DEVELOPMENT EXPERIENCES IN INDIA 61 Strategic gender needs are based on an analysis of women's subordination to men; deriving out of this is the strategic gender interest which seeks as an alternative, a more equal and satisfactory organization of society than that which exists at present, in terms of both the structure and nature of relationships between men and women.3 Practical gender needs are formulated from concrete conditions of women's experience: 'they do not generally entail a strategic goal such as women's emancipation or gender equality, nor do they challenge the prevailing forms of subordination even though they arise directly out of them.14 In planning terms, policies for meeting practical gender needs focus on the domestic arena, on income earning activities, and also on community level requirements of housing and basic services. This is based on the perception which makes women primarily responsible for domestic work involving child care, family health and food provision and also the community management of housing and basic services. This identification is done, more often than not, by women themselves, thereby preserving and reinforcing (even if unconsciously) the sexual division of labour. It is our submission that, by and large, the 'women's question' in India has got reduced to and is now almost completely identified with meeting practical gender needs, particularly at the level of gender policy and planning. While individual writings on the subject uncover the ideological basis of the persistence of gender inequities, a content analysis of the state's plan documents, its periodic policy statements, the major documents brought out by the women's movement in India, show the dominance of practical gender needs over strategic gender interests both in the conception and in the transformation of these policies into programmes of action.5 The proliferation of NGOs and voluntary associations has, to a large extent, enabled the state to withdraw into the background and act more as a funding body; the NGOs and voluntary organisations, on the other hand, not only have a limited charter but are constrained to fulfil targets and/or show quick results if their sources of funding are not to run dry. Hence, meeting practical gender needs are becoming an end in themselves without any scope for transformation of these into strategic gender needs. Hence the feminist perspective and content of the women's movement has been considerably diffused if not lost altogether. In such a milieu, the movement has had very little time and even less inclination to perceive the 'women's question' against macro processes at work in the economy. This reduction of the women's question to practical gender needs has had a very deleterious impact inasmuch as neither the planning process nor statements of particular policies deem il imperative to incorporate/integrate gender perspectives onto their main agenda. Whatever attempts have been made thus far have been of an add-on nature and hence have only a token value.6