1.1 Bihar’s Developmental and Social Context

Jeevika was launched in rural Bihar in 2006, at a time when the state was marked by some of the most acute levels of poverty and deprivation in India. In 1999–2000, Bihar was categorized as a low-Human Development Index (HDI) region, scoring 0.292 – a figure that rose only marginally to 0.367 by 2007–2008.Footnote ¹ Footnote ² Footnote ³ The rural poverty rate stood at 55.7 percent, far exceeding the all-India average of 41.8 percent. Bihar’s per capita GDP, at ₹6,773, was 32 percent of the national average. Bihar was classified in the “Low Equality” category of the Gender Development Index (GDI) and had the lowest GDI score in 2011–2012 (0.422). The gender gap in literacy was particularly stark. In 2006, only 37 percent of women were literate compared to 70.4 percent of men.Footnote ⁴ Nationally, these figures stood at 55 percent and 78 percent respectively. Access to formal credit was limited: only 1 percent of Bihari women had access to microcredit, one-fourth of the national average. Indebtedness among rural households was very high, with 66 percent of loans obtained from private moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates ranging from 100 to 200 percent annually (Hoffmann et al., Reference Hoffmann, Rao, Surendra and Datta2021). These statistics illustrate the formidable challenge of improving gender roles and relations.

Caste remains a central axis of identity and social hierarchy in Bihar, with a long history of discrimination, exclusion, and violence. A British magistrate in undivided Bengal, of which Bihar was a significant part, described the province as the “home of extreme Hindu orthodoxy,” with extreme caste distinctions (O’Malley, Reference O’Malley1989/ Reference O’Malley1907, p. 3). In the postindependence period, structural reforms attempted to destabilize traditional caste hierarchies. The Abolition of Zamindari Act (1950) and the Land Ceiling Act (1962) disrupted longstanding patterns of land ownership and labor control, catalyzing resistance from landless, lower-caste groups. These tensions fueled the rise of the Naxalite movement in the late 1960s, which began as a class-based peasant rebellion but evolved into a broader assertion of lower-caste rights in Bihar during the 1970s and beyond (Banerjee, Reference Banerjee2006; Bhatia, Reference Bhatia2005). In response, dominant castes organized private militias to suppress lower-caste mobilization and engaged in brutal reprisals with ninety recorded massacres between 1984 and 2001 that claimed the lives of 860 individuals and often targeting women and children (Louis, Reference Louis2002; Kumar, Reference Kumar2003).

Although levels of violence have sharply declined, caste continues to shape the social fabric of Bihar in subtle and symbolic ways. It continues to structure critical aspects of daily life, including political mobilization, occupational access, marriage practices, and social interactions such as commensality (sharing meals with people from other groups).

Jeevika was launched in 2006 in this context as a community-based poverty alleviation initiative.Footnote ⁵ It was initiated by the Government of Bihar, supported by a long-term low-interest loan and technical assistance from the World Bank. The program’s primary goal is to enhance the economic well-being of the poor by establishing women’s SHGs and providing credit and other livelihood support services. Enrollment is focused on women from the most impoverished families, who are predominantly from historically marginalized castes, specifically the Scheduled Castes (SC), often referred to as dalit (oppressed). The SC category, as defined by the Indian constitution, includes subcastes positioned at the lowest rung of the caste hierarchy. Despite constitutional guarantees of affirmative action in public education and employment, the stigma associated with SC identity persists in informal life. For SC women, this marginalization is compounded by gender and class, severely limiting their agency, autonomy, and overall well-being.

Jeevika mobilizes such women into SHGs, which are self-managed institutions of ten to fifteen members each. Being formed into groups makes women “bankable,” or credit-worthy for institutional lending using the collateral-free joint-liability model. These SHGs are linked with banks and nested into a federated structure. Ten to fifteen SHGs form a Village Organization (VO), and thirty-five to forty-five VOs form a Cluster-Level Federations (CLF). Within each SHG, regular meetings are held to facilitate savings, borrowing loans, and repayments. These gatherings also serve as a platform for members to connect and share their experiences of family and community life. In principle, these meetings are managed and led by three elected office bearers: the President, the Treasurer, and the Secretary, all chosen from among the group members by the women. However, due to the prevalence of low literacy and numeracy, a Community Mobilizer (CM) – a person with basic financial literacy skills – was appointed, among other things, to assist with account keeping.

Following group formation, SHGs are expected to hold regular weekly meetings and initiate savings practices within the first six months. During this period, members contribute a modest weekly amount of ₹5–10. This initial phase emphasizes “inter-loaning,” whereby members borrow from the collective savings, fostering trust and familiarizing themselves with essential financial practices. Peer monitoring and mutual accountability mechanisms are employed to ensure timely repayment of loans. After approximately five to six months of consistent and regular meetings, the project provides the SHG with a Community Investment Fund (CIF) – a substantial one-time grant of Rs. 50,000. These funds are then disbursed to members as loans that must be repaid with interest. Through repeated cycles of borrowing and repayment, the capital base of each SHG grows, gradually forming a sustainable corpus or “resources in perpetuity” for the community.Footnote ⁶

As capital accumulates, SHGs expand their lending operations. Members submit loan requests, which are prioritized and approved through collective deliberation. Over time, loans are extended to members who were not part of the initial priority list, reinforcing a culture of repayment and generating a documented financial track record. This track record enhances SHGs’ credibility with formal banking institutions. Moreover, regular meetings and financial operations enhance members’ institutional and financial management skills. At this stage, Jeevika facilitates SHGs’ access to additional credit through linkages with national and regional banks. These institutional loans typically carry an annual interest rate of approximately 24 percent.

When ten to fifteen SHGs are formed within a village, they are federated into a Village Organization (VO). These VOs are envisioned as autonomous community institutions capable of leading broader interventions in livelihood promotion, social development, and access to public entitlements and services. Their responsibilities include providing financial support and agricultural inputs to beneficiaries, procuring grains at wholesale rates, offering emergency health loans, and improving access to government schemes such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Additionally, VOs are mandated to identify and address local development issues in collaboration with Jeevika staff.

VOs convene bimonthly meetings, attended by three elected representatives from each member SHG – typically comprising thirty to forty-five women. These meetings involve specialized committees such as the loan repayment committee, social action committee, and procurement committee. Each VO elects its own leaders and appoints a bookkeeper to maintain financial records. At the next level of organization, VOs are integrated into Cluster-Level Federations (CLFs), which focus on scaling livelihood activities and enterprise development (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

Institutional architecture of Jeevika

Through this multilayered institutional architecture, Jeevika established a robust “associational mechanism” for women’s collective empowerment, facilitating the development of women’s agency (Sanyal, Reference Sanyal2009, Reference Sanyal2014). Initially piloted in 2006 across six districts, the model has since been scaled across all thirty-eight districts of Bihar. Jeevika now operates statewide, reaching approximately 12.5 million households.

The institutional architecture of the Jeevika intervention drew upon existing models of poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment that had already been implemented in various Indian states. Core components such as the provision of credit through women’s SHGs, the integration of SHGs into federated structures, the creation of small-scale employment and livelihood opportunities, and the articulation of aspirational roles for SHGs in broader developmental and democratic processes were all elements found in earlier state-led initiatives. Three pioneering examples include the Tamil Nadu government’s Pudhu Vaazhvu Project (PVP, formerly Mahalir Thittam), launched in 1990, the Kerala government’s Kudumbashree program, initiated in 1995, the Velugu Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), which launched in Andhra Pradesh with support from the World Bank in 2000.

When the Government of Bihar launched Jeevika in 2006, the SERP model served as a foundational blueprint. However, rather than being a direct transplant, it was contextually adapted to suit local needs. This process involved cross-regional learning: SHG leaders from Andhra Pradesh traveled to Bihar to support SHG formation, while women from Bihar undertook immersion visits to Andhra to train as community mobilizers. Upon their return, these mobilizers played a pivotal role in catalyzing SHG formation across Bihar. This form of knowledge exchange and local adaptation underscores that Jeevika exemplifies a process of co-production and adaptive implementation, rather than “institutional monocropping” (Andrews et al., Reference Andrews, Pritchett and Woolcock2017; Evans, Reference Evans2004) – the wholesale transplantation of idealized institutional blueprints without sensitivity to local contexts and cultures.

Women’s SHG-based programs such as Jeevika embody the aspirations and values advanced by India’s long-standing women’s movements – movements that themselves trace their roots to the social reform initiatives of the colonial era (Krishnaraj, Reference Krishnaraj2012). In the nineteenth century, Indian social reformers across several regions launched movements to abolish regressive practices affecting Hindu women, such as sati (widow immolation), child marriage, the prohibition of widow remarriage, and the confinement of women to the domestic sphere. These reformers championed women’s education, the possibility of remarriage for Hindu widows, and women’s participation in public life.

Between 1917 and 1927, key national women’s organizations such as the All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC) and the Women’s India Association (WIA) were established. These organizations advocated for women’s suffrage and legal reforms in marriage and property rights, laying the groundwork for collective women’s action in the public sphere. The nationalist movement led by Mahatma Gandhi further legitimized women’s public engagement. Gandhi actively encouraged women’s participation in civil disobedience and the Swadeshi movement, which promoted economic self-reliance and resistance to foreign goods. Around the same time, Subhas Chandra Bose’s formation of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, an all-female combat unit, marked a pioneering development.

