From Independence to Freedom

But yes. Gandhiji’s words have been the guiding force in shaping this idea through experience. For him economic freedom was as important as political independence. He called economic poverty a ‘moral collapse’ of the society. The problem of poverty and loss of freedom are not separate, he said. This ‘second freedom’ is an idea that has worked for me over the decades.

As I passed my Law degree I joined Textile Labour Association (TLA) founded by Gandhiji in Ahmedabad in 1917. While working with textile workers i.e. industrial workers of the formal sector of the economy, gradually, slowly two things became clearer to my mind : one, when 89% of the working population of India engaged in informal sector and self-employed sectors remain unorganised, unrecognised, unprotected, there is no labour movement worth its name in our country. Two, 80% women in India are rural, poor, illiterate-semiliterate and economically very active who should be actually playing a leading role in the women’s movement of India.

My background being of the labour union, I started within TLA organising women working in the unorganised sector of the economy in early seventies and unionised them into the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA).

As such, SEWA was a union of first of its kind in 1972. Informal sector workers were hardly organised before. However, ideawise, I don’t think there was anything new or original that we did. In India, these are ageold proven ideas. India had its guilds of artisans, had caste panchayats, mostly occupationwise, with suitable structures and processes to protect and develop their work and economic interests.

The women we unionised suffered poverty and exploitation for lack of access to financial services. We started organising them further into a cooperative bank viz SEWA Bank, in 1974. This was unique because it was a formal bank of the illiterate and poor women. However, earlier, there did exist Sharafi Pedhies sectorwise, tradewise, villagewise. Small savings, local savings were put in gold and silver, temples, water harvesting bodies. That is where village people invested their time, labour, money.

Regarding self employment, historically, culturally, traditionally our country has been essentially self employed. A subsistence economy – agricultural or tribal – which had been commercialised partly has been now superimposed by an industrial economy. The economy is still largely agricultural and tribal, but from subsistence it has been catapulted into a commercial economy because of industrialisation. Self employment has been the basic Indian culture. Self employment had been the way of earning one’s livelihood. Most of the occupations and trades were homebased. The idea of separation of work and rest did not exist.

All these ideas were already rooted in our soil. I think SEWA provided them a forum to stand firm and forge links with others.

We found that SEWA women were rooted in these ideas and practices.

Being close to these women we built up on the foundation of these ideas that existed. As we were close to them we could notice the differences between the issues of the self employed in the urban and rural areas, between artisans and farmers, men and women. We helped to bring them together, to talk with each other and tried to carefully understand them.

We built on the strength of the number.

Over years, we matched our actions with the power of numbers – not by dozens but by thousands. We were engaged in making lives and livelihoods viable of 900 salt workers, 10,000 bidi workers, 45000 artisans, 50000 street vendors, 1,40,000 landless, 2 lakh loanees. Ideas acted in numbers. That certainly brought their visibility. A strong impact showed on the women themselves in terms of confidence, on the government in terms of our outreach. The politicians recognised their constituencies in our numbers. Therefore, the communities, the government, politicians took us seriously. Our words carried weight.

We matched the power of numbers with power of public ideas. As we understood the women and identified their work, nursed their interests and then made our actions into public ideas. SEWA Bank steadily progressed for 30 years. It could have spread through many branches but that was not the goal. We strived to let many SEWA Banking grow in many more areas in the country. And that is what has happened. This has influenced for more than what one SEWA Bank would have reached through its one structure. SEWA Bank has shared her experience, knowledge and knowhow, here and abroad. Poor women, worldwide, in last two decades, have proved their credit worthiness. Microcredit is now considered the most crucial component in the armory of fight against poverty. This is to illustrate my point from action to idea.

The organised number and the strong deeprooted ideas combined, have gone to form a movement. In SEWA movement, new experiences are invented to challenge the dominant, oppressive structures, concepts and practices. The SEWA Union structure is like a banayan tree that has developed into the SEWA Movement changing women’s work and living conditions. It owes the change, I believe, to firstly, its grassroots, the Indian soil and, secondly, women’s ability to translate their values into working systems. Indian traditions are deeply embedded in women, and SEWA started from where women were : from their strengths, their needs and their limitations. Indian traditions are built as much on economic systems as on social and cultural ones. SEWA women tried to manage to recognise and build on the vibrancy and strength of self employment in the face of the rapidly changing economy and its resulting upheaval of traditional social values.

