Introduction
Jangaon offers a revealing glimpse into what women’s empowerment can mean in everyday life. In Telangana, Mission Shakti is being implemented through grassroots initiatives that address women’s safety, social empowerment and the wellbeing of girls. At the district, mandal and village levels, these initiatives seek to connect women and communities with information, services and institutional support.
For adolescent girls, some of these interventions begin with an everyday but essential concern: menstrual hygiene. Sanitary-napkin incinerators have been installed in schools and colleges alongside awareness initiatives on menstrual health and hygiene. While such infrastructure may appear modest, it addresses a practical issue that directly affects girls’ health, dignity and ability to participate comfortably in educational spaces.
These interventions are also connected to broader concerns around the safety, nutrition and wellbeing of girls. They demonstrate how questions of empowerment can begin with the conditions in which women and girls live, study and participate in their communities. Empowerment is therefore not limited to employment or financial independence; it also involves creating environments in which women and girls can access information, services and opportunities with dignity.
Jangaon offers a useful starting point for a larger question: what does empowerment mean when it enters the everyday lives of women and girls? Is providing services and awareness enough, or must empowerment also create the conditions for women and girls to make choices, claim their rights and exercise greater agency over their own lives?
What Does “Empowerment” Mean?
The term “women’s empowerment” is widely used in policy and development discourse, but empowerment is more than the provision of services, resources or opportunities. Naila Kabeer’s influential work on gender equality and empowerment places agency and the ability to make meaningful choices at the centre of the concept. From this perspective, the question is not only what women receive, but what they are able to do with the resources and opportunities available to them (Kabeer, 2005).
This distinction is important when considering interventions around women’s safety and wellbeing. Infrastructure can address an immediate need. A sanitary-napkin incinerator, for example, can make a school environment safer and more hygienic, while an awareness programme can make information about health, rights and government services more accessible. Such interventions can remove practical barriers that affect girls’ participation in education and women’s participation in public life. But access to a facility or service does not, by itself, establish agency.
Safety is therefore an important condition of empowerment, but it is not its endpoint. A girl may have a safer school environment, yet empowerment also involves having the confidence and opportunity to express her concerns, make choices and participate in decisions affecting her life. Similarly, a woman may know about a welfare service or a legal entitlement without necessarily having the social, economic or institutional conditions required to claim it.
The distinction between information and decision-making power is equally significant. Women’s empowerment has educational, economic, social and political dimensions (Srinivasa & Siddegowda, 2015). Information can open possibilities, but its transformative value depends on whether women are able to act upon what they know. Awareness becomes meaningful when it is accompanied by access to resources, institutional support and opportunities for participation.
The experience of Self-Help Groups provides another way of understanding this process. Research on SHGs associates collective organisation with savings, credit, financial knowledge and participation in social and economic life. The Mission Shakti literature similarly identifies collective savings and microcredit as mechanisms of financial inclusion, while the wider case study links women’s participation in SHGs with increased confidence and involvement in household and community decision-making.
Empowerment, therefore, is best understood as a process of expanding choices and agency, rather than as a single service or measurable intervention. Resources and opportunities matter because they can create the conditions from which agency becomes possible. But the deeper measure is whether women and girls are increasingly able to speak, negotiate, make decisions and influence the circumstances of their own lives.
This distinction provides a useful lens through which to examine Mission Shakti in Telangana—not simply in terms of what the programme provides, but in terms of the forms of participation and agency that those interventions make possible.
Mission Shakti in Telangana
In Telangana, Mission Shakti operates through an institutional network that brings together women’s safety, protection, support and empowerment. The state’s Socio-Economic Outlook 2024 records 36 Sakhi One Stop Centres, 33 District Child Protection Units, 33 Child Helpline units, 13 state-run women’s institutions, 18 Swadhar Grehs and two Ujjwala Homes, alongside the State Hub for Empowerment of Women (SHEW). The same report describes these services as part of the state’s broader effort to create a secure and supportive environment for women and children.
