The Congress released its manifesto on Saturday and went all out to woo Gujarat voters. Some of the promises the grand old party made to the electorate are recruitments to fill 10 lakh government and quasi-government jobs including five lakh jobs for women, a 20% reduction of all taxes, restoring the old pension scheme for government employees, free medical treatment worth up to Rs 10 lakh, a monthly unemployment dole, waiving off farmers’ loans of up to Rs 3 lakh, free education for all girls up to postgraduate level, pollution control in cities, renaming the Narendra Modi stadium in Motera after Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and halting the Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram precinct rejuvenation project. While releasing the Congress manifesto on Saturday, Rajasthan chief minister and senior Congress observer for the election, Ashok Gehlot, said, “If our party wins, this manifesto will be the cabinet’s first official policy paper. The manifesto has 11 commitments. ” The Congress promised that at its very first cabinet meeting, it will change the name of the stadium at Motera to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel stadium. The BJP recently named the stadium after Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
On my 18th birthday, my mother gave me a ticket to Ahmedabad with the words, “Go, meet Ela Bhatt”.“Who is Ela Bhatt?” I asked, bewildered.“She’s a Gandhian,” replied my mother.“So?” I countered, with my just-turning-eighteen brashness.“Go, find out for yourself,” replied my mother.Elaben, as she was known to all, was short-statured, soft-spoken, dressed in a white khadi sari with a green border. She took all of us — it was a conference — in a bus to Sabarmati ashram. As the bus halted, she was talking of the police that had stopped some women from selling their wares and how they had picketed and the women had won. I noticed her eyes were shining with pride.“What about the traffic?” I asked in my naivete; she went at length to explain that the poor, particularly women, too have rights which are being consistently violated. As I listened to her, I missed walking to Hrday Kunj — Bapu’s room. She told me, “Get a glimpse of it, at least”. I ran; but seeing the delegates returning, I turned back. Observing my downcast face, she said, “You will get there.” I did not know her words would be prophetic.Elaben was thrown out of her job at the Textile Labour Association in a patriarchal manner. As she cried, her husband, Ramesh Bhatt, who had a deep influence on her remarked, “Chalo, acchha hua”. “I was so surprised,” she recalled, but she then set up SEWA – Self Employed Women’s Association, the first all-women’s trade union of vegetable vendors, rag-pickers, head-loaders, cart-pushers, to whom she gave the dignified term, “self-employed”. It has now crossed the million mark and has worked consistently towards enabling the poor in the informal sector for minimum wages, dignity, health and insurance. Elaben worked tirelessly, informing society that 86 per cent of the workforce was in the informal sector, working with no social security and in appalling conditions. All the benefits were going to the formal or organised sector.However, at the SEWA conference I was attending, there was an innovative discussion: An American producer, Martha Stewart, was talking about bringing in video equipment and there was a discussion about training the head-loaders, cart-pushers and vegetable vendors to make videos. In the late 1970s, the idea itself was revolutionary and it formed the genesis of Video SEWA.I went on to do my Masters in Social Work, later going to Washington State University to do another Masters in Communications, but I heard a call — was it Bapu or Elaben — and on returning to India, I went straight to Hrday Kunj and on to Elaben’s home. Her home was simple; it was small, with a Gujarati swing in the verandah, a blue khadi-covered sofa and small peedis or stools. Her husband Ramesh Bhatt — who tragically died young — and she had named it, “Toy House”, making the small-is-beautiful idea a concrete reality. She seated me on the sofa, but herself sat on a low stool, then she served me with her own hands; perhaps she was obliquely teaching me about sewa — service and humility.It was to her and to this home that I returned, again and again, at various turning points in my life. In 1995, I began making recordings of freedom fighters and reached Ahmedabad where I reached out to Video Sewa for assistance. Elaben was supportive and, indeed, applauded the archive with enthusiasm. I met and recorded Veerbalaben Nagarwadia who was present when Bapu and the others commenced the Dandi March from Sabarmati Ashram on March 12, 1930. I also recorded Nimuben Desai, who was jailed for harbouring in her house a man wanted by the British, and Sarlaben Shah who was present at the procession at Gujarat College where Vinod Kinariwala was shot and killed by the police. She had lifted the body along with the others.Elaben was a mentor for the “Hamaara Itihaas” freedom fighters’ archive but always so unfailingly modest that it was only later that I learnt that her maternal grandfather, Manidhar Prasad Vyas, had been a freedom fighter and had worked with Bapu. She shared his diary, written in Gujarati, with me. Her grandfather had been a doctor, she told me: “He showed Bapu around Gujarat, and was forced to resign by the British for openly displaying his closeness to him”. She went on to share that he had organised the satyagraha at the Dharasana Salt works where there had been violence against the satyagrahis, as reported by Webb Miller of the United Press International. Since Manidhar Prasad Vyas was a doctor, he had considered it his duty to treat the injured satyagrahis, as well. All this and much more, I finally managed to record, after a lifetime of knowing her, at Elaben’s residence only in 2019.At