When a much-hyped project fails to live up to expectations, it leaves a scar. Mahila Mall is one such scar for the Kudumbashree Mission, as it celebrates its silver jubilee. Even after its shutdown, the mall keeps reappearing in the news for all the wrong reasons, not allowing the scar to fade.
Mahila Mall was a venture of the Unity Group of Kudumbashree under the Kozhikode Corporation Community Development Society (CDS), claimed to be the first ever mall in Asia with an all-woman crew. When Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurated it in November 2018, it was promoted as the ultimate model for women empowerment, a platform for women entrepreneurs to start and flourish. But the honeymoon phase faded in just a month and the 70 odd women entrepreneurs who invested their life's savings in the mall, started expressing their discontent over the management of the mall. What started as whispers among the entrepreneurs soon grew as an outcry for justice.
