From the President`s desk ---
It is great pleasure for me to welcome and greet you all a Happy New Year! In my long journey of 25 years of Social Service , this is indeed a great moment for me to host this 82nd Annual conference of the All India Women`s Conference. It is really a gratifying thought, that at the beginning of my tenure as President of Mumbai Branch, this opportunity to host the 82nd Annual conference in Mumbai after almost 45 years , has come my way.

One of the most enduring clichés about India is that, it is a country of contradictions. Like all clichés, this one too has a grain of truth in it. At the heart of the contradiction stand women: for it is true to say that, they are among the most oppressed, and it is equally true to say that they are among the most liberated, the most articulate and perhaps even the most free. Can these two realities be simultaneously true? During the eighteen years that India had a woman as Prime Minister, the country also saw increasing incidence of violence and discrimination against women. This is no different from any other time: a casual visitor to any Indian city-for example Mumbai—will see hundreds of women, young and old working in all kinds of professions: doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, scientist—and yet newspapers in India are full of stories of violent incidents against women, of rape, sexual harassment, and sometimes even murder. But to have a woman in the highest office of the State and to simultaneously have extreme violence against women are merely the two ends of the scale. As always a more complex reality lies in between. AIWC is an organisation where women of all such genres strive together at grass root level to battle against the co-existence of “Slum-Dogs” and “Millionaires” even after sixty two years of independence in one of the worlds largest democracies—India. AIWC is an all women organisation driven with the sole objective of lightening and relieving the travails and pains of the less fortunate women. The welfare of others is the sole driver which unifies and motivates our women towards this goal. The woman of today must strive hard for the complete removal of suffering and deprival of the needy . This must be their destination.

At the AIWC, women have created an organisation which is slated to become a juggernaut which will continue this conquest till a state of minimum level of satisfaction is reached and a levelled field of opportunities for all is created. As Mahatma Gandhiji said, India lives in villages. The plight of the rural woman is still the same. Women must reach out to the hinterlands and seek out the real and needy ones and work for them. This mission initiated by the historical lady luminaries of the AIWC has sustained over eight decades and grown manifold, addressing various issues of deprival arising from time to time. This baton has been passed on to us and I feel really honoured to be a part of this legacy of the AIWC. It has truly been an enriching experience and has left me with a feeling of tremendous satisfaction. A lot more still needs to be done, therefore I hope this glorious past of ours will inspire the generation next to create an even more glorious future which will place smiles instead of tears on the faces of those whom we have been working for.

---- Sheela Kakde