One evening after work, my coworkers and I stopped for chai at a small, hole-in-the-wall tea stand that they swore made the best masala chai in the neighborhood. As we stood together, cups warm in hand, the scene around us felt subtly but unmistakably off-balance. The tea stand was surrounded almost entirely by men, clusters of them leaning against motorbikes, talking, laughing, and inhabiting the space unapologetically. We were the only women there — conspicuous and exposed. A question surfaced, quiet at first, then insistent: Where are all of the women?
In the weeks that followed, I began seeing the same absence everywhere across the Old City of Hyderabad. Whether in markets, small shops, or public gatherings, the city’s rhythm moved around men. In several neighborhoods in this part of Hyderabad, women’s absence from public life is not coincidental, but structured. Many are expected to remain inside, their movement limited to the home and the responsibilities within it. Mobility was not just discouraged but actively policed.
This reality was not originally the focus of my work, but it quickly became impossible to ignore.
Kriti Social Initiative’s intervention was initially designed solely around financial empowerment: forming over 70 self-help groups (SHG) where dozens of women save small amounts together to appeal for bank loans. By pooling their financial resources collectively, the women have had the ability to build community, loan to one another, and secure funds for rent, tuition fees, medical expenses, and more.
Yet in practice, participating in an SHG requires more than just saving money: it requires women to leave their homes, attend meetings, and negotiate decisions. What was designed as a financial intervention quickly became a mobility one, too.
My role has been to design and implement an impact evaluation framework, initially focused on financial outcomes but increasingly aimed at capturing subtler shifts in confidence, voice, and agency. Through this work, I’ve come to see the true depth of the change taking place.
Many of the women involved in these SHGs married before 18, became mothers soon after, and dropped out of school young. Most live below the poverty line — some even in informal structures without stable flooring or reliable electricity. And yet within these groups, I witnessed something profoundly powerful: women counseling one another, holding each other accountable, organizing savings, and crafting futures that once felt unreachable.
When I began this project, I assumed financial security would be the central metric of transformation. But as I sat with women one by one, I began to see that the change was not solely in the loans. It lived in the smallest acts of agency: stepping outside alone, speaking in a group, holding one’s own money. These are the kinds of shifts that rarely appear in spreadsheets but shape the soul of empowerment.
What feels ordinary to me — meeting a friend, running an errand alone, taking public transit — carries a completely different weight here. Many of the women I spoke with have never traveled more than two kilometers from their home unaccompanied. So when a woman leaves her home once a month on her own to attend an SHG meeting, it is far from insignificant. It is a strong act of movement and agency. A shift that her mother and grandmother may never have been allowed to take. A movement that widens the horizon for her daughter.
As I listen to these stories while designing the evaluation framework, I feel the gravity of my own freedom. I grew up encouraged to speak openly, to go where I pleased, to return home late with ease. These were customary parts of my life — habits so ordinary that I never recognized them as privilege.
In Hyderabad, those same habits are unimaginable freedoms.
I am learning that empowerment here looks like the quiet courage of:
One woman stepping beyond her gate.
One woman controlling her own savings.
One woman raising her hand to ask a question for the first time.
All small beginnings of generational change.