a critical point in my life, I reached her doorstep again. This time it was personal. Elaben generously shared her personal life with me, telling me that when she wanted to marry Ramesh, her parents had opposed it saying, “Do you even know what poverty is?” Ramesh Bhatt, while well-educated, was not from a wealthy family. She told me, she worked “as a manual worker breaking stones for a few days” to understand poverty. I knew she was gently guiding me. On the arrival of my beloved, daughter — whom I adopted and named Sachi for Bapu’s love for sach, truth — I took her to Ahmedabad. We visited Hrday Kunj and then on to Elaben’s home where she hugged my daughter and me with deep love, over a simple and memorable Gujarati meal with her son Mihir and daughter in-law, Reema and grandson, Som.In the last few years of her life, Elaben wrote prolifically. Her book, We Are Poor, Yet So Many, proved the power of women organising and demanding their work be counted as productive. The women always said, “There is no work but the work is killing me” because their work was not accounted for or paid. I was present at the launch of her book, Anubandh, where she stated that the “six basic needs of life: food, clothing, housing, health, education and banking can be met locally, within a hundred-mile radius”. She believed — and her work through SEWA exemplified this — that people would themselves find innovative solutions to poverty, exploitation and environmental degradation, if given a few resources. She asked, “If we are inviting the world to do business with us, why are the policeman’s hands still on the shoulder of the vegetable vendor, who feels compelled to give hafta to do her daily work?”Over the years we exchanged numerous messages with deep love and affection. I sadly did not get a response from her when I wrote to her on Diwali and on November 2, when I learnt that the soul who had kept the diya of ahimsa and satyagraha burning bright by lighting the lives of millions of women was no more, I wept. I had lost my spiritual mother, role model and heroine.Elaben has left behind a powerful legacy of values. She showed that Gandhi lives on when we embrace a life of simplicity and stand by the poor. This is even more pertinent as we confront climate change. In her work with poor women and in SEWA’s work, Gandhi lives.The writer is an author and filmmaker. She is the director of the ‘Hamaara Itihaas’ archives.
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 over four dozen institutions for the poor and by the poor, and to empower poor women workers — founded on the principle that “the poor don’t need charity, they need an enabling mechanism to strive and come out of the vicious circle of poverty and vulnerability”.SEWA, as Bhatt always said, is a trade union of women who “did not need to come together against anyone, they just needed to come together for themselves”. And by this act of coming together, these women gave themselves a voice.Idea born of struggleBhatt, who passed away in Ahmedabad earlier this week, belonged to a family of freedom fighters. Her ideology was shaped by the freedom movement, her training as a lawyer, through her association with the Textile Labour Association, and experience of life in the slums through her late husband Ramesh, an economist. Ahmedabad, where she was born, and Surat, where she went to school — cities that were powered by the textile industry — partly charted her course.The closure of two major textile mills in Ahmedabad in 1968 gave Bhatt her first insight into the extent of women’s involvement in running homes. As the men agitated for reopening the mills, the women worked to earn their families’ livelihoods. “They sold fruits and vegetables in the streets; stitched in their homes at piece-rate for middle-men; worked as labourers in wholesale commodity markets, loading and unloading merchandise; or collected recyclable refuse from city streets”, she wrote in her book, We Are Poor But So Many: The Story of Self-Employed Women in India.Women at centre, everywhereWith 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 has helped rehabilitate women in personal, and even political or social crises, by empowering them through skilling and training. From embroiderers of Kutch and Banaskantha to rag-pickers and vegetable vendors in Ahmedabad, SEWA has brought them all in its tent. SEWA takes pride in the fact that women from diverse social and community backgrounds work together in the organisation.The organisation took a conscious decision to keep men out. Bhatt wrote, “Initially, I was open to the idea of men joining our union struggles, because I felt that they would lend more strength to SEWA; however, the women emphatically refused. They said they would feel inhibited with men around, and they believed men would dominate and create tensions.“In addition, they felt that the issues that were important to women were different from those important to men. Another major but unspoken reason was that the women wanted to keep their earnings and savings private — if not secret — from the men.”Pathbreaking initiativesAs 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), National Rural Livelihoods Mission (2011), and 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.Among the many institutions launched by SEWA is a clothing line named after its oldest artisan, Hansiba, which has collaborated with French and British designers to take the ethnic embroidery of Gujarat to the world. Hansiba collaborated with Sabah, a livelihood support organisation in Pakistan, to organise a fashion show in 2013. Apart from Delhi and Mumbai, Hansiba retails in Europe, Australia, the Americas, and Japan.In Ahmedabad, SEWA sells vegetables grown in its farms, pulses, and spices. During the pandemic, SEWA launched Anubandh, an e-commerce platform to connect sellers with buyers, to keep kitchen fires burning through the lockdowns.
