Monisha Behal

Behal was born in 1951 in Tezpur, Assam, into a family of writers, filmmakers, poets and activists; her mother was an active member of the Tezpur Mahila Samiti. She has recalled helping soldiers and civilians during the Sino-Indian war of 1962, at the age of eleven, when her family refused to be evacuated.

Behal began working on rural women's issues in the early 1980s through the Tezpur District Mahila Samiti in her home town, encouraging women's organisations to approach agricultural work from a rights perspective. During the 1980s and 1990s she carried out research across the north-eastern states and published articles in the press on women's social and economic conditions, and built a team of younger activists through training work in Assam, Meghalaya and Nagaland.

The North East Network was established in 1995 and grew into three state chapters, in Assam, Meghalaya and Nagaland. Between 1995 and 1998 Behal's work in Chizami village, Phek district, Nagaland, developed into the Chizami Resource Centre, which combined biodiversity documentation with women's learning programmes; a linked livelihood project for weavers grew to involve more than 300 women across Chizami and ten neighbouring villages.

In 2015 she initiated the Green Hub at Tezpur, a film and video documentation centre described as the first digital archive of its kind in the region, where fellows document wildlife conservation, environment and social issues. She chairs Nenterprise, a trust promoting the livelihoods of women weavers in districts of Assam and Nagaland.

Behal was a member of the Government of India's High Level Committee on the Status of Women from 2013 to 2015, and wrote its chapter on violence against women. She is a founding member and governing body member of the Foundation for Social Transformation, registered in Guwahati in December 2005 after a series of planning meetings across Guwahati and Shillong in 2005 and 2006.

The first Sanskriti Award for excellence in social work was conferred on the North East Network under Behal's leadership by Sheila Dikshit, Chief Minister of Delhi, on 28 October 2004. On 8 March 2007 she received the Ananya Award for women achievers from the Ministry of Women and Child Development, and in December 2007 a citation from the Assam Pradeshik Mahila Samiti and Tezpur District Mahila Samiti. She was felicitated by Nandini women's magazine in 2009.

She received the Joymoti Award from the Dibrugarh Ladies Club on 16 March 2016 and the FICCI Ladies Organisation Woman Achievers Award of Excellence 2015–16 in Guwahati on 29 April 2016. In August 2018 she was among six people honoured at the MG Changemakers event in Mumbai, and in February 2019 received the Outlook Business Women of Worth award in Kolkata. Gauhati University conferred an honorary doctorate on her at its 30th convocation on 24 February 2023.[3][4][5][6][7]