138 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Ajmer, Jaipur and Jodhpur districts, the Project made an attempt to evolve an understanding of women's health in the the larger socio-economic context. During the course of project work, the health team also gained insights into the functioning of WDP vis-a-vis its stated objectives. With time, the clash of interest between the hierarchies of the programme sharpened. The experience of working with the health project threw up the following questions: 1. What did empowerment of women mean in the context of their changing life situation? 2. What was the difference between a state sponsored women's organisation and an organisation that has emerged from the grass roots? 3. Whose priorities and interests were ultimately being served? 4. While promoting population control and increasing access to contraception, in order to provide women a "choice", what had been the response in situations where women had chosen to delink their fertility and sexuality? 5. How and why had the state succeeded in forging alliances with NCO's and how had it succeeded in co-opting activists from the women's movement? 6. How could a programme which had the prime objective of women's empowerment devalue and exploit its women workers, particularly workers at the lowest rung, without whose labour the programme would co exist? 7. What has been the role of funding and how has it served as a means of control? This paper attempts to deal with some of these questions as a backdrop to the real life situation facing poor rural women whose health and access to contraception forms a major area of concern not just for national planners but for a document such as the World Development Report as well. The initial three to four years of the WDP witnessed a great deal of enthusiasm. Collective strengths were channelised to re-define gender roles and relationships; to break the confines of the family; and to facilitate participation as equals in the productive process. Spontaneous struggles ranged from fighting domestic and sexual violence to demanding minimum wages; from demanding employment opportunities to agitating fr the fulfillment of basic needs like drinking water, education and medical care. Women's forums sprung up in many villages, and it appeared that women had found space ^o articulate their oppression and had begun to organise themselves to