SEWA has worked to transform the traditional economy and its people into the modern economy while maintaining the strengths of the traditional systems. The SEWA exemplifies such traditional - modern union. The SEWA Bank - a regular Bank of the formal Banking sector - moves with the rhythm of the members’ economy. Our experience shows that whenever we build a new structure relevant to the aspirations and needs of the women, the structure has invariably thrown out a movement which has given birth to another structure relevant to the life of the women. Such structures/organisations and the concomitant movement have always mutually stimulated each other, producing women’s leadership at all levels of their public interventions, be it in the area of banking, ecology, social security, legislations, management or census operation. Each Sewa intervention has its own record of history.

With these words as a background, let me say now what we have been doing in SEWA at various levels.

Beyond Survival

Our experience of working with poor women at SEWA emphasises the fact that work is the foremost priority for them. Their lives revolve around work. “If we work we survive”, as they always say. Hence they try to maximise any employment opportunity that they come across. Let me state that Full Employment has to be the foundation stone of any moral and rational economic model. The society which leaves millions unemployed cannot morally justify its economic systems – no matter high growth.

We have learnt that employment is the link between poverty and growth. In that case what do we do in SEWA to attain full employment at the household level?

We develop the women’s productivity to the fullest, assist provide access to markets and capital, ensure better terms of trade, effectively build their organisational and managerial capacities, and persist in bringing enabling policies at the macro level. We believe, this will for sure, lead to a growth of both employment and GNP of our country.

Let me briefly dwell on these points in the context of SEWA’s efforts in this direction.

Our artisan members such as block printers, handloom weavers, stitchers, embroiderers, leather workers, generally do have the skill that they have learnt traditionally from the family, but since market requirements have changed, these skills need upgrading and adapting to new designs. Also they need to learn to adapt to the quality requirements of modern markets. We have found that if these artisans are brought in contact with modern designs and requirements of the modern markets, with suitable training they quickly learn the new skills required to enter the new markets.

Designers from Delhi, New York, Paris come and regularly work with our artisans’ organisations called Banascraft andKutchcraft. Using their traditional design motifs, the designers give product development inputs based on the market trend. This has resulted into Banascraft forging partnership with several major stores and boutiques in some metropolitan cities. Now Banascraft artisans have also developed their production base to cater to the export market. Acquiring new skills and accessing the market has led to a dramatic improvement of employment opportunities of the 16000 strong district association of rural women artisans.

Similarly, traditional mid-wives who had the traditional skills of child-birth have been trained in modern methods of child birth, family planning and some basic clinical techniques and have now become para-medics. These midwives have formed their own co-operatives and have become popular in the rural areas. Their income has rose from almost zero to average Rs. 65 per one delivery. And, the profession which had no new entrant before has now opened doors for young and literate women of the village.

More modern tools, when made available to such workers enhance both employment opportunities and productivity. Electrical powered sewing machines, irrigation pumps, pneumatic tyres for hand-carts, small power tillers, drip irrigation systems for dry areas, small-scale paper recycling plants - these are all tools that SEWA members have been now using to increase their productivity and to stand firm in the competitive market.

One of the main attempts of SEWA members is to own assets and improve their productivity. SEWA Bank, is a women’s co-operative bank in which SEWA members save and take loans usually first for redemption of debts from private money lenders, and then borrow to acquire assets. These may be a handcart, a house, a workshed, a piece of land, a well, a handloom, a sewing machine, a cow or some chickens. These assets improve the family income by increasing productivity, or adding an additional source of earning and diversifying the resource base.

Starting with a share capital of Rs. 72,400 (average Rs.11) and 6188 depositors in 1974, the Bank today has total working capital of about Rs. 35 crores (no subsidy or any outside capital) and more than 1,20,000 depositors. The loan repayment rate has been 92 to 95%. The Bank has distributed dividend every year to her shareholders. The financial services provided by the Bank consists of savings, credit and deposit-linked insurance through variety of financial products including housing.

