Kathmandu, May 31 -- Dil Kumari BK, a resident of Madi Municipality's ward 3, had watched enough of her community's men leave for foreign employment to know that if Dalit women in Gulmeli Tole were going to build anything, they would have to build it themselves. She had first joined Sunaulo Mahila Samuha, a women's group in the area. But the group was far from her settlement and there were no Dalit women there. She realised in time that Dalit women needed their own space, built on proximity and shared experience. So she went door to door in her own tole and formed Mili Juli Samuha, which included 22 members, all Dalit, all from the same tole, most of them wives and mothers whose husbands were abroad.

When Madi Municipality introduced a p...