This is an ethnographic study of the structure, practices, and effects of the Mahila Samakhya program, a "government-organized non-governmental organization" involving Indian state agencies and feminist groups that aims to mobilize low-caste, rural women who have been disempowered by economic forces and by social and political structures in neoliberal India. Author Sharma (anthropology and feminist studies, Wesleyan U.) uses the study to explore a range of questions about the state, development, gender, subaltern subjects, and popular protest, and to show how transnational ideologies of development articulate and jostle with histories of state and subject formation and of popular movements in India. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)