It is now proved that women, poor, working in the informal sector can run a financial body like a bank, profitably. When the members own a Bank, they take keen interest in its management, ensure a high repayment rate, maximum surpluses and distributing largest possible dividends to the members. SEWA Bank is full of stories. Let me give one example : Nanuben, an agriculture worker in Mesana, and her husband Vithalbhai, earned Rs. 3/- per day during the season of six months. The rest of the year, they almost starved. They migrated to Ahmedabad city in search of work. They entered the city in 1978 with Rs. 7/- in their pocket, stayed in her grandfather’s slum on a rent of Rs. 5/- per month. With her grandmother, she joined a tiny business of collecting and repairing used clothes from houses and then selling them in the used garments market. She and her husband learnt stitching on a rented machine paying fees to the neighbour-teacher. Chandaben Board member of SEWA Bank introduced Naunben to the bank. Her first loan (1978) was of Rs. 500 to buy a basket for collection of clothes, buttons and threads for repair and foodgrains for consumption plus a pair of sturdy footwear. She made a surplus of Rs. 400 and borrowed Rs. 1500 to buy her own sewing machine and to repair the floor of her hut.

With a long-term relationship with SEWA Bank, Nanuben has borrowed 18 times so far. She bought a house, some furniture, invested in some gold and silver, married off her daughter during these years and has a bank balance of Rs. 12000 today. She says, “We were living in   a hut and were eating only once a day, sleeping on the floor, when we came to Ahmedabad city. Now we have a pucca house, with cots and a ceiling fan, stock of grains and oil, a stove, soaps and woollens. Earlier, I was washing and repairing all the clothes myself. Now we have engaged a tailor, and a washerman comes to my house daily for collecting clothes to wash.” Nanuben’s total assets today amount to around rupees four lakh.

Nanuben has capital, has the capacity to stand in the competitive market, has access to social insurance, thus ensuring health care, child care, shelter, and has a voice and share in the decision-making process of the SEWA Bank that she owns. This story of Nanuben’s journey from Rs. 7 to Rs. 4 lakh,” over 18 years, runs along the SEWA Bank’s story “From one Nanuben to 1,60,000 Bens.” Needless to say each Ben develops at her own pace. Bens walk holding each other’s hands, marching forward and others following them towards the Second Freedom. Women’s banking is freedom, it is power.

Reaching Knowledge

Although knowledge and techniques grow more and more sophisticated for the private and public sector, this growth of the knowledge has not really reached these women. SEWA members have tried to reach modern techniques with some very positive encouraging results. In agriculture, our marginal farmers and members of land co-operatives have sought training and technical guidance in modern agriculture practices to the local Agriculture Universities. The women farmers learnt about new varieties of seeds and plants and how to use them. The landless women and small farmers have formed themselves into small co-operatives to improve the conditions of their own private small holdings, or to develop their common wasteland. This gives them a steady and secure livelihood as well as improving the environment of their villages where they live.

In the dry districts of Surendranagar, Mesana and Kutch, the Sewa members have learnt the technique of harvesting and conserving roof rain water into water tanks constructed by them in their homes. The Banaskantha women’s water committees have taken over the operation and maintenance of regional water supply scheme. They have become now ‘water technicians’.

The Sabarkantha women repair hand pumps, undertake recharging of wells, and thereby restore water supply to the villages. All these services are provided by their Associations, on payment.

The severe problem of water shortage has led to lack of drinking water, water for cattle and for irrigation. SEWA members have begun to restore their employment by learning and using modern techniques of water harvesting on a big scale by building plastic-lined ponds and small check dams in several villages around. In last 5 years, 226 villages have the benefit of such ponds.

Similarly, the local young women have been trained as community health workers and serve the need of healthcare and childcare of the village community. 80% of the minor ailments of cough-cold-cuts-burns are treated by these trained community health workers. They can diognise the signs and symptoms of serious diseases like pneumonia, TB, malaria and have learnt to use better the government system linking with its referral services. The health workers have learnt about modern drugs and their use. They formed their health cooperative producing health care and childcare services for their own community. This cooperative runs drug shops in municipal general hospitals and outside selling rational generic drugs at almost cost price. The impact is high in terms of health care (measles deaths in Shankarbhavan slums have disappeared, far more number of young women are using contraceptives) but also in terms of creating employment opportunities for the local women.