In the postindependence (after 1947) period, the report “Towards Equality” by the Committee on the Status of Women (1974) marked a pivotal moment in the contemporary Indian women’s movement.Footnote ⁷ The report revealed entrenched gender disparities despite constitutional assurances of equality and called for a broad range of reforms, including the mobilization of women’s collectives at the grassroots level. The legacy of Gandhian cooperative ideals also played a role in shaping these efforts. In 1972, Ela Bhatt founded the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in Gujarat, the first women’s cooperative and trade union focused on organizing low-income women in the informal sector (Bhatt, Reference Bhatt2006). SEWA provided its members with access to credit, food security, employment opportunities, and legal recognition, and became a globally recognized model for empowering working-class women.

Building on these efforts, the Mahila Samakhya program, launched by the Government of India in 1988, further institutionalized women’s empowerment by promoting the formation of women’s collectives across rural India. Together, these historical and contemporary movements provided a normative and organizational foundation upon which SHG-based programs like Jeevika could be developed and scaled.

In essence, Jeevika can be understood as an example of “induced” interventions that adapted and scaled up home-grown organic social movements (Mansuri and Rao, Reference Mansuri and Rao2012). While the provision of credit to poor women constitutes a shared cornerstone of the SHG model and globally prevalent microfinance approaches, important distinctions differentiate them. Many microcredit models (pioneered by Grameen and BRAC in Bangladesh) have evolved from their original nonprofit, NGO-led structures into for-profit, commercialized entities. Many of these pioneering organizations have transitioned into full-service financial institutions or banks.

Similarly, the dominant global model of financial inclusion – led by microfinance institutions (MFIs) and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) – has been largely commercial in nature. By contrast, the SHG model as implemented in India, including Jeevika, remains a nonprofit, state-supported initiative. While it does prioritize the provision of low-cost credit as a poverty-alleviation strategy, credit alone is not the sole focus. Rather, the model incorporates explicit goals of social empowerment through the construction of grassroots women’s institutions.

This approach positions Indian SHGs not only as financial intermediaries but also as institutional platforms upon which a wide array of “vertical” development interventions can be layered. Over the past two decades, a diverse range of programs – spanning nutrition, maternal health, food security, income generation, and governance convergence – have been integrated into the institutional architecture of Jeevika. In doing so, SHGs have come to serve as critical conduits for state-led development, embodying a more holistic and participatory vision of empowerment.

1.2 A Brief Review of the Impact of Jeevika and Other SHG Programs in India

Jeevika has been very open to external research, resulting in a substantial body of literature evaluating its impacts. Among the earliest evaluations is Datta (Reference Datta2015), which focused on Phase I of the project (2008–2011). Employing propensity score matching methods on data from approximately 7,000 households across 400 villages, the study reported significant reductions in household debt. On average, households in treatment areas had outstanding debts of Rs. 5,000, compared to Rs. 14,500 in control areas. Moreover, treatment households were more likely to borrow for productive activities or to refinance high-interest debts, rather than for consumption. Asset ownership among treatment households also improved significantly, with higher rates of ownership of mobile phones, watches, livestock (such as cows and bullocks), and other durable goods.

Beyond economic gains, the intervention also yielded notable outcomes in women’s social empowerment. After four years, 9 percent of women in treatment villages attended gram sabhas (village assemblies), compared to 3.5 percent in control villages. Additionally, 79 percent of women in treatment areas reported expressing opinions on their children’s education (10 percentage points higher than controls), and 83 percent reported willingness to intervene in or prevent instances of domestic violence (a 9-percentage point increase relative to controls).

In 2011, the expansion of Jeevika to Phase II was deliberately subject to a randomized rollout to facilitate a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) conducted by Hoffmann et al. (Reference Hoffmann, Rao, Surendra and Datta2021) between 2012 and 2014. The study involved 179 gram panchayats (GPs): in 89 GPs, Jeevika was launched in 2012 (treatment group), while in the remaining 90, it was introduced eighteen months later in 2014 (control group). Within each GP, one or two villages were randomly sampled, followed by random selection of forty households per village, with deliberate oversampling of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) households to reflect the program’s focus on economically disadvantaged groups. The final sample included 8,900 households across 333 villages in 179 GPs.

While this design enhances confidence in the causal validity of findings, the timing of the evaluation – just eighteen months post-rollout – limited the detection of longer-term or social impacts. Nonetheless, the study documented strong economic effects. SHG membership rose by 47 percent, and SHG-linked loan uptake increased by 28 percent. This led to a marked shift in household borrowing patterns: 28 percent of debt was moved from high-interest informal lenders to Jeevika-supported SHGs. At a macro level, the study observed a 35 percent decline in the interest rate for informal borrowing, suggesting that increased credit access through Jeevika created competitive pressure on informal lenders. Together, these changes were estimated to increase household annual disposable income by approximately Rs. 1,441, which is approximately 2.3 percent of annual household consumption expenditure in control villages as measured by the second-round survey.

More recent research has revisited the original Hoffman et al RCT sample to explore long-term and social impacts that require more time to emerge. Sen and Sharan (Reference Sen and Sharan2024) investigated the political empowerment of SC women in the 2016 GP elections, four years after Jeevika was introduced in treatment areas. Their analysis revealed a 126 percent increase in the number of SC women running for office in treated GPs. Notably, these candidates were disproportionately drawn from poorer and less-educated households and were more likely to be SHG leaders than ordinary members. The study also found higher voter turnout in GPs reserved for SCs. The authors interpret these findings as evidence that SHG participation cultivates leadership capacity and enables SHG networks to function as platforms for political mobilization.

Attanasio et al. (Reference Orazio, Kochar, Mahajan and Surendra2023), using both the original 2012–14 data and new data from 2019, examined the effect of SHG membership on group-based risk sharing. In villages where SHGs had been active for longer periods and were better implemented, SHG members demonstrated significantly improved ability to provide mutual financial assistance. Separately, a district-level RCT assessing a nutrition intervention delivered through Jeevika reported significant improvements in dietary diversity (Scott et al., Reference Scott, Gupta and Menon2022).

Beyond the evaluations of Jeevika in Bihar, there is a substantial body of research on related SHG-based programs across India, many of which have been subject to rigorous impact evaluations (Deshpande Reference Deshpande2022, provides an excellent review). One of the earliest evaluations was conducted by Deininger and Liu (Reference Deininger and Liu2013) on Andhra Pradesh’s Velugu project (2000–2004), which found improvements in female empowerment, dietary diversity, and household consumption. Desai and Joshi (Reference Desai and Joshi2014) implemented an RCT on SEWA’s SHG program in Rajasthan, reporting increased women’s participation in group savings schemes, greater engagement in non-farm labor, and improved involvement in both household decision-making and civic activities.

Deshpande and Khanna (Reference Deshpande and Khanna2021), in a study of an SHG initiative in Maharashtra, found evidence that the program fostered significant social capital among participating women. In Tamil Nadu, Khanna et al. (Reference Khanna, Kochhar and Palaniswamy2015) evaluated the Pudhu Vaazhvu Project and observed a notable decline in high-cost debt, diversification of livelihoods, and some improvement in women’s empowerment and political participation. Complementing these findings, Palaniswamy et al. (Reference Palaniswamy, Parthasarathy and Rao2019) reported that PVP participation increased women’s involvement in village assemblies not only through attendance but also through greater participation in discussions, longer speaking time, and a redirection of the assembly agenda toward PVP-related concerns – at times crowding out other community issues.

Prillaman (Reference Prillaman2023) found that women involved in SHGs in Madhya Pradesh, were substantially more likely to engage in local politics, particularly through participation in village assembly meetings. Christian et al. (Reference Christian, Kandpal, Palaniswamy and Rao2019) assessed the responses of villages in Odisha during the aftermath of Cyclone Phailin and found that villages with functioning SHGs were significantly more resilient due to their enhanced organizational capacity. Finally, using social network data derived from name-generator questions and formal network analysis, Davidson and Sanyal (Reference Davidson and Sanyal2017) found that credit-group membership in Karnataka expanded women’s social networks, particularly non-kin ties over kin ties.

Beginning in 2011, these different SHG programs were integrated into the nationwide National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM). Kochhar et al. (Reference Kochar, Barooah and Jain2020), using quasi-experimental methods on a large-scale dataset comprising 27,000 households across nine Indian states, documented substantial economic benefits. They found that SHG participation led to increased access to credit from both SHGs and banks, which translated into higher household incomes – approximately Rs. 11,000 more annually after an additional 2.5 years of SHG membership, representing a 19 percent increase over a baseline of Rs. 57,000. The program also led to increased labor force participation among both women and men in SHG-member households, and a reduction in reliance on informal loans. Further analysis by Kochhar et al. (Reference Kochar, Nagabhushana, Sarkar, Shah and Singh2022) indicated that in states with larger allocations of Community Investment Funds (CIF), SHG participation strengthened women’s intra-household bargaining power, particularly regarding decisions on household expenditure.

Qualitative and mixed-methods studies of SHG programs also deserve mention. Sanyal (Reference Sanyal2009, Reference Sanyal2014, Reference Sanyal2015) analyzed SHGs’ role in enhancing women’s agency, normative influence, and social capital drawing on interviews with hundreds of SHG members. She argues that organizing socially isolated women into SHGs stimulates an “associational mechanism” that cultivates women’s capabilities and capacity for collective action. These effects were most evident when SHG members engaged in collective mobilizations or participated in grassroots political institutions such as village assemblies. Notably, these gains were not primarily driven by economic advancement. In further work on citizen’s participation in village assembly deliberations in South India, Sanyal and Rao (2018) and Palaniswamy et al. (Reference Palaniswamy, Parthasarathy and Rao2019) have shown that rural women who publicly identify as SHG leaders or members articulate demands for public goods (rather than individual public entitlements or grievances) and in more informed and sophisticated ways in contrast to unaffiliated women.

