Ela Bhatt Quotes

founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Ela Ramesh Bhatt (7 September 1933 – 2 November 2022) was an exemplary Indian social worker, cooperative organizer, activist and Gandhian. Her legal training and interaction with Gandhi influenced her to establish the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA) in 1972. Bhatt was a part of the international labor, cooperative, women, and micro-finance movements. She had won several prestigious national and international awards such as the Ramon Magsaysay Award (1977), Right Livelihood Award (1984) and the Padma Bhushan (1986).

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Native Name: इला भट्ट

Alternative Names: Ela Ramesh Bhatt

From Wikidata (CC0)

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...tribute to her unflinching zeal towards the betterment of women in society.

Women predominate in the lower strata of employment.

I am Hindu, and my activism is very much framed within that context, of karma as meaning action.

…Inner peace is important, but I have always felt that living a daily life with peace is the end. So in reality individual peace and global peace are not separate. They are one and the same.

Through women, what exists and is real, what is traditional, historical, modern and cultural, given the opportunity, is upgraded. That is what the challenge to bring peace is about.

[So], in 1972, we started SEWA, the Self Employed Women’s Association. SEWA in many respects is a microcosm of the general picture of the informal sector, in India and worldwide.

We were rebuilding the nation, looking to a more just society. It was a time when many of us were going to the villages to live there. We were a generation that had no confusion in our minds as to how to do things. Gandhiji had shown the way. This atmosphere infused politics and the way we did things.

Ela Bhatt Quotes

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