Access to Markets and Capital

The women producers have neither the finances nor the knowledge nor the contacts to reach better markets. A small grower of tomatoes usually has to sell her produce at the village level to the traders at half the price she could get from the city. An embroiderer has to sell her exquisitely embroidered skirt to a trader at one-tenth the price it will finally sell for. The small salt producer cannot hire a railway wagon to the wholesale market and so has to dispose of her salt at a fraction of the real price. The handloom weaver buys scarce yarn at double the price that the weaving factory gets it. The leather worker has to give up her trade as all raw leather in the area has been exported.

Similarly for capital. A vendor has to borrow at 15% per month from the money lender, while the banks are lending to businesses around the same rate per year. A marginal farmer has to mortgage her land, and all her rights to produce on it, during a lean year, as she has no access to cheaper sources of credit. Seeds are borrowed at sowing season, to be returned with 250% at the time of harvest.

SEWA has found that employment opportunities are enhanced several-fold when the women’s livelihoods are directly linked with the mainstream markets. The SEWA women in the Santalpur desert area had intermittent employment, earning a pittance when picking gum off trees and selling them to traders. But when these women formed their own co-operative and linked up with the licensing and selling agent viz., the Forest Development Corporation, the gum pickers had steady employment. By forming dairy co-operatives linked with the milk marketing federation, livestock owners were able to get a steady and fair price for their milk. The embroiderers of the desert districts could turn their occasional sale of products into a full-time employment earning opportunity when they acquired their own shop in the city of Ahmedabad. Bamboo workers could buy bamboos at one half of the price when they went to another state and bought in bulk.

By forming their own bank and their own village level savings and credit groups and district level Savings Associations, SEWA members have been able to increase their earnings and create new employment for themselves by accessing capital at much lower interest rates.

SEWA organises her members to form economic organisations and find a wide variety of organisational forms depending on the area, the activity and the capacity of the members. Urban members who are more literate and have more access to services, have formed registered co-operatives. So have the milk producers as they could fit into an already existing dairy co-operative infrastructure. Service providers like health-care and child-care workers have formed co-operatives of a new type. SEWA’s co-operatives later came together to form a state-level federation that now provides training and policy support as well as marketing services to its 67 member-cooperatives. As their representative, the Federation takes up common issues of her members at the state and national level forums.

However, women producers in the scattered villages found the co-operative laws too cumbersome, so they organised themselves into Government sponsored DWCRA groups which have simple and less demanding rules. In 9 districts, such groups have come together to form District DWCRA Association that provide them with basic infrastructural support to access credit and market. Their Associations have brought them visibility and voice. In the rural areas where water is a scarce resource, the producers in DWCRA groups have formed Water Committees to deal with the water management including access to more and better sources of water.

One of the most difficult problems the women have had to face in owning these organisations is developing their managerial capacity. One of the major inputs of SEWA has been to train the women, their leaders and executive committee members to manage their own groups. At the same time SEWA has helped the groups to hire managers and accountants and to train them. Recently, SEWA-AMA (Ahmedabad Management Association) have jointly formed a centre for management training of the grassroots managers in SEWA and NGOs of Gujarat. This has turned into a fruitful alliance.

Why is SEWA in all this business?! To gain freedom through full employment at her household level.

SEWA’s two concrete goals are full employment and self-reliance for all her members. For us, full employment means such employment that assures income security, food security and social security - social security that includes at least health care, child care and shelter. By our goal of self-reliance, we mean that women should be autonomous and self-reliant, both economically and in terms of their decision-making ability, individually and collectively.

Perhaps it will interest you to know the performance of SEWA in numbers.

In very broad terms, during the year 1999, our annual report states the following :

SEWA’s union membership is 2,15,234, (1/3^rd urban, 2/3^rd rural) most probably the largest primary trade union of the country.

37,602 new employments were created, during the year, through their union, cooperatives and district associations. The rest has been the strengthening of the existing employment on hand.

In a membership based organisation, the members’ priorities necessarily shape the priorities of the organisation. SEWA has developed its various activities based on the reality and issues faced and articulated by the members. SEWA has much broader mandate from her members, though I have mentioned here only the economic aspects of the agenda. The following ten questions have emerged from the members’ articulation, that continually serve as a common direction for all members, leaders and staff. It also provides a useful guideline for monitoring the progress of SEWA activities.

