On a river island that has long been a symbol of Assam's cultural identity, women are now picking up trowels. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma appreciated an initiative on Friday, 25 September 2026, in which skilled women in Majuli — the world's largest river island — are being trained as masons, with the Chief Minister's Office of Assam calling it 'a promising step towards an Atmanirbhar Assam, built by its women.'

From Majuli's ghats to a construction site

Masonry has traditionally been a male-dominated trade across rural India, and Majuli is no exception. The trained women are first set to contribute to school boundary wall construction — a concrete, visible assignment that puts their new skills to immediate use in their own communities. That first deployment matters: it is both a proof-of-concept and a confidence-builder before the larger assignment that follows.

The bigger opportunity comes next — housing construction under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), the central government's flagship scheme launched in 2015 to provide pucca houses to eligible rural and urban families. PMAY projects represent sustained, paid work, and plugging locally trained women masons into that pipeline turns a skill-training initiative into a durable livelihood.

Why Majuli, and why masonry

Majuli district has been a focus of state-level livelihood and infrastructure investment given its geographical isolation and the particular vulnerabilities that come with living on a flood-prone river island. By routing PMAY construction demand through locally trained workers, the state simultaneously addresses unemployment and keeps money circulating within the community.

The move also fits squarely within the Skill India Mission framework, active since 2015, which explicitly includes construction trades as pathways to formal employment. What distinguishes the Majuli model is the deliberate targeting of women for a trade they have historically been shut out of — breaking, as the CMO put it, longstanding barriers.

Assam's pattern of gender-inclusive infrastructure work

This is not an isolated gesture. Assam has, since roughly 2020, been weaving women into non-traditional trades by connecting skill training directly to existing infrastructure schemes — creating demand-linked training rather than certification that leads nowhere. The Majuli mason programme follows that logic: train women, then hand them a contract. The self-reliance framing echoes the national Atmanirbhar Bharat ('self-reliant India') agenda, but localised to community-level economic autonomy for women.

CM Sarma, who has led Assam since May 2021, has made women's skill development a stated pillar of the state's welfare agenda. His appreciation of the initiative signals that the programme is likely to attract continued administrative and budgetary attention.

The real measure will come when the first PMAY walls go up — built, brick by brick, by the women of Majuli.