Agarwal (Reference Agarwal2019) examines women-only group farming initiatives led by women’s SHGs in Telangana and Kerala, where women lease and cultivate land collectively. She finds that group farming enhances women’s economic, social, and political empowerment – especially when supported by institutional infrastructure and state commitment. Kerala’s decentralized and better-supported model yielded significantly higher productivity and income than Telangana’s, where state support was limited and caste-based constraints more severe. Banerjee (Reference Banerjee2023) conducted a village ethnography and found that SHGs fostered horizontal solidarities among women, bridging caste and class divides. These solidarities facilitated “civic growth” and “natality” – the capability for active citizenship and political agency – and influenced local electoral politics, enabling women to challenge corrupt leadership and shape village governance. Dulhunty (Reference Dulhunty2024) similarly found that SHGs reduced gendered isolation and fostered “power with” – a collective form of agency that enabled women to contest patriarchal norms. However, she highlights the variability of outcomes depending on program design. SHGs grounded in feminist frameworks are more likely to promote dignity, mobility, and solidarity than those guided by neoliberal logics.

Taken together, these studies demonstrate that the benefits of SHG-based programs are both economic and social in nature. On the economic front, SHG membership is associated with reduced household debt, greater asset ownership, enhanced income levels, and improved access to affordable credit. Socially, SHGs have been shown to increase women’s participation in political and civic life, build social capital, facilitate mutual financial support, and enhance empowerment. Notably, the economic impacts of SHG participation often become evident within twelve to eighteen months of group formation and the establishment of federated, bank-linked structures. Social impacts, by contrast, have a longer gestation period, typically beginning to manifest after four years – an observation reinforced by findings presented in this Element.

1.3 Understanding “How” and “Why”: The Qualitative Counterpart to Quantitative Evidence on Jeevika

This Element offers a complementary contribution to the growing body of literature on Jeevika and other SHG-based programs discussed above. Specifically, we focus on the processes and mechanisms underlying the social impacts of SHGs – the “how” and “why” of these transformative outcomes – which are particularly striking given the rural Indian contexts in which these programs operate.

To explore these dynamics, we conducted a four-year qualitative study (2011–2015) across ten villages that formed a sub-sample of those included in the original RCT-based impact evaluation of Jeevika (Hoffmann et al., Reference Hoffmann, Rao, Surendra and Datta2021) and subsequent related studies, see Figure 2 for a timeline. The ten villages span two sets of triplets in Madhubani and Muzaffarpur districts, and two sets of pairs in Madhepura and Saharsa districts. These villages fall into three categories: (a) two Phase I villages where Jeevika had been active since 2006, (b) four Phase II villages where Jeevika began in 2011, and (c) four control villages where Jeevika was not introduced until after 2015.

Figure 2

Project and research timeline

The Phase I villages were randomly selected from the broader RCT sample in Muzaffarpur and Madhubani districts. Once these were identified, each was paired with a Phase II and a control village using a two-pronged matching strategy. First, we employed quantitative matching via propensity score methods using 2001 Census data on key variables such as literacy rates, caste composition, landlessness, outmigration, and infrastructure. This yielded a shortlist of candidate control villages – three in Muzaffarpur and two in Madhubani.

To finalize the matches, we supplemented the statistical matching with qualitative assessments. Field investigators visited the shortlisted villages and conducted week-long exploratory studies to examine their geographical, economic, social, and political characteristics (see Table 1). For the comparison between districts where Jeevika started in Phase I (2006) and where it started only in Phase II (2011), we included two additional pairs of Phase II and control villages from the Kosi region (Madhepura and Saharsa districts).

This integrated sampling strategy – combining quantitative rigor with qualitative depth – enabled us to construct meaningful “statistical clones” for comparison. It strengthens the basis for causal inference regarding the social changes that Jeevika induced, while also allowing us to unpack the pathways through which these impacts emerged.

Across all ten villages in our study, residential patterns reveal a distinct caste-wise spatial concentration into hamlets or neighborhoods, commonly referred to as tolas. These hamlets are caste-homogenous and are often physically separated from each other by roads, fields, or other natural and built boundaries – signifying a clear pattern of spatial and social segregation along caste lines.

In the sample villages from Madhubani district, upper-caste communities – particularly Brahmins and Bhumihars – form the majority. Their hamlets are typically situated near key village institutions such as the temple, pond, and school, reflecting both symbolic and practical centrality in village life. In contrast, lower-caste hamlets – home to SC groups such as the Musahar, Pasi, Ram, and Dhobi subcastes – extend toward the peripheries. The Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in these villages include the Yadav, Mandal, Badhai, Hajam, and Teli subcastes. A notable difference between two Madhubani villages – Ramganj and Virganj – is their religious composition. Ramganj has a significant Muslim population, including groups such as the Sheikh, Ansari, Nutt, and Pamariya, whereas Virganj has only a single Muslim household (Sheikh). Livelihoods here are predominantly agricultural or agriculturally linked.

The Muzaffarpur villages share similarities with Madhubani, but with variations in caste composition and economic orientation. Here, the dominant upper castes include Chaudhury and Rajput. OBC and middle-caste communities consist of Ansari and Badhai, while the SCs include the Pasi, Ram, Paswan, and Sabzifarosh subcastes. Unlike Madhubani’s farm-centric economy, Muzaffarpur villages are more bazaar-centric, with local markets playing a prominent economic role.

The villages in Madhepura district are broadly comparable to those in Madhubani in terms of caste and livelihood patterns. In contrast, the Saharsa district villages exhibit a markedly different configuration. Both are situated along major district markets, around which hamlets have organically developed. These market hubs have historically attracted trading communities, and local livelihoods are far more commercial than agrarian. Common occupations include tailoring, running private tutoring centers (referred to as “coaching institutions”), and bangle-making.

Taken together, these differences across villages, particularly in caste composition, religious diversity, and economic orientation, shaped both the opportunities and constraints through which Jeevika unfolded. They help explain variation in the pace of change, forms of resistance encountered, and the pathways through which women’s participation translated into shifts in mobility, authority, and political engagement; themes we return to in later sections.

This qualitative study was conducted by the authors with a team of four field researchers from Praxis, an NGO specializing in participatory research in the development sector. The researchers, all young women and men from Bihar, had graduated from local colleges and universities and were fluent in Hindi (and in its local dialects) and English. The researchers were familiar with village life and adept at engaging with women and men across caste lines, facilitating access to households and community spaces. They served as local ethnographers, providing valuable insights into the social dynamics of the villages under study.

In each village, we began with preliminary research using participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methods to understand the local political economy. Subsequently, over four years, we collected qualitative data across twelve cycles. Every four to six months, the ethnographers visited the villages for one cycle of data collection, always accompanied by one or more of the three principal investigators (PIs), who coauthored this Element. All three PIs had functional knowledge of Hindi, allowing them to understand the interviews and interactions with respondents.

The fieldwork involved week-long periods of observation and interviews within each hamlet, with each village consisting of approximately ten hamlets. The ethnographers interviewed a diverse range of respondents across the socioeconomic spectrum and conducted follow-up interviews with initial respondents in the final data collection cycles, generating a set of longitudinal interviews. These allowed us to examine the respondents’ experiences and reflections on the changes induced by Jeevika and the formation of SHGs.

In the Phase I villages, retrospective interviews provided insights about the early implementation and experiences of Jeevika, which began in 2006. By the start of our study in 2011, SHGs had been active for five years. Thus, data from Phase I villages – gathered through retrospective accounts as well as interviews and observations conducted during the ongoing operation of SHGs – covered a nearly decade-long period from 2006 to 2015. In contrast, in the Phase II villages, all interviews and observations were conducted concurrently with Jeevika’s launch and rollout. As a result, our findings from these villages reflect a four-year window aligned with the duration of our fieldwork (2011–2015).

In the initial stage of participant recruitment, we selected individuals to represent a range of socioeconomic strata within each village. In subsequent stages, we employed purposive and snowball sampling techniques to expand the participant pool. To collect qualitative data, we used multiple strategies: (a) individual interviews – both structured and unstructured – with women who participated in Jeevika and those who did not; (b) focus group discussions with both participant and non-participant women; (c) non-participant observation of SHG meetings, trainings, workshops, mobilization drives, and interactions at various administrative levels (village, block, district); and (d) interviews and focus groups with men and key village figures, including religious leaders, panchayat members, moneylenders, ration shop dealers (PDS), landlords, and other public officials. This multi-source data enabled us to compare Jeevika’s impact across its two implementation phases, as well as across treatment and control villages. It also facilitated an assessment of variations in project facilitation quality between the two phases.

To supplement village-level data, we conducted interviews with twenty-four Jeevika personnel at different levels of the organizational hierarchy. These included state, district, and block project managers, training officers, area and cluster coordinators, consultants, and young professionals, both in our field sites and in Patna. Interviews, lasting one to two hours, were conducted in Hindi or Maithili, recorded, and transcribed verbatim into English. We also directly observed project activities carried out by frontline personnel, allowing us to study social processes in real time rather than relying solely on retrospective accounts.

Transcript analysis was conducted using NVivo software. We employed both index coding – guided by themes of interest embedded in our research questions – and analytical coding, which inductively identified emerging themes from respondents’ narratives. Our analytical process proceeded in three stages. First, we identified changes in gender roles and relations as described by women and men in the treatment villages, focusing on those changes attributed to Jeevika and SHG participation. Second, we traced the mechanisms underlying these changes – such as SHG formation, group meeting participation, and financial management – to understand how change occurred. Third, we conducted interpretive analyses to examine why these mechanisms were transformative. For instance, we explored why organizing women into SHGs, requiring regular participation in meetings, and facilitating access to loans – despite limited direct income-generation by women – produced the observed outcomes.

