PROJECT EQUILIBRIA

Project Equilibria came out of a question I couldn't stop thinking about. Almost everyone I talked to said dowry was wrong, yet it still happens in so many families, including ones who openly disagree with it. If people know it's harmful, why do they keep going along with it?

 

The more I looked into it, the clearer it became that dowry survives because of pressure. Family expectations, fear of what relatives will say, tradition, worries about a daughter's security after marriage: all of these push ordinary people into something they don't actually believe in. Simply telling people dowry is bad does nothing about any of that.

 

So I designed Equilibria as a workshop that looks at dowry as a system. It runs over three sessions and is built for NGOs working with teenagers and young adults, ideally before they reach marriageable age. The sessions move through three stages: understanding why dowry exists, questioning who gains and who loses from it, and finally working out what one person can actually do when that pressure shows up in their own life.

 

One rule I set for myself from the start was that I would never lecture. Nobody likes being preached at, and it rarely changes anyone's mind. Participants work through case studies, role plays, discussions and reflection activities, and they reach the conclusions themselves. I also had to rewrite a lot of my early material because I had assumed a level of English that many participants didn't have. Learning to explain complicated ideas simply has probably been the most valuable thing this project has taught me.

 

I founded Equilibria and lead the sessions myself, with a team of student volunteers, across five NGOs in Jaipur. We have already run sessions in person, and watching participants start connecting the dots on their own has been the best part. The whole project runs on a budget of zero, and I've built the curriculum so other NGOs can pick it up and use it.

 

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