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Indian women, who had been respected in medieval India but instead were ignored many decades ago, are now receiving more attention. In India, considerable progress has been achieved in this area, but there is still much more to be done. Tribal society lags in terms of education and social and economic advancement, making it difficult for them to integrate into today's "men-dominated" world. Because of the co-relation and low adoption of educational technology, most people in tribal areas are backward. Tribal communities are secluded, isolated cultures that live in small groups. To some extent, this type of rural development education was attempted even before independence, as part of the community experts to develop the Programme. Education, on the other hand, has been restricted to a few sectors and projects, with extension services developed exclusively to conduct state or national-level plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do states realize social reforms for marginalized groups in settings of entrenched inequality? This article argues that reform implementation is a conflict‐ridden process driven by the institutional activism of street‐level bureaucrats. Through an ethnographic case study of Mahila Samakhya, a novel government program for women's empowerment in Uttar Pradesh, India, I find that local fieldworkers committed to reform promoted girls' education by mobilizing marginalized citizens and mediating local conflicts. Organizational processes of gender‐based training and deliberation enabled fieldworkers to challenge village patriarchy and exclusion and forge programmatic ties with lower caste women. By altering rules to address the practical needs of households, fieldworkers effectively integrated disadvantaged girls into the education system. Institutional activism also engendered conflicts over rules within the bureaucracy, prompting senior officials to advocate for marginalized groups. The findings suggest that institutional commitment to activism is critical for agencies working on the front lines of reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]