Our interpretive approach is grounded in the specific sociocultural context of village life in Bihar, with particular attention to its impact on marginalized groups. Attending to context, rather than assuming it away, or controlling for it, was essential to understanding the magnitude and meaning of the changes experienced by SHG members. The qualitative design enabled us to adopt an emic approach, foregrounding participants’ own meanings and assessments. This approach allowed us to understand, from their point of view, why certain transformations were prioritized over others.

This Element centers on two core sections grounded in four years of qualitative fieldwork. Section 2, which draws on Sanyal et al. (Reference Sanyal, Rao and Majumdar2015), analyzes how Jeevika shifted gender roles by enabling women’s access to and management of money, expanding their mobility, and supporting their participation in public life. These processes helped redefine women’s identities and roles, especially in contexts marked by restrictive patriarchal norms. Through routine engagement with SHG finances, public meetings, and collective action, women gained social standing and challenged entrenched hierarchies. The section concludes that deep cultural change requires more than credit or transfers – it depends on institutions led by marginalized women, cultivated over time.

Section 3, building on Majumdar et al. (Reference Majumdar, Rao and Sanyal2017), explores how Jeevika’s architecture enabled such institution-building. By granting women access to symbolic, financial, and networked resources, the program fostered new cultural competencies and collective agency – effectively operating as an induced social movement.

Section 4 reflects on the broader implications for the theory of cultural change and shifting gender norms, and for development policy.

2.1 Access to Money

Having access to money, let alone control over it, was a challenge for most women in the villages we studied. Both men and women believed that economic resources should be controlled by men. Many also thought that women “don’t have a feel” for money and that they end up wasting it. “You don’t put money in the hands of women. If you let women handle money, they’ll be so happy they’ll go crazy!” said a man from a control village.Footnote ⁸

In most households where husbands were present throughout the year (i.e., not migrant workers), the man managed all aspects of household finances – earning, saving, spending, borrowing, and lending. Women had to ask their husbands for money when they needed to make purchases from roaming vendors who arrived at their doorsteps with various goods. Women with migrant husbands or older women often managed finances in the absence of their husbands, but they still did very little without permission.

Jeevika and other SHG-based interventions typically have two financial components: credit and savings. Small savings played a significant role in making women feel empowered through their participation in Jeevika SHGs. Half of the women we interviewed had never borrowed a loan, either from their SHG savings or from the SHG-bank-linked credit line, yet they spoke animatedly about the financial awakening they experienced through Jeevika. This financial awakening can be attributed to three aspects linked to money associated with Jeevika: controlling money, counting money, and circulating money. These aspects were encapsulated in the messages: “We can access the money, it stays with us,” “We can count the money,” and “We can decide whom to give it to.”

Controlling personal savings secured in Jeevika (even when set aside from the husband’s earnings) held special value for women, who rarely had money protected from the claims of other family members. “Owning” this money became synonymous with belonging to the SHG and infused the money with meaning. “Owning the money means owning the group. Until every single member takes ownership of the group and sees it as her responsibility, there can be no development,” shared a group member.Footnote ⁹

Savings in Jeevika SHGs were sanctified as money over which women had full authority, and this had an empowering effect. Jeevika personnel and community mobilizers (CMs) repeatedly convinced women that the money would always be in their control; Jeevika women were encouraged to handle money independently and take full ownership. Each SHG was provided with a moneybox and a register, both of which were kept in the treasurer’s house and used during weekly meetings. The CM’s role was limited to noting weekly transactions in the register.

Counting money regularly was another significant act for women, given low levels of literacy which was a commonly cited reason in control villages for why women were considered unfit to handle money. “Women are dehaati (unsophisticated, rustic); men are better able to negotiate and bargain outside the home,” said one man.Footnote ¹⁰ This pejorative notion held by some men was also internalized by many women, who considered themselves incompetent in the world of money and finance. Equating illiteracy with incompetence, they were often excluded from financial decisions within the household. Those forced by circumstances to handle money were acutely aware of doing so despite their illiteracy. “In my family, I take care of the money because my husband and sons are away. They give me money to save and to take care of all the expenses. My husband never goes to the bank. He says, ‘You handle it.’ But I still let him know whenever I take a loan from someone. I am illiterate, though, so I have to memorize everything,” shared a woman from a control village.Footnote ¹¹ Yet, a woman from a treatment village who had become accustomed to handling money through the SHG struck a different tone: “Earlier, we were illiterate. Now my son says, ‘I don’t have to worry, my mother’s there to take care of everything!’ He earns and sends me money, and I repay my loan in easy installments.”Footnote ¹²

Transacting with money in Jeevika SHGs over the years gave women important skills, such as performing basic manual calculations with relatively large sums of money, calculating simple and compound interest, and figuring out repayment installments. They took great pride in the routine task of counting their savings every week. In most SHGs, the CM and the women serving as the group leader and the treasurer did the calculations. However, in some groups, women rotated this task. “Those who don’t know how to count money are made president for one day, and they are asked to collect savings from the other members of the group so that they can do it themselves. This is done on a rotation basis, and other women are also given a chance to learn counting,” explained one participant.Footnote ¹³

Teaching women how to count money and calculate interest seemed like trivial components of the project, but according to the women, it had a profound and lasting impact. This was most evident when we studied a few groups that had failed to function properly. These groups illustrated how educated, socially advantaged members could usurp the group’s access to credit for personal profiteering when fellow group members, handicapped by their illiteracy, refrained from monitoring the group’s financial affairs. For instance, in one of the groups in Saifpur, a few educated, upper-caste women repeatedly borrowed from the group at a 2 percent monthly interest rate and lent to non-members at 5 percent, pocketing the difference. For a long time, group members from the Halwai (sweet makers) community had no knowledge of this. They relied on the educated, upper-caste group members from the Chaudhury community to conduct all financial transactions. Upon finally uncovering this, they complained to the CM, who refused to do much about it as she was an upper-caste Chaudhury herself.

In the context of poverty alleviation programs such as Jeevika, literacy can be a weapon that allows elites to capture the benefits if left unchecked. Therefore, for lower-caste women, becoming financially conversant had a significant impact. It positioned them to be protected from being duped by all manner of lenders and financial operators. Hardened by their experience, these women had become vocal in group meetings and constantly reinforced the idea that the money belonged to everyone. What had taken place in this group reflected a wider change. In every meeting we observed, lower-caste women reiterated to upper-caste women that they understood they had equal rights over the money since they had all invested the same amount. “The group is for everyone. You’re not special here! You save ten bucks, and I save ten bucks, too,” they asserted.Footnote ¹⁴

Circulating money within the SHG through peer-lending practices enabled women to wield new forms of authority and agency. When women sought loans, they presented their requests during group meetings, where members collectively deliberated and decided on approvals, often weighing competing needs. For women accustomed to others exerting power over them, this governing role in lending decisions marked a significant step toward financial self-governance and autonomy. A group member outlined the step-by-step process.

These practices not only facilitated verbal claims-making and participatory decision-making but also honed women’s skills in arguing their cases and justifying decisions based on financial and economic circumstances. Group meetings thus became vital spaces for public articulation and deliberation that were otherwise unavailable to these women in other aspects of life. When conducted fairly, these processes instilled women with a sense of financial self-efficacy. However, issues arose when elites dominated proceedings or when malpractices occurred due to insufficient facilitation. Nevertheless, groups that addressed these challenges and adopted fair practices deepened women’s confidence in their financial abilities.

One member shared how her group implemented a preventive rule against malpractices, exemplifying their authority and capability to uphold integrity. Reflecting on past conflicts, particularly regarding inter-loans and accusations of favoritism among group leaders, she explained that new rules now required signatures from all ten members for withdrawals. In cases where not all members were present, at least eight signatures were mandatory, ensuring transparency and fairness.

Demonstrating to themselves and to others outside their group that they could effectively control, count, and circulate money was transformative for women. It challenged the entrenched belief that only men were capable of managing finances, granting women access to household funds. Women asserted their haq (right) over household finances and decisions, citing their newfound ability to secure loans. “Before, even for ten rupees, I had to scramble. Now, I can easily borrow as much as I want. No one can even tell if I am in need (of money) or how I am managing. No one gets to know anything about it. It’s brought many positive changes in my life, which is good. I get respect,” one woman remarked.Footnote ¹⁷

This stood in stark contrast to neighboring control villages where women rarely had a say in household financial matters. Even those whose husbands worked away often deferred to their husbands over the phone or relied on their fathers-in-law for decisions.

Women also valued the preferential access to a credit source that offered loans at a guaranteed and standardized low interest rate, which was the most visible and tangible material benefit of their SHG membership to their families. Even if women never borrowed a loan themselves, knowing they had access to these funds for essential household needs had an empowering effect. It enabled them to participate in financial decisions typically made solely by their husbands.

The right to question their husbands marked a significant shift in many women’s lives, shared one member. She recounted how her newfound ability to secure loans allowed her to assert herself when her husband dismissed her input.

Access to credit gave many women significant bargaining power within their households, leading to a role reversal where men began requesting loans from women instead of the other way around.

Despite these loans being repaid from men’s earnings, the opportunity to access low-interest credit through women was highly valued. This dependence on women for access to credit increased their perceived value in their husbands’ eyes. Women shared how access to Jeevika loans reduced the financial burden on their husbands by providing access to low-interest funds which not only enabled them to share the household’s financial responsibilities but also inspired them to explore income-generating opportunities beyond their usual domestic roles.

