Top 15 Ela Bhatt Quotes

All my life I have worked to change concepts, and that begins with how people see and understand the problems.

Every human being has something, a spiritual element, that makes them want to do better, to reach higher.

What we really are looking for is self reliance and that is how we should measure success. I don’t much like the word empowerment, but self-reliance is the foundation of SEWA’s approach,.

Microfinance is the best example of success in the kinds of systemic institutional areas.

Systems are needed, for example for management, accounting, skill development and MIS to serve the needs of the working poor.

Injustice happens at many levels, from the grass roots to the top. And one of the keys of SEWA’s vision and action is linking them.

SEWA is about political action, and that has always been at the heart of what we have done. It is about changing the balance of power in favor of the poor. That has meant constant tension, with big farmers, moneylenders, contractors, big traders, government, local panchayats, and so on.

The country is moving in a different direction, times have changed. But for me Gandhiji’s values are still the frame, still alive and valid.

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

[SEWA] have been doing many different things, leading the SEWA movement which is about economic freedom for the poor, women, and self employed.

SEWA is now the largest union in India, with a membership of around 1.2 million women.

[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.

Women predominate in the lower strata of employment.

...as I worked with the unionized labor, of the much larger labor force that was outside the purview of the protective labor laws, of any form of social security, access to justice, access to financial services, anything. That tugged at my heart. And those people were unorganized and had no strength to act to seek remedies.

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.