In the crowded settlements of Indore, a familiar assumption has long shaped what work looks like for women: that dignified, skilled, technical work belongs to someone else. Most women in these communities grew up without schooling, and arrived at adulthood with few options beyond domestic labour, cleaning work, or daily-wage jobs with little security. Their daughters, watching this, often left school early to follow the same path.

One organisation working in these settlements decided to challenge that assumption at its root. It began training women as two-wheeler mechanics, electricians, and professional drivers. The trades it chose were deliberate: each one was long considered the preserve of men, each one offered a living wage, and each one put a woman visibly in charge of something technical in public space.

The approach goes well beyond a training certificate. Community mobilisation, family counselling, empowerment sessions on legal rights and health, and direct routes to work through women-run garages and on-call services are all part of the same model.

Walk into one of the women-run garages in Indore today and the scene takes a moment to register. Tools on the bench, scooters rolling in, customers asking questions with the casual familiarity of any neighbourhood repair shop. The women running it speak to customers with confidence, direct the work, and handle the accounts. Some came here out of necessity, some out of curiosity, some are using it as a stepping stone toward something else entirely. What they share is that this space gave them a technical skill, an income of their own, and a visibility in their communities they had never had before.

Over 700 women across these settlements have already trained and entered these trades, with incomes rising significantly from what they earned before. As they work, they become something else too: the first people in their neighbourhoods that younger women can point to and say, this is possible for me.