In the microcredit literature, borrowing for a husband’s business is often viewed as disempowering for women. It is associated with potential exploitation and exacerbating gender disparities in asset ownership, reinforcing existing male dominance. However, participants in Jeevika rarely differentiated between borrowing for themselves or for their husbands and family. They did not perceive supporting the main household enterprise, typically managed by their husbands, as a reaffirmation of vulnerability. This perspective likely stemmed from the understanding that the family’s primary income source sustained all family members, even if men managed and ran the economic activities.

Another major reason why credit from Jeevika empowered women, even without turning them into entrepreneurs, was its role in reducing dependency on relatives and informal lenders for loans. Moneylenders, landlords, and employers could be unreliable, discriminatory, or charge exorbitant interest rates. Relying solely on them or on financially constrained relatives could be life-threatening during medical emergencies.

Jeevika provides a Community Health Fund (CHF) that offers loans for medical expenses at a 1 percent monthly interest rate, half the usual 2 percent rate. Women often cited health emergencies as their primary reason for borrowing, followed by expenses for ceremonies, home construction, and less frequently, repaying old debts or funding entrepreneurial activities. Accessing low-interest loans during medical crises greatly enhanced women’s sense of financial self-efficacy.

The ability to borrow easily at low rates during medical emergencies prevented families from selling assets under duress or falling into substantial debt. Men, appreciative of this group-based borrowing system, recognized that it alleviated the pressure of arranging for loans under critical time pressure, often at unfavorable terms.

These benefits were amplified for poor lower-caste Hindu and Muslim women. In one of the two treatment villages, where many men worked as migrant laborers, these women were accustomed to making financial transactions. However, they were severely disadvantaged in their ability to borrow from moneylenders, who offered them the least favorable terms. Through their SHGs, they could borrow more easily and affordably, at the same rates as women of other castes, classes, and religions. In sum, Jeevika loans provided much-needed money without tarnishing people’s dignity, which was especially important for lower-caste borrowers. “We don’t have to beg for money” or “ask for alms” was a common refrain among these women. Moneylenders, now operating in a more competitive financial landscape due to Jeevika’s lower interest rates, were displeased with this development. Some even mocked their women clients and refused to lend to SHG members. “I tell them, why should I lend to you? Go ask your group for money!” said a goldsmith-cum-moneylender in Saifpur.Footnote ²⁶

A small number of women borrowed to expand their existing income-generating enterprises, and an even smaller number borrowed to start new economic activities as first-time entrepreneurs. Despite the small numbers, the impacts were significant. An exemplary case was Sudha Devi, the CLF president in Saifpur. She summarized her story, saying, “Before, I had to worry about having enough to eat. Now I’m sending my grandchildren to private school!” Her acumen in accessing both small and large loans from Jeevika to run her village convenience store made her the poster child of Jeevika. She frequently mentioned that her success had made her husband’s remittances a drop in the ocean, motivating him to return home and help with the business. She boldly embraced and reinforced her role as the family’s breadwinner.

In Ramganj, some men responded by starting their own savings groups to outdo Jeevika. A man, who served as the president of such a group and was a former candidate for the post of Mukhiya (Village Head), explained their intention unabashedly.

This assertion of not considering kin relationships for lending or punishing defaulters was a direct jab at Jeevika SHGs. Women SHG members referred to each other as didi, or sister, a term Jeevika used to foster group solidarity.

Credit from Jeevika had an empowering effect on women for many reasons, most of which had nothing to do with entrepreneurship; Jeevika’s enabling effect came from financially awakening women by giving them control over money and reducing their dependency on relatives and the informal credit market. Unlike loans from moneylenders, which triggered feelings of humiliation, Jeevika loans produced feelings of pride and self-efficacy. They also reduced their family’s vulnerability to losing dignity or being treated poorly. Jeevika transformed borrowing into a right, a positive entitlement, raising women’s value to themselves and to others.

2.2 Spatial and Physical Mobility

In rural Bihar, femininity is demarcated by confinement to domestic spaces, limited socialization within intimate circles of family and kin, and the inability to move freely without a chaperone. Village men and women interpret physical and spatial mobility as a reflection of a person’s gender and caste. Thus, women’s mobility is seen as immodest and wayward, leading to its suppression. These perceptions contribute to women’s gendered isolation, deliberately structured to subdue their power over their own lives and those of others. This suppression diminishes their ability to get things done and curbs their collective power to achieve desired goals. Therefore, changing mobility and participation in the public sphere are challenging. Yet, Jeevika was able to redefine physical and spatial mobility as signifying competence and self-sufficiency.

In these rural communities, the extent of women’s travel, the places they can go to with or without an escort, and their activities in those spaces are integral to their gendered disadvantaged status. Being a woman was associated with the domestic sphere, where they served their families and were protected by men. These spatial boundaries were reinforced by normative and physical sanctions from families and communities; women could be restrained or even beaten for going places without permission and an escort. In our control villages, men’s narratives revealed that, for women, mobility, morality, and modesty were closely linked. Men typically viewed mobile women as immoral and perceived the public domain, such as local bazaars, as threatening to women’s sexuality and commitment to their families.

A typical conversation illustrates these views:

This brief dialogue highlights the major themes observed in several hours of interviews and observations. In control villages, moral codes of behavior remained resistant to change, even though daily practices were beginning to yield to the pressures of changing times and needs. Deviations were denounced. Nonconformist women who used their influence and information to inspire others to be agentic and break conventions were viewed as a menace. Such women risked being labeled as troublemakers.

Negative views expressed in control villages were echoed in treatment villages by men in households where women had chosen not to affiliate with Jeevika. A police constable in Ramganj starkly declared that a woman’s proper place was within the household because women were household property, and husbands had proprietary rights over their wives. He viewed women venturing out as signifying male deficiency. In this framework, achieving gender equality would remain incomplete because it was a zero-sum game. Women gaining freedom would entail men losing status and power, ultimately loosening the proprietary rights husbands exercised over their wives.

These gender norms were deeply internalized by women and tied to caste. While upper-caste women could not step out of their homes and neighborhoods, lower-caste women who had to do so could not obtain societal consent. For Brahmin, Kayasth, Bhumihar, Rajput (Hindu upper castes), and Sheikh (Muslim upper caste) women alike, their courtyard was their world. Some of these women were proud of their limited mobility and considered it as a reflection of their husband’s fulfilling their provider-protector role. “Women should not step foot outside their threshold. Women from the Brahmin community will starve to death, but they won’t step outside,” said one woman.Footnote ³⁰ Another woman countered with a rhetorical question, “Why do I need to step out of the house if my husband is providing for me!”Footnote ³¹

Dominant discourses had permeated communities with caste privilege and class advantage (for instance, some Brahmins and Sheikhs) to those without. However, the political empowerment of lower caste groups in the past two decades and a dramatic rise in male out-migration among them had introduced discourses countering the dominant narrative. In many focus group discussions with Yadav and Paswan women, particularly the wives of migrants, some argued that life would be difficult if a woman did not step outside the house.Footnote ³² Yet, women who had to go out did not glorify or enjoy this liberty. Like the police constable mentioned earlier, they saw it as symptomatic of male deficiency. They perceived sitting at home and doing household work as “a luxury, available only to women from well-to-do and ‘decent’ families.”Footnote ³³

Thus, women’s freedom of mobility was seen as a tainted freedom, a necessity arising from compromised circumstances. This cultural meaning was similar for those who disapproved of it and those who practiced it. Occasionally, Brahmin women whose husbands had migrated did not see any harm in stepping into the public domain to fulfill their family’s caregiving needs. Even this attempt at reinterpreting the meaning of women’s mobility out of the house relied on caregiving-based justifications. Thus, the household as a physical and symbolic space was crucial to the legibility of women as “wifely” instead of “wayward.”

In treatment villages, spurring women’s mobility and amplifying their voices were key to the process of undoing the everyday practice of gender. Notions of interactional propriety within the family hierarchy meant that women had to keep their voice subdued so it would not travel outside the walls of the house. Physically leaving the perimeter of the house and speaking with strangers were considered egregious violations, only to be permitted or tolerated when required by unfortunate circumstances (usually male incompetence or absence). From this being the reality of their post-marital lives to being able to go places freely was experienced by the women as a dramatic improvement.

We are not claiming that Jeevika women could now go anywhere they pleased. Their increased mobility should not be read as their ability to go to places for personal pleasure (a freedom still reserved for men) but rather for an important personal or household purpose (like visiting markets, banks, schools, health centers, etc.). This qualification of freedom grounded on serving a purpose came through in several participants’ recounting of the change. An upper-caste member qualified her freedom and ability to speak with “even men if required.” This was telling of the enormity of the change and its new parameters.

Another group member also serving Jeevika as a community mobilizer justified going out for her family’s needs in a way that seemed to be a clever manipulation of her family’s sentiments. This self-justificatory move that she may have used to convince her husband, and in-laws allowed her to extend the mobility she had gained from doing “I” related work. This captures the spillover effect of physical mobility from the domain of I activities to other domains of life.

