in which she exerted and legitimised her expert authority. Besides, it examines the impact of the process of ‘scientisation’ on the various social groups involved and targeted by the different schemes Nimbkar pursued.