A vision for women’s empowerment: the story of Ela Bhatt’s SEWA

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 1

SEWA, the Self Employed Women’s Association set up by Ela Bhatt in 1972, has achieved something that no company, conglomerate, or perhaps even government has achieved in India — the creation of a truly effective employment support programme for women who are among the country’s poorest and most marginalised.

Over 50 years, SEWA has built more than four dozen institutions for the poor and by the poor, and to empower poor women workers — all founded on the principle that “the poor do not need charity, they need an enabling mechanism to strive and come out of the vicious circle of poverty and vulnerability”.

About Ela Bhatt

• She was known as the “Gentle Revolutionary” who changed the lives of lakhs of women through her organisation, providing them with microloans for five decades.
• She founded the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in 1972.
• She also headed the women’s wing of Majoor Mahajan Sangh-the Textile Labour Association founded by Anasuya Sarabhai and Mahatma Gandhi.
• She was the chairperson of the Sabarmati Ashram Memorial and Preservation Trust, also co-founded the Women’s World Banking, a global network of microfinance organisations, of which she was chairperson from 1984 to 1988.
• She was also nominated to Rajya Sabha, and was a member of the Planning Commission.
• She had also acted as an advisor to organisations like the World Bank.
• In 2007, she joined the Elders, a group of world leaders founded by Nelson Mandela to promote human rights and peace.
• She was a prodigious writer who penned in Anasuya, our Gujarati newsletter, a play on street vendors. One of her famous book was “We are Poor but We are Many”.
• She was a recipient of the Padma Bhushan, Ramon Magsaysay Award and Indira Gandhi International Prize for Peace among many other awards.

Self Employed Women’s Association

• SEWA was born out of the Textile Labour Association (TLA) — founded by Anasuya Sarabhai and Mahatma Gandhi in 1920 — 
• But it could not register as a trade union until 1972 because its members did not have an “employer”, and were thus not seen as workers.
• In 1981, after the anti-reservation riots in which the Bhatts were targeted for supporting quotas for Dalits in medical education, the TLA broke up with SEWA. “
• At the time of the break from the TLA, SEWA had 4,900 members, a small cooperative bank, an office building, a rural centre, one vehicle, and a few typewriters. 
• As early as in 1974, SEWA Bank was established to provide small loans to poor women — an initiative that was recognised by the International Labour Organisation as a microfinance movement.
• The Unorganised Workers Social Security Act (2008), the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (2011), and the Street Vendors Act (2014), are seen as successes of SEWA’s struggle. The PM Street Vendors Atmanirbhar Nidhi (PM-SVANidhi) scheme is seen as being inspired by SEWA’s microfinance model.
• With an annual membership fee of just Rs 10, SEWA allows anyone who is self-employed to become a member.
• Its network is spread across 18 Indian states, in other countries of South Asia, in South Africa, and Latin America.
• It simultaneously provided employment to women and promoted cooperative production, consumption and marketing of textiles which constituted the core of India’s industrialisation.