These questions are very simple that we keep on asking each other (members, leaders, managers) all the time : Through our efforts in SEWA (i) has employment increased, (ii) income gone up, (iii) food and nutrition improved (iv) health safeguarded (v) child care attended (vi) housing improved (vii) increased ownership of assets (assets like savings, land, house, cattle, workspace, tools of work, shareholding, license, identity card in her own name) (viii) collective organisational strength increased (ix) leadership grown (x) do they feel moving towards self reliance - financially and in taking decisions over their affairs, at individual and collectives level?

If the answer is in ‘yes’, ok, let us go ahead, we are on the right track.

Promoting Women’s Own Organisations

It has become clear to us that the basis of development and progress is organising, building organisation. Self employed women must organise themselves into sustainable organisations so that they can collectively promote their own development. To fight poverty and injustice, collective organisational strength is the pre condition.

These organisations have many different purposes. They are trade organisations which promote employment, increase income and link the women workers/producers with the market. They are organisations which build assets through savings and credit, such as the SEWA Bank. They are organisations which provide social security, such as health care, child care and housing. These are SEWA’s service cooperatives. And then there are organisations which promote the cause of, and advocate for, poor women’s economic status, like SEWA’s labour unions.

Organising for visibility and voice is a continuous process. It is a movement that produce numerous organisations at the village level, at the district level, at the state level, at the national, international level. These organisations envigourate the movement to go ahead and in the process more organisations -bodies take birth and take roots. It is like the bunyan tree whose branch take roots and grow into independent self-reliant tree throwing out more branches and so on the bunyan tree sprawls on the ground for generations to come. Even cutting down a branch from the mother tree would not destroy any one, both will survive. - That is SEWA’s vision in building organisations of poor self employed women.

It is very essential for the poor to be autonomous in terms of financial self sufficiency as well as, in terms of decisions making. For them often collective empowerment is more important than on an individual basis. With collective strength, they are able to combat with the outside exploitative and corrupt forces like money lender or police or a black marketeer.

The organisation helps the members in removing their marginalisation, and brings them into the mainstream. The SEWA Cooperative Bank could bring the illiterate, poor, women workers and producers in the mainstream of formal banking system, and therefore, were able to deal with the Reserve Bank of India on par with other Cooperative or Government Banks. The auditors of the RBI have to discuss (may be for the first time) the banking matters with Board of Directors of SEWA Bank who are the elected representatives of artisans, labourers, rag pickers and street vendors. This provides a unique experience of exposure and dialogue to both the sides. There is no doubt that SEWA Cooperative Bank would not have been able to perform effectively if there was no SEWA, the umbrella union organisation of the self employed women. Similarly, SEWA would not have been able to fight the union conflicts if there was no standby viz., SEWA Bank for the victimised. Joint action of union and cooperatives is our strategy in struggle and development that has worked effectively.

The collectiveness of the organisation generates tremendous power and strength for its members in their individual life. Famidabi of Bhopal, a bidi worker, on her way to attend the bidi workers’ meeting in Ahmedabad dropped her ‘burkha’ for ever. Karimabibi, leader of chindi workers of Dariapur, openly confronted her own brother who represented the employers while she was representing chindi workers negotiating wage rise, before the Labour Commissioner, in his office.

Let me tell you that when a woman gets organised on the basis of work, her self esteem grows and realises the fact that she is a ‘worker’, a ‘producer’, and active contributor to the national income, and not just somebody’s wife, mother or daughter or a homemaker. While participating in the organisation and management of her cooperative or union, her self confidence and competence grow, a sense of responsibility grows, leadership within her grows. SEWA Academy’s study done for ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) of the 1200 SEWA field leaders found that 52 percent of the members perceive themselves as head of their family.

Having attained collective economic strength, within the family a woman’s status goes higher and her decisions are respected : The ESCAP study of SEWA members find that (i) 32 percent of leaders take decision in buying family asset;  (ii) 35 percent decide on their son’s and daughter’s marriage;  (iii) All have participated in public meetings and rallies, while only 15 percent of their men have done so; (iv) All have dealt directly with either municipality or police or government and panchayat officials while only four percent of their men have done so; (v) 87 percent of leaders decide who to vote for and 36 percent have participated in political meetings.

All women spoken to in the study, experienced that their social status within their community is also higher than before due to their leadership position in SEWA union and cooperatives. Of them, 75 percent feel that their prestige in the community has gone up, and 57 percent have interacted with the caste panchayats which earlier did not have any such interaction.