Ela Bhatt has been part of my life almost since Dastkar’s beginning in the ’80s. I had the fortune to see her in multiple roles — not just as the founder and head of SEWA, but as homemaker, wife, mother, mother-in-law and grandmother. A teacher and mentor, but also a perennial seeker of truth; nurturing and exemplary always. Her grandsons, both creative, were encouraged to scribble on the walls of her home!Ever welcoming, she loved meeting new people and learning new things. Much of our conversation and correspondence were about Indian social history, and how it shaped our lives and thinking. She was delighted to discover the Gandhian links between our families. “I remembered you while visiting Dandi and particularly Dharasana, where your granduncle Abbas Tyabji was leading the salt satyagraha as Gandhiji got arrested in Dandi,” she wrote, “My grandfather also was at Dharasana, beaten and arrested. He was leading the first team of the satyagraha. I wanted to share this with you.”Something else she shared, which is so eloquent of her as a person, was concerning the day she left the SEWA office after giving up her post as general secretary in 1996, a role she’d had since its inception decades before. After the emotional goodbyes, she was feeling rather flat, wondering what the future held, what she would do. Suddenly inspired, she directed the driver to go to the home of a music teacher she knew, and signed up for singing lessons! Thereafter, Indian classical singing became an important part of her life (as yoga was). Needless to say, she remained as busy as ever, on the national and international stage.Elaben was an activist and a feminist, well ahead of her time and milieu. She was a lone voice in the trade-union movement in Ahmedabad in the 1960s, when her engagement with unorganised women workers in the Ahmedabad textile industry began. She saw the importance of their contribution to family incomes, and the appalling conditions in which they worked. Be they rag pickers or casual labour, they were unorganised, unrepresented and had no voice. Her legal training (she was an LLB) and her experience as an educator (she had taught English at SNDT University) equipped her to be their advocate. The unions’ opposition to the inclusion of unorganised women led to the founding of SEWA in 1972 and its growth into the movement of 2.1 million women workers in 18 states, that it is today.Elaben’s advocacy was never strident or loud, nor was she an impassioned orator. She remained a gentle revolutionary, though never passive. All the more effective because what she said was never about herself, but as the spokeswoman for thousands of women who had no voice of their own. As she said herself, “Jay beeja nay aagad karay te aagewan (those who put others forward are leaders)”.As the simplicity of her habitual khadi saris showed, she was a Gandhian, a word often misused and often slightly dismissive. There was nothing naive or woolly about her Gandhi-ism. It was, like the Mahatma’s, practical and focussed. The vision was always partnered by an action plan. When something didn’t work, she rethought it. The post-Godhra killings and increasing communalism in Gujarat wounded her spirit, but, inspiringly, she remained an optimist till the end.Gandhi used the handspun and handwoven as a metaphor for independence and swadeshi; Elaben used a clay pot. Buy locally, use local resources, become sustainable, empower local communities. “Poverty is a form of violence,” she said often, “Poverty is a society’s disrespect for human labour.”As Dastkar worked with SEWA over the years, first with block printers in Ahmedabad and then the rural-mirror work, patchwork and aari-embroidery women in Banaskantha, she was quick to agree that poor women need not make cheap things. Whatever we created should reflect the full potential of their skills, and they should be paid accordingly.She had great empathy with the women and, also, with their rich cultural heritage and skill sets, something they themselves often didn’t value. “Her work is part of a woman’s identity — her life, her family, her community, her religion, her faith, her person and identity,” she said. We shared our belief that “Traditional crafts are not our past; they are our future.”My enduring memory of Elaben is one I saw many times — a small neat erect figure, clad in her trademark khadi sari, elegant but understated, backpack on her back, walking firmly through the airport doors, on to yet another international conclave, yet another coming together of disparate people, yet another destination, sharing the message of equality and the power of women, sharing her gentle strength and inspirational spirit. Her journey is not yet done.You want some people to live forever. In fact, you need them to.Laila Tyabji is founder member and chairperson Dastkar Society for Crafts & Craftspeople.
