Ela Bhatt and the SEWA movement:

Subject : Polity

Context-

Elaben Bhatt, The Gandhian, SEWA founder, and women’s empowerment activist dies.

Who was Ela Bhatt:

She was known as the “Gentle Revolutionary” who changed the lives of lakhs of women through her organisation, providing them with microloans for five decades.
She founded the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in 1972
She also headed the women’s wing of Majoor Mahajan Sangh-the Textile Labour Association founded by Anasuya Sarabhai and Mahatma Gandhi.
She was the chairperson of the Sabarmati Ashram Memorial and Preservation Trust, also co-founded the Women’s World Banking, a global network of microfinance organisations,of which she was chairperson from 1984 to 1988.
She was also nominated to Rajya Sabha, and was a member of the Planning Commission.
She had also acted as an advisor to organisations like the World Bank.
In 2007, she joined the Elders, a group of world leaders founded by Nelson Mandela to promote human rights and peace.
She was a prodigious writer who penned in Anasuya, our Gujarati newsletter, a play on street vendors.One of her famous book was We are Poor But We are Many.
She was a recipient of the Padma Bhushan, Ramon Magsaysay Award and Indira Gandhi International Prize for Peace among many other awards.

What is SEWA:

The full form of SEWA is the Self Employed Women’s Association.
It was founded by Ela Bhatt in 1972 as a branch of Textile Labour Association a labour union founded by Gandhi in 1918
It is a trade union based in Ahmedabad India, that promotes the rights of low-income, independently employed female workers and is one of the largest organization of informal workers in the world.