Moreover, when the workers/producers form their own organisations, they are also able to break new grounds, eg teachers and mothers forming ‘Sangini’, their own childcare cooperative. The health functionaries ranging from doctors to dais (midwives) form their own cooperative viz., ‘Lokswasthya’. They not only ‘produce and sell’ health services to SEWA members, but also run drug counters at the two municipal general hospitals, thereby, propagating use of generic rational drugs vis-a-vis brand named drugs. ‘Saundarya,’ the cleaners’ cooperative, won a historic court case establishing the cooperatives rights to negotiate employment conditions with the company against the company’s employee’s union. “We are not individual workers, we are collective owners of our cooperative”, said the ‘Saundarya’ while arguing in the Court.

All along, it has been observed that given the opportunity, people - may be poor and illiterate, women or men - are ready to absorb new ideas and assistance, ready to get organised. However, such People’s Organisations can only flourish if the macro policies and economic environment give them the space to grow. With very little encouragement, and in spite of much resistance against it, the informal sector has survived and grown in the last decades. An enabling environment to those resourceful people in the sector would allow further growth resulting in enhanced employment, better earnings and more control of producers over their own economies.

The first of these policies should be liberal laws which allow scope for many different types of member based socio economic organisations to take roots and grow. These laws should ensure maximum control to their members   - with the government playing the role of an effective facilitator (only).

While liberalisation has been theorder of the day for the private industry, the informal sector still labours under heavy controls. Raw materials can only be obtained by licenses, Co-operative Banks are not allowed to operate in rural areas, forest produce is still owned by the State and inaccessible to gatherers and producers, village water resources are managed by the State in spite of people’s ability and willingness to manage them. An enabling policy should recognise the bureaucratic barriers to growth of the informal and self employed sector and remove them.

Access to resources and organisations hitherto controlled by the State is another area which can foster growth. At present, basic resources like land, forests, water bodies even Corporations and Companies are owned by the State. It has been recognised that these should be privatised, but many of these resources would be more productively used and generate more employment if they are handed over to the Peoples Organisations. For example, lakes can be managed by fisher people’s groups, Handloom Corporation and Yarn Companies can be handed over to weavers groups.

It is important that policies be formulated to bring new techniques and ideas to this sector. At present the technical universities are funded by the Government to do research and training which do not reach the People’s Sector. These policies should be changed to encourage researchers and trainers to reach the enterprises in this sector and hold hands to lift them up to be on par with other entrepreneurs.

Similarly, infrastructural and management support which reaches this sector only incidentally, should be funneled into the people’s enterprises. Credit policy today almost discourages the small borrowings. This should be changed to reach these small enterprises to be able to absorb more and larger amount of credit.

Perhaps the most important enabling policy, however, is to recognise this sector, its vast size, its employment potential and its people centered enterprises. Once it is recognised and given a place in the national economy, I feel certain that full and better employment will follow. Building people’s organisations is the strategy that surely has worked according to our experience in SEWA.

The point that I would like to make and repeat for the policy makers is to recognise the important role of the informal sector in the national economies. Because 92% of the India’s total workforce is in the informal sector. Let me quote from the studies by NCAER, New Delhi. The size of informal sector is large but also its contribution: 63% of GDP, 55% of savings and 47% of all exports are accounted by the IFS. However, the tragedy is that a majority of those working in the IFS remain poor. And, also the IFS is predominantly women. In the world of work, the overlap between women, informality and poverty is obvious.

So, if poverty is to be removed, not by charity, but by raising the income of poor women through financial services and productive work, I strongly feel that country’s informal economies have to be recorded, recognised and strengthened. Formal and Informal which is a false divide, indeed should be treated in a holistic way by policy makers.

There is one caution that I would like to make before this august gathering of senior level bureaucrats and politicians. Please do not introduce programmes in isolation of other linkages, e.g. credit as a quick fix to poverty or recently known as ‘women’s empowerment’. Credit alone is not the end but the means. There is need to weave financial services with employment/livelihoods of the poor.

Globalisation and Liberalisation

Ahmedabad City

Ahmedabad is a globalising city. Direct financial investments are up. Joint ventures with foreign partners are rapidly rising. Global partnerships in Industry and Commerce are becoming common. Sections of society are gaining from these forces, the poor cannot. But they can gain in some cases. Before I give an illustration of a World Bank project of “Parivartan,” let me give you a current profile of the workers in Ahmedabad city.

