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Ela Bhatt Quotes
1933–2022 India
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.
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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.
Microfinance is the best example of success in the kinds of systemic institutional areas.
SEWA is now the largest union in India, with a membership of around 1.2 million women.
Systems are needed, for example for management, accounting, skill development and MIS to serve the needs of the working poor.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,.
...tribute to her unflinching zeal towards the betterment of women in society.
[SEWA] have been doing many different things, leading the SEWA movement which is about economic freedom for the poor, women, and self employed.
…Poverty and violence are not God made, they are man made. Poverty and peace cannot coexist.
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