Police arrived in 1989 to disperse a women's sit-in. The Ahmedabad municipal administration wanted the demonstrators off the streets, which would have put their livelihoods in jeopardy because they were street sellers. The officers, however, did not anticipate a little union representative who pleaded for two hours before finally giving in.
The policemen had come up against India’s “gentle revolutionary”. An activist who championed collective power, Ela Ramesh Bhatt, affectionately called Elaben, died earlier this month.
Born to a well-off family in Gujarat in 1933, Ela’s early life was steeped in India’s freedom struggle against British colonialism. She attended school and college in Surat, before studying law in Ahmedabad. She later married fellow student leader Ramesh Bhatt. Ela joined the Textile Labour Association’s legal team soon after university and began battling for textile labourers.
Ela discovered that the majority of workers were not unionised and did not have regular wages or protection from exploitation, particularly female workers. Ela founded the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), India's first working women's movement, in 1972 with the goal of changing this.
Ela knew finance was critical to eradicating poverty. Loan sharks preyed on self-employed workers, without bank accounts or health insurance, whenever they suffered mishaps from crop-ruining storms to injuries. So in 1974, SEWA started a women’s bank.
“Poor women are economically active,” the microfinancing pioneer argued, and “should not be considered unbankable”. Ela insisted on putting money in their hands rather than their husbands’. She argued that women were more responsible and effective with money; the loan recovery rates for SEWA, which were well over 90%, confirmed her claim. Later, in 1979, she became a founder member of the international microlending network Women's World Banking. She served as chancellor of a university founded by Gandhi - embodied Gandhian simplicity, with her severe middle parting and khadi cotton saris.
