Opinion Ela Bhatt: A Gandhian at heart and in her work

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.

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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”.