When Chetna Jogi walks to her classes at Government Veerbala Kalibai Girls’ College today, she does so without a second thought. It’s easy to miss just how significant that is — until you hear how she describes what changed.
“The training gave me the strength to move independently,” said the BSc student, reflecting on her time at the college’s Rani Laxmi Bai Kendra — a programme that blends confidence-building, legal literacy, and financial skills for young women across Rajasthan.
There’s a weight to that word — independently. It isn’t the language of someone who was always sure of herself, but of someone who had to build that certainty, one class at a time.
For Chetna, who comes from a modest family in Rajasthan’s tribal belt, the shift hasn’t come from mastering one single skill. It comes from a slow, steady belief that she can navigate the world — the classroom, the bank, the government office — entirely on her own terms.
She’s one of thousands of young women across the state who’ve been through a Rani Laxmi Bai Kendra, an initiative of Rajasthan’s Department of Higher Education, run inside government colleges.
Named after the warrior queen of Jhansi, the programme is less about combat and more about capability — helping young women show up in the world with the knowledge, awareness, and self-assurance to make their own decisions.
A four-week programme
Each Kendra runs a four-week curriculum in batches of 40 to 45 students — small enough, trainers say, that no one gets lost in the crowd.
Alongside sessions on personal safety and body awareness, students attend workshops on women’s legal rights, emergency response, health, and staying safe online.
Trainers, often drawn from state police units, work with small batches of students to teach practical self-defence techniques.
The programme runs in partnership with the state police — a detail that shapes the sessions as much as the content itself. Rather than a one-off awareness camp, students spend four weeks in a setting where police involvement is a routine, familiar part of college life rather than something reserved for emergencies.
For Ridhika Kanwar Bhati, a first-year BSc student from Chittorgarh, it was the small things that mattered most — yoga and meditation sessions that helped her focus, and an all-women environment that made it easier to ask questions she might otherwise have held back.
Learning the law
For many students, the sessions on legal rights and cybersecurity leave the deepest impression. For some, it’s the first time they’ve learned in detail about the laws designed to protect them, or the support systems available when they need help.
Girls learn how to recognise harassment, how to preserve evidence in cases of online abuse, and which authorities or helplines to approach in an emergency. Information that once felt distant or complicated becomes something practical — something they can actually use.
Careers and finance
The Kendras also look beyond college. Sessions on personality development, career planning, and vocational guidance are designed to help young women build financially independent futures — covering the basics of banking, budgeting, and scholarships.
Beyond self-defence, the Kendras teach banking, budgeting, and scholarship literacy to help students plan for financial independence.
For students from smaller towns and tribal districts, this is often their first structured introduction to opportunities most had never had reason to consider — from competitive exams to vocational courses to professional careers.
For a student like Chetna, who grew up in Rajasthan’s tribal belt, that alone can be the difference between a future that feels fixed and one that feels like a series of choices she gets to make herself.
150 colleges and counting
What started as a pilot in a handful of colleges has grown into one of the largest college-based programmes of its kind in the country.
The first phase covered 34 government girls’ colleges at district headquarters, training nearly 3,500 students. The second phase expanded to 314 colleges at the block level, reaching around 15,000 young women — a nearly ninefold jump in colleges covered within a single phase.
A third phase is now rolling out across another 150 colleges, pushing the total number of students trained past 25,000.
If Rajasthan hits that number, it will be one of the country’s largest college-based empowerment programmes for young women.
More than a number
For students like Chetna and Ridhika, though, the real impact isn’t in the statistics — it’s in the everyday moments. It’s the confidence to walk into a classroom, a bank, or a government office knowing exactly where to go, what to ask, and how to speak up for herself.
“The training gave me the strength to move independently,” Chetna said again — and this time, it isn’t just a line from an interview. It’s how she lives, every single day.
