In 1914, Maharani Chimnabai, the second wife of Sayajirao Gaekwad and the Maharani of Baroda, started the Shree Maharani Chimnabai Stree Udyogalaya (MCSU), one of the earliest women’s vocational centres in the country. She had been travelling the world and had seen how with men fighting at the front during the World War, women were learning new skills to fend for themselves. She realised that a similar format would work for India, where women needed empowerment, and believed that the way forward would be to give them those skills to become self-sufficient. “The Udyogalaya came into being with the vision of imparting vocational training to lower income women,” Radhikaraje Gaekwad, trustee and vice-president of MCSU, tells us. “They were trained in things that didn’t need a lot of formal education—block-printing, bookbinding, file-making, and the making of preserves and papad,” she says, sharing that many women who came from rural areas were housed in a hostel where they learnt these skills. “Over the years, we have incorporated computer classes, beauty parlour and fashion designing courses.”

Applique patchwork by craftsman Khetaram Choudhary’s Marudara Mahila Vikaas Samiti in Barmer, Rajasthan