Some of the most severely disadvantaged women, who had endured extreme poverty and caste-based discrimination and ignominy, underwent remarkable transformations. Suneeta Devi, a middle-aged widow from the Hajaam tola (traditionally barbers), lived with her parents and defied norms by being vocal, mobile, and self-taught in Madhubani painting – an art traditionally reserved for upper-caste Brahmin women with a national and international market. Despite facing community ridicule, she joined Jeevika’s initiative in her village, becoming instrumental in recruiting women into the SHGs. Initially targeted with verbal assaults for her interactions with male staff, Suneeta’s pioneering role led her to rise as the president of her group and Village Organization (VO). Years later, she achieved further success as a licensed Public Distribution System (PDS) dealer under Jeevika’s livelihood intervention. Through Jeevika, Suneeta gained opportunities to travel beyond her village (to other villages in Bihar), state (to Delhi and Hyderabad), and even internationally (air travel to Bangladesh). She asserted that now no one dared to pass disparaging comments on her being “freefain” (freely mobile) and that the detractors had been silenced, earning her respect and admiration within her community. Suneeta became a beacon of trust among women and was welcomed in every neighborhood.

Sita Devi and her family faced lifelong discrimination as untouchables due to their Dom caste affiliation. Traditionally, Doms have been marginalized for their caste occupation involving handling and cremating dead bodies in Hindu funerary rites. This discrimination was evident in the physical segregation of their community to the village periphery and their proximity to fields used for open defecation. Throughout her life, Sita Devi experienced the invisible aspects of discrimination. She was prohibited from visiting people of other castes, coming into contact with them, or interacting with them. Despite these challenges, she emerged as one of the highest-paid members of Jeevika in Ramganj. As an active Community Resource Person (CRP), she participated in over fifteen mobilization drives, extending her work and travel far beyond her home. Her transformation into a passionate Jeevika didi led her to criticize other women who struggled to assert themselves outside their homes. She derided such women who were limited by their gendered habitus, which she belittled as cooking, cleaning and feeding families.

Sita Devi’s statement highlights a key feature of Jeevika’s organizational functioning. Filling leadership roles – such as Community Resource Persons (CRPs) and leaders of SHGs, VOs, and CLFs – was itself difficult, requiring Jeevika to remain flexible and recruit women it could successfully mobilize. In some cases, these were women whose life circumstances had forced them to fend for themselves, fostering agency and articulateness that made them well suited to leadership. More often, however, Jeevika recruited women who had spent most of their lives as cloistered housewives and were entering the public sphere for the first time. The constraints of operating in rural Bihar made preferential selection for leadership impractical; women were therefore not screened out for lacking prior leadership qualities. As a result, most women who assumed leadership roles were inexperienced and initially lacked mobility and confidence in public settings. Yet participation in SHGs – and especially serving in leadership positions – repeatedly exposed them to new situations, enabling them over time to develop new competencies and substantially expand their skills and capacities.

Women like Suneeta and Sita were mobilized quickly and enrolled early due to their harsh lives. However, upper-caste women proved challenging to integrate into the project. Despite the opportunities for accessing cheap credit and building personal savings, they hesitated to leave the consecrated space of their upper-caste homes and share space with lower-caste women. In Ramganj, dominated by Maithili Brahmins, some women refrained from joining Jeevika because they viewed the work as beneath their dignity. One non-joiner explained her reluctance: “I am not part of any savings group. Lower-caste groups are rife with backbiting and quarrels. They are all illiterate and constantly bicker. That’s what my husband says.”Footnote ³⁸

Savita Devi, a Brahmin woman, initially refused to join, stating, “This is the work of chhotka log (people of lower status and means).”Footnote ³⁹ Sometime later, a combination of economic incentives, skillful facilitation, and exposure to diverse groups during mobilization drives eventually persuaded her to join the SHG and serve as a Jeevika CRP. Even then, she prevented her educated daughter-in-law from joining, asserting, “She’s an educated girl; she’s meant for bigger things. She won’t sit with us illiterates, no way!”Footnote ⁴⁰ Reflecting on her journey, Savita emphasized the transformative impact of seeing other women venture outside their homes:

Change rarely occurs without opposition. And if a change is perceived as calamitous, it is resisted fiercely. In rural Bihar, concerns over losing social control over mobile women outweighed fears about losing economic control due to their newfound access to credit. In places like Ramganj and Saifpur, men and many women resisted new discourses promoting women’s mobility and the autonomy it implied. They viewed women’s participation in SHGs as immoral, fearing that women venturing outside could lead to licentious behavior and illicit romantic relationships. Thus, women associating with SHGs threatened men’s roles as husbands, fathers-in-law, and fathers, challenging their control over women as wives, daughters-in-law, and daughters. Arula Devi shared how critics condemned the changes that were showing up.

By referencing these women as someone’s daughter or daughter-in-law, detractors highlighted the potential dishonor to family that was ever present as a silent threat. Interestingly, the economic aspects of the credit and livelihoods program did not receive nearly as much intense criticism or scrutiny.

For this reason, enrolling in Jeevika was initially challenging for many upper-caste women. There were instances where breaches in norms of female mobility were deemed so severe by husbands that they resorted to violence.

Barb-filled public comments in treatment villages starkly contrasted circulating wives with circumscribed husbands. Men who allowed their wives to join Jeevika faced crude taunts, such as “You work within the village while your wife mingles with other men outside the village (during group mobilization work)!”Footnote ⁴⁴ This tactic sometimes led to the desired outcome for the program’s opponents. Some men, initially supportive, pressured by peers, forced their wives to withdraw. Shakeela Khatoon’s husband reacted similarly to derisive comments.

Men’s sanctioning of women’s physical and spatial mobility served dual purposes: to confine women by upholding age-old conventions and to fiercely defend their masculine exceptionalism. Often, men reacted not just as husbands asserting power over their wives within their individual marital families but as members of a broader gender group that perceived Jeevika as an emasculating intervention threatening their masculinity.

The renegotiation of boundaries regarding womanhood and caste is an ongoing, dynamic process. While some women were optimistic about unfolding changes, others remained cautious and in flux. Maya Jha, a community mobilizer and wife of the temple’s head priest, struggled to fully accept the increased mobility of lower-caste women. She sought to convince Jeevika personnel and us (the researchers) that her attitudes had evolved. She recounted that a decade ago she would not have allowed even the shadow of a woman from the Ram community to touch her, yet now she welcomes them into her courtyard for meetings. However, observations of her group meetings revealed a gap between rhetoric and practice. She sat on the bed with two other Brahmin members, while the eleven Ram community women crowded on the floor. She personally collected savings from Brahmin women but insisted that Ram women leave their contributions at the edge of the bed, keeping them at a distance. In her absence, Ram women often complained about her behavior, making it a subject of their sarcasm and jokes.

The potential of these gains to lead to lasting social change was a critical concern for Jeevika’s field-level facilitators, program designers, and evaluators. This concern was most pressing though for women like Sita Devi, for whom increased mobility had been transformative. Any reversal would be devastating for her. She was acutely aware that her momentous newfound mobility was anchored in Jeevika and would last only as long as Jeevika. She feared that without the program, restrictions might resurge, once again excluding women like her from certain spaces.

The marked expansion of women’s physical and spatial mobility during Jeevika’s early Phase 1 (2006–2015) represented a profound shift, disrupting the gender–caste habitus that had long confined women within rigid social categories and symbolic boundaries. These boundaries became more porous, enabling women to expand their capabilities. This transformation involved not only individual changes among women participating in SHGs but also broader relational shifts among husbands, in-laws, and kin who gradually accepted and accommodated women’s new “beings” and “doings.” Through everyday negotiations within households, these changes reshaped the attitudes and practices of men and women who were not SHG members themselves. Over time, the effects rippled across families and communities, exceeding the sum of individual transformations by altering the social expectations that structured gendered behavior. The standards against which future generations of women and men would be judged were irrevocably changed, making the scale and implications of these shifts akin to a revolution.

This revolution, however, was not uncontested. Some men and upper-caste groups expressed resistance and skepticism, yet opposition never escalated into the widespread or violent backlash observed elsewhere – such as against women garment workers or microcredit groups in Bangladesh. Explaining this absence of backlash requires a contrastive perspective. Two factors are especially salient. First, Jeevika’s visible sponsorship by the state and its explicit endorsement by the Chief Minister conferred political legitimacy from the outset. While social acceptance had to be negotiated locally, political acceptance was already established, raising the costs of organized opposition. Second, by the early 2000s, the private militias of dominant castes that had previously suppressed lower-caste mobilization had been largely dismantled, and religious institutions lacked both the capacity and personnel to mount large-scale resistance, even when ideologically opposed to women’s participation. Together, these conditions help explain why the changes endured and why, in our view, they amounted to a quiet but genuine revolution.

2.3 Public debate and Action

In rural Bihar, women rarely participated in public life before 2006, the year Jeevika launched in two treatment villages. Women’s gatherings typically revolved around private family celebrations, kin group rituals (births, marriages, deaths, and funerals), communal religious ceremonies at temples and mosques (for those allowed to enter), and community responses to calamities. Participation in village meetings involving public deliberations on local governance and collective action was exclusively dominated by men.

In control villages, women did not perceive local self-governance institutions as responsive to their needs. These spaces for political action were seen as male-dominated, where women had little literal and figurative space. Public officials viewed women as incapable of active participation in public debates and governance. In Virganj and Bhimpur, most women had never attended village assemblies, a forum for resolving individual and collective issues and selecting beneficiaries for government schemes and subsidies. The few women who did attend were often widows seeking pensions or housing rights under government welfare schemes, or impoverished women appealing for assistance. They were generally treated poorly, denied information, and kept at bay.