Within this framework, the District Hub for Empowerment of Women (DHEW) provides an important link between government programmes and local communities. Its objectives include improving women’s access to government services, creating awareness about schemes and legal provisions, building the capacity of frontline functionaries and strengthening coordination between departments. It also seeks to create an enabling environment for women’s safety and empowerment.
The institutional network is complemented by services designed to respond directly to women experiencing violence or distress. Government data presented to Parliament records that, as of September 2025, all 36 approved One Stop Centres in Telangana were functional. Since the inception of the scheme, 77,858 women in Telangana had received assistance through One Stop Centres, while 76,444 women had been assisted through the Women Helpline. The One Stop Centres provide services including medical assistance, legal aid, temporary shelter, police assistance and psycho-social counselling.
At the district level, these structures translate into awareness and outreach activities. In Nirmal, for example, the District Hub for Empowerment of Women conducts awareness programmes addressing child rights, child marriage, gender discrimination, girl-child education, cyber safety, the POCSO Act and safe and unsafe touch. The district’s Sakhi One Stop Centre has also been providing counselling and legal assistance since 2019.
Jangaon provides another important local context. Here, interventions around girls’ safety, nutrition and menstrual hygiene have brought Mission Shakti into schools, colleges and community spaces. Sanitary-napkin incinerators, accompanied by awareness initiatives, address an everyday concern that has direct implications for girls’ health, dignity and participation in education.
The Telangana model therefore combines state-level infrastructure, district institutions, specialist support services and grassroots awareness. Its significance lies in attempting to create an institutional chain through which women and girls can move from awareness of their rights to actual access to support.
But institutional reach is only the beginning. The more difficult question is what happens when women and girls enter these systems: whether they are simply recipients of services or whether these structures create meaningful opportunities for participation and agency.
Women and Girls as Participants, Not Beneficiaries
The scale of Mission Shakti’s institutional network tells us how widely services can reach women and girls. But reach alone does not tell us whether women are participating in the processes intended to support them. The more important question is whether women have opportunities to express their concerns, identify their needs and influence the decisions that affect their lives.
This requires looking beyond the language of “beneficiaries.” Women who receive counselling, legal assistance, information or welfare services are beneficiaries of those interventions. But empowerment requires a further step: recognising women not only as recipients of support, but as people with knowledge, experience and priorities that can shape how support is designed and delivered.
Telangana’s large Self-Help Group network provides an important example of this shift. The state reports more than 63 lakh women organised through Self-Help Groups, creating an established network for financial inclusion and collective action. The government’s current approach seeks to move these groups beyond savings and bank linkages towards livelihoods, enterprise development and wealth creation. (Telangana EFMS)
The significance of these groups lies not only in their numbers but also in their ability to articulate collective concerns. At the 2024 Swashakti Women’s Convention, SHG members presenting their products directly raised the issue of inadequate marketing facilities with the Chief Minister. The government subsequently announced measures to strengthen marketing opportunities for SHG products. Here, women were not simply receiving a programme; they were identifying a problem, voicing it collectively and contributing to the policy conversation around its solution. (Telangana Government)
The same principle can be extended to the work of the District Hubs for Empowerment of Women. Their stated objectives include improving women’s access to government services, creating awareness of schemes and legal provisions, building the capacity of functionaries and strengthening coordination between departments. (Gadwal District) In Nirmal, for example, DHEW awareness programmes address child rights, child marriage, gender discrimination, girl-child education, cyber safety, the POCSO Act and safe and unsafe touch. (Nirmal District)
For adolescent girls, such engagement matters because issues that are often treated as private can become subjects of public discussion. Menstrual health, for instance, is not simply a matter of hygiene; it is connected to dignity, mobility, education and participation in school. Creating infrastructure and awareness can remove practical barriers, but meaningful participation requires spaces where girls can also articulate their experiences and concerns.
For women, participation similarly needs to extend beyond receiving information. It involves being able to identify priorities, ask questions, access institutional mechanisms and contribute to decisions affecting their families, livelihoods and communities.
The distinction is therefore not simply between receiving and participating, but between being reached and being heard. Telangana’s SHG experience offers evidence that collective platforms can create spaces for women to articulate concerns and influence responses. The continuing challenge is to ensure that this principle of participation extends across the wider Mission Shakti ecosystem, including programmes addressing safety, health, rights and social empowerment.