Workers in Ahmedabad City

A recent survey by the Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR) has found that despite rapid industrial development, the informal sector continues to dominate the urban economy. The study found that in 1997-98, the informal sector – largely resident in unserved, unsafe and unhygienic settlements – accounted for 77% of the employment and 46% of the income generated in Ahmedabad.

Place of Residence

Male-female break-up number is not available, but our general estimate is that women must be above 50% out of the total 11.6 lakh workers in the unorganised sector workers.

Regarding earnings, a split between the annual productivity per person, averaging at Rs. 39,066 found that it was higher for the at Rs. 91,540 than for the IFS at Rs. 23,520 as per  GIDR study. Despite the fact that IFS workers work for longer hours with much less facilities, in bad living conditions, and under harrasments in many cases, in this globalising city, the poor contribute as much as non-poor do. If adequate investments were made in the IFS, they can show very promising results.

“Parivartan” transforms the physical environment in which informal sector workers live by providing them the infrastructure services viz.. internal paved roads, individual toilets, individual water supply, individual sewage connection, stormwater drainage, street lighting and solid waste management / landscaping.

These services are provided on an equitable cost sharing basis, with a unique partnership between the public sector i.e. the municipality, the private sector and the actual residents of the clusters, each of whom pay 1/3 of the total on site capital cost of service provision.   The physical work is undertaken by the municipality.  The process is based on the principle that services to a cluster should be provided, only when there is a clear demand for them. It is important to note that this demand is manifest through payment by individual households of their one third cost share, totalling Rs. 2,100 each.

The crucial factor for success in this process is the provision of financial and credit related services by a credible financial institution that is trusted by the community.   Not being used to promises being delivered by the public sector, our members are hesitant to hand over their money, until they see actual results.

  On the other hand, the Parivartan process requires a minimum of Rs. 500 to be deposited by each household, before the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is able to begin its physical upgradation work. SEWA Bank provides the service of a trusted financial intermediary for Parivartan, playing the dual roles of centralised cash collection prior to hand over to the AMC as well as providing credit to meet individual contributions, where required.

In effect, the Parivartan process that has moved from one slum to 22 slums is a transformation at many levels:

From physical degradation and lack of services to upgradation and basic infrastructure provision; from no dialogue between residents of informal settlements and the municipality to a participatory process of dialogue between them; from illegal to respectable, from dirty to clean, from disease to health; from disaster to safety; The transformation of a slum into a colony or society (from Chhagu Ratna-na Chhapra to Sinheshwari Nagar).

“Parivartan” has brought about the transformation of marginalised slum dwellers into citizens who are now integrated into the city; who now participate in the processes governing their lives and environment and who are aware of their rights as well as their responsibilities as citizens; and

Finally a transformation from being mute victims to active, informed members within their own communities, who are organised through their own democratically elected Resident’s Associations.

So, globalisation and liberalisation have a mixed impact on SEWA. It has resulted, on the one hand in new economic opportunities. For example, with liberalisation, SEWA Bank could expand rapidly to rural districts. With deregulation of the insurance sector in India, insurance coverage, including for health, can reach the poorest of families through new insurance cooperatives and companies. Similarly, with the lifting of trade barriers, for the first time ever, craftswomen of SEWA are reaching global markets of the North and are receiving remunerative prices for their exquisite embroideries or woven textiles. Liberalisation has also meant privatisation, which in turn presents new opportunities for SEWA’s local cooperatives. They now undertake implementation of watershed development programmes,health and child care through their local organisations.

On the other hands, globalisation has meant export of raw materials like cotton yarn to global markets. This has resulted in primary producers – rural artisans, handloom weavers and others – being unable to obtain their traditional raw material. This is either not available to them or unaffordable. Similarly, import of waste paper and rags from Europe has resulted in a glut in the recycling industry in India, the refuge of some of India’s poorest workers, again mainly women. They recycle waste paper and rags painstakingly collected from the street and garbage dumps. These are then sorted and sold by weight to pulp mills. With the influx of overseas recyclables, women get a lower price per kilogram of recyclables than before.