The only reported instance of large-scale female attendance at a Virganj village assembly involved women being summoned solely to appear in a photograph with the Mukhiya. One woman recalled, “We arrived on time, but you know what happens there! They took a group photo of all of us, made us sign a paper, and then we left.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Women’s disillusionment with their superficial inclusion was corroborated by the sarcastic and demeaning remarks of the sarpanchFootnote ⁴⁸ about women attempting to enter the public sphere.

In summary, women in control villages had limited direct interaction with the state and its officials, witnessing it mainly through the lens of male household members. Regardless of their caste or class, most women lacked knowledge on accessing government entitlements, navigating public services, and meeting bureaucratic requirements for welfare access. The gendered status quo in village political life remained entrenched, neutralizing the potential revolutionary impact of political empowerment through reservations for women in elections.

In treatment villages where Jeevika had disrupted the gendered status quo, a dramatically different political landscape emerged. Women enrolled in Jeevika, especially those in leadership positions, became active participants in the political arena. They attended village assemblies and voiced their complaints against corrupt mukhiyas (elected village presidents). By expressing their critical views on traditional politics in this public forum, these women asserted their role in community governance while positioning themselves as political outsiders. This insider–outsider political critic role mirrored Jeevika’s objective, which aimed to raise women’s political consciousness and civic engagement without directly pushing them to intervene in local politics.

The program sought to establish a parallel institutional structure led by women, which would eventually “converge”Footnote ⁵⁰ and collaborate with the existing panchayat-based local governance system. The SHGs were federated into CLFs. Jeevika envisioned this federation, controlled by women, as the future main conduit for implementing the government’s many women-centered interventions. Therefore, this institutional infrastructure was not intended to undermine politically authorized governance institutions. However, by providing women with a platform to discuss challenges affecting their economic welfare and social well-being, these spaces enabled women to unite around their experiences of exclusion from collective decision-making in the village. The grievances these women held against their elected panchayat leaders and their frustration with being excluded (or nominally included) led to the realization that it was time for them to take matters into their own hands.

Some of the women were fiercely critical of these institutions. “We’re quite against the mukhiya. When we said we wanted to attend the village assembly, he just stopped holding them!”Footnote ⁵¹ They also felt strongly about corruption in the panchayat institutions.

These experiences were significant because they signaled to women that public perceptions regarding their status and power were shifting. Although their individual empowerment was being negotiated within the dynamics of their families, they had been collectively empowered as “Jeevika ladies.” Grouped together, these women could be rallied and mobilized toward a common interest or aim, quickly gaining political power. The potential power the women could collectively harness made Jeevika comparable to established entities like caste groups, whose support, as “vote-banks,” was habitually sought for winning elections.

These appeals from outside entities and demands for support from “Jeevika ladies” were seen by some women as a sign that they could eventually harness their newfound power to pursue their interests. “I think if our CLF keeps moving in the right direction, then a day will come when they (those holding power or hoping to ascend to power within the local government) will have to come to us.”Footnote ⁵³ This aspirational assertion reveals a conviction that Jeevika-linked institutions would, one day, become an axis of power, challenging the monopoly on power held by influential men.

What was evident in the meantime was a set of Jeevika leaders rising through the ranks to become conduits or brokers for public services. They became the contact points for women seeking to resolve issues, from obtaining their share of subsidized food staples to securing old-age pensions and subsidies for housing and sanitation. These redistributive entitlements were dispensed through the panchayat, and the decisions were supposed to be officially authorized after open public deliberations in village assemblies. However, these decisions were often opaque, perceived as discretionary and discriminatory. A new practice had emerged where women brought their concerns to the leaders of Jeevika SHGs and VOs instead of approaching elected local representatives or the head of the panchayat. The leaders arbitrated with the panchayat or other institutions to resolve these issues. Radha Devi, the CLF president in Saifpur, enjoyed problem-solving and helping other women. Having risen through the ranks of Jeevika and won elections at all three levels – SHG, VO, and CLF – she considered it her responsibility to care for her “constituency” of women. Our conversations with her were frequently interrupted by women coming to her doorstep for help or information. Her home had become the first stop for women seeking redress for various troubles, and she regularly acted as a broker with rhetorical flair and competence comparable to any skilled politician.

Land disputes involving Jeevika members and non-members were frequently brought to these women for intervention. These disputes often reflected deep-seated caste and class rivalries. The women leaders saw intervening in land disputes as opportunities to address historical injustices inflicted by dominant caste men on women from backward castes.

In Saifpur, Jeevika women also arbitrated land disputes. Since the existing institutional system routinely disregarded women and neglected their complaints, and men offered little help, Jeevika members banded together as a show of force in their new role as a body for dispute resolution.

Jeevika members also arbitrated financial disputes. Girja Devi recounted how group members joined forces to help recover money on behalf of a Jeevika member’s family.

A league of Jeevika members intervened on behalf of one of their group members to force a local brick kiln owner to pay the money he owed her. More significant than the amount of money or wages recovered was the fact that the women successfully confronted a man of wealth and power. This man’s business employed many of the poorest villagers, as brick kiln work is hard and poorly paid. Such businessmen were often among the village strongmen on whom the poor relied for employment and credit. For the women to force him to comply with what they perceived as rightful action signaled their emergence as power brokers. This reluctant acknowledgment from men indicated that the collective status of these women had surpassed their individual status within families and communities.

Jeevika members also intervened to rescue women from domestic violence. Women in Ramganj and Saifpur did not hesitate to take action to stop violence as it unfolded and had cultivated the capacity for rapid mobilization. This was different from women in the control villages, who were reluctant to get involved in other families’ affairs, fearing they would be rebuffed or entangled.

This new modality of Jeevika women transforming their membership base from routine borrowing, lending, and loan-recovery tasks into an active coalition rallying for justice was not well received by the established order. Initially, men disapproved of women mobilizing and often responded mockingly. “My husband would taunt us. He said that he’d see what women power could achieve. He doubted our strength and believed that if the mukhiya, the sarpanch, and the police couldn’t resolve the land dispute, we certainly couldn’t. But we did it.”Footnote ⁶⁰

However, as time went by, some men began to see this empowerment of women as a positive change, the women reported.

Women’s participation and engagement in the public sphere primarily manifested through problem-solving, dispute arbitration, and challenging the authority of local officials such as the sarpanch and mukhiya. These actions were often in response to appeals from aggrieved women who felt they had been wronged. For SHG members, these public actions were symbolic of women actively advocating for justice in ways that both traditional male-dominated institutions, and formal legal systems, had failed to do.

These experiences of successfully leading public actions sparked women’s critical awareness of local institutions – understanding how power operates within them and learning to engage beyond being marginalized recipients. For some, this realization evolved into political aspirations, leading them to contest elected positions in local government, such as ward member, mukhiya (village head), or other influential roles.

Radha Devi, a CLF leader, exemplified this transformation. She boldly contested the election for the top post in the panchayat and lost. Yet, she renewed her resolve to continue striving for power. She viewed attaining political office as a means for serving the community’s disadvantaged, particularly women, and to combat corruption within the existing system.

Asha Devi, the CLF president of Ramganj, also charted a similar same path and contested the panchayat elections. She ran for the ward elections, and women affiliated with Jeevika across eight neighboring villages, whom she had mobilized through grassroots efforts, supported her campaign. As she put it, “Women came in large numbers from eight different villages for the election, and everyone voted for me. You know why? Because I’ve formed groups everywhere, and I’ve done it all on foot.”Footnote ⁶³

Despite her efforts, she lost to her opponent due to alleged election rigging orchestrated by a Choudhary. “I would’ve won if the election had not been rigged by Choudhary. They threatened violence when I tried to protest against them.”Footnote ⁶⁴ However, this setback did not diminish her determination to pursue future electoral bids. She expressed her ambition to contest the next Mukhiya elections, confidently stating, “Give me the position and then see.”

The political empowerment of women within Jeevika grew without direct facilitation from the project itself. In 2006, prior to mobilizing women into the project, Jeevika personnel invested considerable effort in gaining “buy-in” from key panchayat members. They assured them that the project aimed solely to be a women’s microfinance program and had no intention of altering the village’s social and political order. This strategy allowed the project to operate without interference from the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs). As the project gained funding and public support, and as Jeevika women became more visible and developed effective, autonomous problem-solving mechanisms that challenged the PRIs, Jeevika personnel began to withhold support. Consequently, women often felt disappointed when they sought financial or other assistance from Jeevika for election campaigns or anti-liquor mobilizations, only to be denied help.

Thus, the entry of Jeevika women into the public sphere, particularly within the panchayat, can be seen as the project’s unintended consequence. Women asserted that “Jeevika helps build leadership skills and instills confidence in us to manage our community. No school or formal education can teach you that.”Footnote ⁶⁵ Additionally, the project strengthened the collective identity of gareeb didi (poor sisters/women), mobilizing women and improving the terms under which they were recognized and participated in public spaces.

2.4 Discussion and Conclusion

Gender equity and empowerment – central goals of many development programs – ultimately require cultural transformation. Promoting women’s agency entails shifts in norms (shared expectations and informal rules of conduct), habitus (embodied dispositions shaped by long-standing structural constraints), and repertoires (the cultivated capacities and competencies individuals draw upon). Inducing such change – by revising entrenched norms, dismantling inherited habitus, and cultivating new skills – is an ambitious undertaking. As we have argued in this chapter, Jeevika attempted precisely this, and it succeeded to a significant degree.

Participation in self-help groups altered the social and economic conditions shaping women’s lives, directly challenging patriarchal and caste-based structures. As women acquired new competencies, entrenched norms and habitus associated with gender and caste were disrupted. Over time, women adopted new dispositions and practices that redefined femininity: collectively managing finances, resolving community disputes, and aspiring to political office. Their growing civic, political, and financial engagement dismantled long-standing barriers and narrowed gender gaps within a relatively short period, even though progress was uneven.