Mission Shakti becomes more transformative when women are not only the subjects of programmes, but also participants in defining the problems those programmes seek to address and shaping the solutions that follow.
The Gaps: From Intervention to Sustainable Empowerment
Telangana’s Mission Shakti framework demonstrates considerable institutional investment in women’s safety and empowerment. The state has established multiple mechanisms through which women can access protection, counselling, legal assistance, welfare services and information. By September 2025, all 36 approved One Stop Centres in Telangana were functional, and 77,858 women had received assistance through these centres since their inception. Yet institutional reach is not the same as empowerment.
The available data tells us how many centres are functioning and how many women have received assistance. It tells us less about what happens afterwards. Does access to counselling or legal support enable women to make decisions differently? Does information about rights translate into the ability to claim those rights? Do interventions aimed at girls’ safety and wellbeing give girls greater confidence and opportunity to participate in decisions affecting their lives?
This points to the first gap: awareness and action are not the same thing. Information about a government service, welfare scheme or legal right can open a pathway to support, but social expectations, family restrictions, economic dependence, lack of mobility and institutional barriers may still influence whether a woman is able to use that pathway.
There is also a difference between access and control. A woman may have access to a health service, helpline or legal mechanism while having limited control over decisions concerning her health, finances, work or family. Similarly, a girl may have access to a safer and more hygienic educational environment without necessarily having the institutional space to express her concerns or influence decisions affecting her.
For adolescent girls, this distinction is particularly important. Interventions around menstrual hygiene, safety and awareness can remove practical barriers to participation in education. But sustainable empowerment requires more: continued education, reliable information, supportive institutions and spaces where girls’ voices are taken seriously.
Sustainability presents another challenge. Awareness programmes and individual interventions can address immediate concerns, but deeper social change requires continuity. Institutions need trained personnel, regular engagement, accessible services and mechanisms through which women and girls can communicate their experiences and identify what remains inadequate.
This is where the distinction between delivery and transformation becomes important. Delivery asks whether a service has reached its intended population. Transformation asks whether that service has contributed to a lasting expansion of women’s choices, participation and agency.
Mission Shakti’s challenge, therefore, is not simply to increase its reach. It is to deepen the relationship between institutions and the women they serve—to ensure that women and girls are not only protected and supported, but increasingly able to influence the systems, decisions and conditions that shape their lives.
The movement from intervention to sustainable empowerment ultimately requires a shift from doing things for women to creating conditions in which women can increasingly participate in deciding what is needed, how it should be provided and what should change.
Conclusion
Mission Shakti in Telangana demonstrates that women’s empowerment can begin with interventions that respond to the realities of everyday life. Questions of safety, menstrual health, nutrition, awareness and access to institutional support are not peripheral to empowerment; they shape the conditions in which women and girls are able to participate in education, work and public life.
The experience of Jangaon illustrates this connection. An intervention such as menstrual-health infrastructure may address an immediate practical need, but its significance becomes greater when it is accompanied by awareness, discussion and institutional support. Such interventions can help create environments in which girls experience greater dignity and confidence in their everyday lives.
At the same time, empowerment cannot end with the delivery of services. The longer-term question is whether women and girls have meaningful opportunities to participate in identifying their needs, expressing their concerns and influencing the decisions that affect them.
This requires institutions to listen as well as deliver. Women’s experiences and knowledge should inform the design, implementation and evaluation of programmes intended for them. Community engagement should not be limited to reaching people; it should also create avenues for dialogue, feedback and participation.
The significance of Mission Shakti, therefore, lies not only in the services it provides but in the possibilities it creates for women and girls to become active participants in their communities.
The measure of empowerment is ultimately not simply how many women are reached, but how much greater their voice, choice and capacity to participate become.
Telangana’s experience offers an important starting point for this conversation. It reminds us that transformation can begin with an everyday intervention, but its larger purpose must be to create the conditions in which women and girls can increasingly speak, participate, decide and shape the circumstances of their own lives.
References
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