Ahmedabad-based activist Ela Bhatt, who died on November 2 at the age of 89, had long believed in the power of the anecdote to convey ideas. One such story was about the time she asked a gathering of women working in the informal sector what the word “freedom” meant to them. Some women said that it was the ability to step out of the house, others said it was having their own money, or a mobile phone or even fresh clothes every day. Then one woman, she recalled, stepped forward and said that freedom meant “looking a policeman in the eye”.For the founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), this story held the key to empowering workers in the informal economy, especially women — self-respect. This was the idea of empowerment that Elaben, as she was popularly called, worked towards, pioneering microfinancing for women and helping them organise and unionise in pursuit of better work, better wages and better lives. A lawyer by qualification, Bhatt was introduced to the power of the collective at the Textile Labour Association (TLA) — set up by Gandhian labour activist Anasuya Sarabhai in 1920 — where she worked along with husband Ramesh Bhatt. SEWA grew out of the women’s wing of the TLA, and became one of the biggest and most influential women-led cooperatives in the country.A self-described “organiser”, who responded to problems by mobilising on the streets, Bhatt had grown up steeped in Gandhian ideals. To her, putting these ideals into practice meant staunch adherence to non-violence and making self-reliance the chief pillar of her work with the least privileged in society. She helped women overcome deep-rooted social and economic barriers to lift themselves out of poverty and debt and realise, as she put it, that “poverty is not a destiny”.
Ela Bhatt, or Elaben as she was popularly known, was a product of the early days of Independence. Inspired by Gandhiji and the atmosphere of hope and excitement for the future, she studied law in Surat and saw her future as a participant in building a new India. “For me, nation-building meant reaching the workers. They are the foundation of the nation and yet remain poor and neglected”, she said.Elaben was deeply inspired by Ramesh Bhatt, a student leader, who she later married and who became her emotional and intellectual companion. After graduation, Elaben joined the Textile Labour Association (or Majoor Mahajan) and Rameshbhai joined the Gujarat Vidyapeeth in Ahmedabad. The TLA, a trade union of mill workers founded by Anasuya Sarabhai and whose constitution was written by Gandhiji, was Elaben’s learning ground. There, she learnt the elements of organising, of the importance of a trade union — poor people and workers coming together to give each other strength to create a voice and to negotiate for rights. It was here that she first met women from the unorganised or informal economy, women who pulled carts or sold vegetables or stitched garments, and saw how poor and yet hardworking they were.The Self-Employed Women’s Association or SEWA was her creation. Starting as a small organisation in 1972, it has been built into a nationwide, indeed a worldwide, movement of women working at the base of the pyramid. She often recalled how she organised a meeting with women vendors and cart pullers who said, “We want a Majoor Mahajan of our own”. She was amazed when they all opened their little bundles and pulled out 25 paise each as a contribution to their new union. However, as she worked closely with these women, Elaben realised that just fighting for rights was not enough. There were no laws protecting them and the mindset of employers, and of the authorities such as the municipality and police, was exploitative.Elaben had visited Israel a few years previously and seen the working of cooperatives with trade unions. As she thought about how she could truly help these women, she began to work with the idea of creating cooperatives. But where to start? Unlike today, there was no financial inclusion for them. They had nowhere to put their savings and collected notes were often eaten up by rats or stolen by family members. They had to get their loans from moneylenders at unimaginable interest rates. And yet when she tried to link them with the newly nationalised banks, they faced mostly rejections.Elaben often recalled a large meeting of the women on the banks of the Sabarmati river where they told her “We are poor but so many in number that we can collect shares and form our own bank”. And Elaben had the courage, indeed the audacity, to help the women form a cooperative bank.She has been called a gentle revolutionary. Both her ideas and her actions were revolutionary. She gave the world the path with which to reach out and change the lives of the poorest and she called it “Struggle and Development”. This path has been replicated not only in Gujarat where she began but all over India and even in many parts of the world.As a revolutionary she realised that actions alone were not enough, the main problem, as she said, was “mindsets”. She needed to change the ideas and mindsets reflected in laws, policies and attitudes. She became an articulate spokesperson for these invisible women.Recognition and honours began to arrive. In 1977, she won the Magsaysay award, later the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan. She