These changes can also be understood through the lens of status construction (Ridgeway, Reference Ridgeway1991; Ridgeway et al., Reference Ridgeway, Boyle and Kuipers1998; Ridgeway and Correll, Reference Ridgeway and Correll2000). Status beliefs – shared assumptions about the competence and worth of social groups – emerge through repeated interactions in “doubly dissimilar encounters,” where participants differ both by social category (here, gender) and by access to resources. In such interactions, men’s greater access to resources has historically reinforced beliefs in their superior competence, beliefs that are internalized by both men and women. These beliefs persist through two reinforcing mechanisms: women’s own acceptance of lower perceived competence and their beliefs about how others evaluate men’s and women’s abilities, shaped by observing who holds authority and receives esteem in everyday life. Status beliefs become entrenched when both advantaged and disadvantaged groups come to believe that society broadly views one category as more competent and deserving.

Jeevika intervened directly in both mechanisms. It challenged assumptions that positioned women as inherently less capable and less deserving of respect. Prior to Jeevika, interactions between women and men were structured by unequal power and limited access to resources. By granting women exclusive access to low-interest credit – resources previously unavailable to poor households – Jeevika enabled women to borrow larger sums, move beyond the household, engage with public institutions, and manage financial affairs collectively. These activities, long associated with male authority, became visible markers of women’s competence. Paradoxically, by explicitly privileging women and excluding men, Jeevika initially accentuated gender distinctions – an approach that may sit uneasily with some Western feminist ideals but proved essential in the context of rural Bihar. Access to socially valued economic roles enhanced women’s self-worth, increased their perceived value to others, and elevated their public standing, thereby narrowing gender-based status inequalities.

3.1 Implementing Jeevika

Jeevika’s rollout followed a sequence of phases that laid the groundwork for sustained community participation. The initial “Village Entry” phase involved conducting a “power analysis” to identify influential local stakeholders and understand caste and power dynamics. Project personnel carefully navigated these relationships, gaining the trust of village elites while avoiding antagonizing them. This was followed by “social mapping” to identify the poorest households and target them for SHG enrollment. The “Mobilization” phase aimed to shift mindsets and encourage women to see themselves as capable of transforming their lives. This phase involved discursive and dramatic techniques – storytelling, street theatre, and role-playing – rooted in local traditions to promote concepts like self-reliance and collective action. Early participants, or “first movers,” were instrumental in enrolling others, often leveraging their community ties and prior experiences with group formation. “Facilitation” followed, focusing on constructing new identities and institutions for women. Women gained symbolic resources through identities like gareeb didi (poor sister) and saksham Jeevika didi (capable sister), which united them across caste and religion. Institutional resources were created through a tiered structure of SHGs federated into VOs and CLFs. After a period of maturation, these groups were given access to externally funded credit and other livelihood support and linked with mainstream financial institutions.

3.2 Discussion and Conclusion

Bottom–up, people-centric implementation relies less on a fixed template and more on co-production and adaptive implementation, aligning the pace of project execution with the rate at which people adopt or resist the project. This is particularly relevant for SHG-based projects like Jeevika, which work with women in patriarchal contexts.

The disagreements regarding participating in SHGs often begins within households, manifesting as conflicts between husbands and wives or between parents-in-law and daughters-in-law. This division extends to broader ethno-religious communities, where religious leaders might oppose the initiatives, and to caste communities, where interactions between advantaged and disadvantaged castes can be fraught. Such dynamics make implementing SHG interventions in South Asia significantly more complex compared to other development projects.

In light of this complexity, Jeevika’s people-centric approach involved recognizing and addressing these divisive dynamics. Project personnel had to navigate conflicts, reconcile with factions and key figures initially opposed to the project, and engage the target population through intensive mobilization efforts. Effectively recognizing, reconciling, and recruiting women required Jeevika to leverage a significant number of interpersonal skills which included project personnel adapting their interactions at different stages of the project. At times, they used charismatic communication to engage and appeal to women. At other moments, they employed consciousness-raising dialogue to emphasize the deep-seated inequalities affecting women and the necessity of overcoming these barriers. When mobilizing key stakeholders in the village, they used consensus-building language to gain support for the project. Additionally, they resorted to restitutive communication to address and resolve hostilities towards the SHGs and the project. While some of these communication strategies were based on scripts developed at the project’s headquarters in Patna, the state capital, local adaptation was essential. The scripts needed to be adjusted to suit the specific contingencies and cultural contexts of the project communities.

The importance of tactically using communication to build relationships within the complex social landscapes of development projects is often undervalued by both development practitioners and scholars. Interpersonal skills, which do not require advanced technical knowledge, are frequently dismissed as less crucial compared to technical skills that directly contribute to physical infrastructure. However, they are critical for building social institutions for marginalized groups, the absence of which can be as detrimental as lacking physical infrastructure. In rural areas, where women often lack access to the same institutions available to men – such as farmers’ groups and political organizations – the gender gap widens, leading to disproportionately negative effects on women. In the case of Jeevika, the project personnel’s interpersonal skills were essential in shaping how women and men engaged with and related to the project. Their process of creating an enabling environment and forming institutions of, for, and by women with meaningful economic and social objectives was akin to activists mobilizing people into social movements.

While the project personnel played a crucial frontstage role in ensuring the success of Jeevika’s implementation, the state provided significant support. The government’s political commitment to the project translated into vital resources and stability. Indeed, villagers who opposed Jeevika often criticized the government for its backing of the initiative. Although this monograph does not focus on the state’s role, it remains an important aspect of the broader SHG movement in India.

Implementing SHG programs at scale across India, along the lines of the processes described in this section, has “induced” a social movement that has dramatically expanded the possibilities for what women can be, and do.

4.1 From Theory to Practice: A Framework for Action

These insights point to both analytical and practical strategies for fostering gender equity. Programs seeking to induce durable change should aim to:

1. 1. Generate new behavioral norms and shift moral judgments about what women and men can and should do.

2. 2. Create interactional spaces in which norm-defying practices are learned, rehearsed, and socially sanctioned.

3. 3. Cultivate new, enabling identities for women.

4. 4. Provide exposure to experiences that challenge conventional associations between gender and capability.

5. 5. Transform the opportunity structures and constraints that shape durable preferences and embodied practices.

6. 6. Expand the cultural configurations – networks, relationships, and associations – available to women.

7. 7. Build groups and institutions that redistribute power, rights, and responsibilities, while enabling access to symbolic and material resources.

Each of these principles was instantiated in Jeevika not as an abstract design choice but through concrete institutional routines described throughout this Element.

Much contemporary development discourse, influenced by behavioral economics (Thaler and Sunstein, Reference Thaler and Sunstein2008), treats culture as a set of cognitive biases to be “nudged” away. Jeevika’s experience suggests that durable shifts in gender norms require moving beyond narrow behaviorist paradigms to engage with the deeper processes that shape, constrain, and enable human action. Cultural change is not primarily a matter of individual nudges or incentives; it is a collective process of boosting agency (Hertwig et al., Reference Hertwig, Michie, West and Reicher2025), in which culture and gender are constitutive of what it means to act, choose, and aspire. Long-term change requires a reconfiguration of power relations within households and communities, sustained by new solidarities and recalibrated symbolic boundaries.

4.2 Implications for Project Design and Implementation

Projects like Jeevika highlight the importance of co-production and adaptive learning (Ostrom, Reference Ostrom1990). Development must be grounded in local realities and remain flexible to changing contexts; there is no universal “best practice.”

Jeevika avoided “institutional monocropping” (Andrews et al., Reference Andrews, Pritchett and Woolcock2017) by adapting proven SHG models from other Indian states to the Bihari context. Drawing on a wide range of governmental and nongovernmental experiences with membership-based organizations (Chen et al., Reference Chen, Jhabvala, Kanbur and Richards2006), the program localized these approaches through a tiered system of community facilitators. This design enabled scale while preserving contextual responsiveness.

Embedded research played a critical role. The World Bank’s Social Observatory worked closely with the project team, functioning as a thought partner rather than an external evaluator. Decision Support Systems and Process Monitoring Systems generated real-time, community-validated data, while qualitative fieldwork provided iterative feedback. Together, these tools fostered a learning ecosystem in which research informed design, implementation, and strategy.

Effective development, in this model, prioritizes processes as much as outcomes. Mistakes are inevitable; with robust learning systems in place, they become sources of institutional adaptation rather than failure.

4.3 Limits, Fragilities, and the Conditions of Cultural Durability

The transformations documented here are neither inevitable nor irreversible. Cultural change – even when induced and institutionalized – is contingent, politically situated, and must be continuously reproduced through practice. Recognizing this fragility clarifies rather than undermines the conditions under which durability becomes possible.

Bihar matters theoretically because it is a hard case. Deep patriarchy, caste segmentation, weak state capacity, and histories of coercive domination are not favorable conditions for gender-equitable change. That meaningful shifts occurred here strengthens the argument that culture is a site of political economy, not a residual constraint. Large-scale cultural change does not require consensus, enlightenment, or frontal confrontation. It requires aligned incentives, protected spaces for collective practice, and institutions that redistribute not only material resources but cultural capital itself.

In this sense, Jeevika offers no blueprint to be mechanically replicated. It offers instead a set of principles for how agency is built, sustained, and rendered durable through collective life. Cultural change remains vulnerable to reversal – but when embedded in everyday institutions and practices, it can outlast the moment of its induction and reshape what future change becomes possible.