Another effect of liberalisation and globalisation is the case of our members who are gum collectors. These women collect a resin that oozes out from Prosopis Juliflora shrubs in the desert. By Indian law, the gum collected thus can only be sold to the government's forest corporation who pays women a third of what they could get on the open market. And free imports of gum from the Sudan are depressing the prices per kilo even further. Women are demanding deregulation and liberalisation of the gum industry.

Infotech is the new and fast-growing sector in the world today, resulting in widespread changes. It has made communication faster and easier, links people to information and markets all over the globe. But it is linking those who have access to this technology and leaves out and even de-links those who do not. The challenges we face today is how do we reach infotech to the poor. How can they also benefit from the advances in infotech? And what are some of the concrete ways in which we can reach this new technology to the poorest of workers, especially women.

At SEWA, we have learned that not only can infotech reach women workers but also it can be used to enhance their incomes. For example, computerisation of SEWA Bank has simplified banking operations and helped to expand the self-help groups involved in financial services at the village level. Similarly, SEWA-promoted district-level economic organisations can maintain up-to-date production and sales data and expand their businesses.

The possibilities of adapting this technology to serve the needs of the poor are tremendous. We will have to develop systems that are appropriate for the poor – software in local languages   and back-up services to be available even in villages – and find ways to reduce the costs of hardware.

We in SEWA have also been using satellite communication technology with SAC in Ahmedabad to help women obtain quick and easy access to information, and even communication with government officials, without incurring transport and other costs.

Video technology has also proved to be a powerful tool when in women’s hands. At SEWA, women who have never been to school are using video to establish linkages between districts, sharing their ideas and information with others all over India. These videos of women made by themselves are used on India’s many channels, an alternative to the programmes made in metorpolitan areas which currently predominate.

In sum, the infotech sector has great potential to significantly increase incomes and change lives, provided we set up appropriate infrastructure and provide the software and training required for the poor and excluded.

Let me make it clear that we do not want to get trapped into the old debate on “Market versus State”. We work directly with the poor. Whatever works to improve the standard of living of the poor in a sustainable way to the poor women we serve, is welcome in our strategy. We support trade liberalisation that have increased the demand for the output and labor of our members. But we have opposed other types of trade liberalization when they hurt, for example, the employment and incomes of the husbands and brothers and fathers of our members. We are strong supporters of deregulating the control of the Gujarat State Forestry Corporation on the livelihoods of our members. But we oppose deregulation of the pharmaceutical industry because of the devastating impact of these on basic drug prices; and, we support increased regulation in Export Processing Zones to ensure that labor standards are met. Is SEWA pro-state or pro-market? It is difficult to say. What is clear is that SEWA is pro-poor. One of our best known pamphlets is in fact entitled "Liberalizing for the Poor."

At the turn of the century the real questions are to do with the right balance of market and state, and how things actually work on the ground.

True, poor women have lack of income generating opportunities or choices. They have poor links with markets. They complain of the failure of state institutions to respond to their needs.

True, the poor women suffer insecurity, such as health risks, the risk of being out of work, and the agricultural risks, and the agricultural gains that they make are always fragile.

However, working with SEWA women, one can see what is possible. Although local structures are still not accountable to them and their village, an explicit affirmative action policy allowed e.g. Basrabai in Mahudi village of district Kutch got elected as sarpanch, showing what can be done through state action. And SEWA shows how poor people can make a difference if they organise themselves to defend their rights, take advantage of market opportunities, and protect themselves from risks.

In some ways, the yearning for the idea of Second Freedom surpassed us. It pushed us each year to develop adventurous attitude, enlarge the scope of the search and see that the sense of hope and humour could be raised above the level of ‘destiny’, ‘God’s will’ or just blaming the ‘system’.

Gandhiji’s thinking had shown us the way in our student days, a clear direction leading us to commitment, sustained efforts, a gentle but firm belief in women’s leadership in social change, and willingness to see beyond what was around. What has been inspiring about this idea of Second Freedom is how much we did and can do, how effectively we could transform the place and time we have been through, and what is perhaps most inspiring is that it did not occur to us not to.

How can one sum up this three-decade old intense journey? I believe, we have tried to give a shape to this quest for a Second Freedom and set it on its course. Once standing ‘against’ poverty or inequality,it was much harder to be ‘for’ the Second Freedom. We are still very far from the destination. However, the ongoing journey from Independence to Freedom is a more worthwhile an experience for me, than finally reaching the destination.