• NCRB reports point towards the increase in the number of crime against women in different parts of the country. 
• As criminal justice solutions have largely been inaccessible to socially precarious women, a more inclusive alternative is to have collective-based resolution mechanisms. 
• The potential of large-scale groups of women, such as self-help groups (SHGs), becomes critical in the Indian context.

Role of women collectives

1. Work with government, community and private sector

• They work with governments, community groups and the private sector

     2.Implementation and evaluation of projects

• They develop and implement programs, monitor and evaluate their progress

     3.Train women

• They help train people working on those projects.

    4.Reach upto most vulnerable women

• They’re considered more nimble than other institutions in accomplishing development goals because they can reach the most vulnerable or disaffected people in a community and find innovative solutions to problems.
• Although their funding streams and institutional decision-making structures are typically multinational, NGOs’ legitimacy, indeed, often rests on perceptions of them being “local” and “close to the people.”

     5.Act as dispute resolution platform for crime against women

• India has experimented with many models of community dispute resolution mechanisms — the Nari Adalats (women courts) in various States, Women’s Resource Centres (Rajasthan), Shalishi (West Bengal), and Mahila Panchayats (Delhi) — which have seen intimate partner violence, IPV as a public issue rather than a personal problem. 
• Several NGOs have co-opted these models so that women can resolve cases of violence without getting entangled in tedious legal processes

Conclusion

• The SHGs have shown good results in socio-economic conditions in different parts of India. But most of these are only concentrated in certain pockets of country. 
• So there is need to address this imbalance and use them as conduit to reach the marginalized sections of women for their empowerment.
• Collectives of women need adequate investment for building their capacities; there must be investment in specific training, and gender analysis processes. SHGs are mostly seen as administrative entities. Their social role can be enhanced to tackle the widespread problem of IPV.