was appointed as a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha; at the international level, she was honoured with degrees from Harvard and Yale. She was appointed as a member of “The Elders”, an international group started by Nelson Mandela. And through all this, her only concern was to promote the cause of her women. As a Rajya Sabha member, she introduced bills for street vendors and home-based workers. Through her efforts, the Street Vendors Bill did become law. When she received the Padma Shri, the only thing she asked for was a Commission on women in the unorganised sector. She produced the first All-India study called Shram Shakti in 1988, a classic even today.Elaben recognised the importance of organising workers. What she started in Ahmedabad, she brought to the rest of the world, inspiring international federations of street vendors, home-based workers, domestic workers, and rag pickers. She made her presence felt in international forums such as the International Labour Organisation where she succeeded in getting a Convention for home-based workers. Recognising the need to change mindsets world wide she founded WIEGO an international network of researchers, policymakers and activists.Perhaps Elaben’s greatest achievement is that she changed millions of lives. Empowering poor working women, but also many educated and professional women who joined her movement and took it forward. Last year, SEWA celebrated 50 years of achievement, but Elaben, at the age of 88 was still looking ahead: “Let us think of what change we want to bring in the next fifty years, who are the people we need and let us inspire many women as well as men to join us in that change.”The writer is national coordinator, SEWA
The bridge is 300-metre long and 14-metre wide (File)Ahmedabad: The Ahmedabad civic body has decided to restrict the number of persons on the pedestrian-only Atal Bridge on the Sabarmati River here to 3,000 per hour, after the Morbi bridge tragedy in which 134 people were killed, an official said.The 300-metre long and 14-metre wide Atal Bridge, which connects the flower garden on the western-end of the riverfront and the upcoming arts and culture centre on the eastern-end, has become a huge attraction for people since it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 27."Though the bridge is capable of bearing the weight of nearly 12,000 people, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has decided to limit the number of visitors on it in view of the Morbi bridge tragedy," the civic-run Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation Ltd, which manages the structure, said in a statement on Monday."As a precaution, we have decided to limit the number of visitors on the Atal Bridge. Now, only 3,000 visitors will be given entry every hour. Not more than 3,000 people per hour will be allowed to stand on the bridge, and the rest will be asked to wait on the Riverfront for their turn," it added.The Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation Limited said the bridge is very strong and safe, but the decision has been taken for the safety of visitors and appealed for cooperation on this issue.PromotedListen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.comThe bridge, with an eye-catching design and LED lighting, has been built using 2,600 tons of steel pipes. Its roof is made of colourful fabric and the railing has been built with glass and stainless steel.(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
AHMEDABAD: Three days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Atal goot overbridge over the Sabarmati to the public, the civic body spelled out 13 rules for the public, including entry charges. They included timings, prohibition of music, singing and dancing on the bridge and barred pets. What the rules did not include was the number of people allowed on the bridge at a time. On Monday, a day after the Morbi bridge disaster, the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation Limited (SRFDCL) through a statement notified a limit on visitors at the bridge, saying 3,000 visitors per hour will be allowed to use the bridge. The statement says the bridge's load bearing capacity is 12,000 people at a time. However, as an additional safety measure, it has been limited to 3,000 people an hour. The rainbow-coloured bridge over the Sabarmati has been built at an estimated cost of Rs 74 crore and was opened to the public in August.
In the aftermath of the Morbi bridge collapse that proved fatal to over 130 people, the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation Limited (SRFDCL) Monday said it has decided to limit the visitors at Atal Bridge—the foot overbridge over Sabarmati river in Ahmedabad—to 3,000 persons per hour.“The bridge’s present technical capacity allows for 12,000 visitors to stand on the bridge at a given time but from now on, only 3,000 visitors will be permitted per hour on the bridge so that visitors can safely enjoy Atal Bridge,” SRFDCL stated in a press note.Though Atal Bridge’s structure is “technically highly safe and strong”, the decision has been taken in light of the Morbi incident, it added. “…if hourly visitors exceed 3,000, visitors are requested to wait for a while and cooperate with the administration,” the note said.
