1 FACE TO FACE WITH RURAL WOMEN CWDS ’ SEARCH FOR NEW KNOWLEDGE AND AN INTERVENTIONIST ROLE

Established in 1980, the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS) carried a legacy of the traumatic experience shared by most members of the Committee on the Status of Women in India (1971-74); five years (1975-80) of attempts at sponsoring compensatory research on the majority of Indian women whose life experiences had remained ‘invisible ’ to policy makers and social analysts alike; and three years (1977-80) of a frantic search for new development strategies and policies in collaboration with the Planning Commission and a few allies within the bureaucracy. The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) had responded to the Committee on the Status of Women in India’s (CSWI) appeal to bridge the invisibility gap by initiating the first Programme of Women’s Studies in India, soon after the submission of the Committee’s report, inducting myself and Kumud Sharma to implement this programme under the guidance of a high powered Advisory Committee. The Committee included, in addition to four members of the erstwhile CSWI, a galaxy of the most reputed social scientists and jurists in the country. Beginning in the dark period of the National Emergency (1975-77), this research programme deliberately maintained a low profile, but viewed from its onset, research as a ‘tool for action’