SEWA’s model offers valuable lessons for enhancing Odisha’s Mission Shakti program aimed at women’s economic empowerment
Dr. Goutam Saha & Dr. Satya Narayan Misra
According to the data released in 2023 by Din Dayal Upadhyay Yojana, National Rural Livelihood Mission, India has 6.5 lakh villages and 90 lakh self-help groups. Almost 10 crore women are members. This amounts to 14 SHG per village, and every 8th woman is an SHG member. So, there is a huge need for government policy interventions, corporate funding, community development, and entrepreneurship to promote proper women’s empowerment.
Women’s empowerment through livelihood generation is one of the favorite projects of present-day state and central governments, NGOs, and community-led organizations. Odisha witnessed the tremendous success of its flagship women empowerment program Mission Shakti in terms of stupendous growth and economic impact on women.
Within 24 years, it has had 6 lakh SHGs and 70 lakh members with the help of the Odisha state government. It outnumbered Kudumbashree, the Kerala government’s large-scale livelihood-generating program, though it started three years late. At present, Odisha has a new government that aims to add more value to the earlier government’s existing programs. Our article has aimed to provide direction on how women’s empowerment can have a better version than Odisha’s existing one by drawing heavily from the successful model of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), India’s largest trade union for women who work in the informal economy.
SEWA was established in 1972 as a trade union for the informal sector across 18 states of India. SEWA also aims to provide full employment and self-reliance to its members. SEWA defines full employment as providing its members with work security, income security, food security, and social security, which includes healthcare, childcare, insurance, pension, and housing at the household level. SEWA also grew to have 29 lakh members to become the world’s largest informal organization.
SEWA and her founder, Ela Bhatt, received the Right Livelihood Award in 1984, an alternative Nobel Prize, for their path-breaking work in livelihood and women empowerment. Ela Bhatt was awarded the Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Raman Magsaysay Award, Niwano Peace Prize, Indira Gandhi Peace Award, and many more. Now, let us state in which areas Mission Shakti can learn from SEWA and her founder.
Empowerment & Advocacy
Mission Shakti’s Women Self Help Groups (WSHG) generally depend more on the state government’s intervention regarding their organizational decision-making and funding. But undoubtedly, it brought economic empowerment to the grassroots women. Women’s income grew by 19%. Among the women entrepreneurs of Mission Shakti, the loan recovery rate is 96%. We interviewed a women entrepreneur who said us how low-interest loans from Mission Shakti helped her fish retail to grow with higher turnover and generate employment for two people. However, SEWA members grew in different directions.
At the micro level, we witnessed in the Sundargarh district of Odisha, with five local partners, SEWA empowered domestic workers to build their organization, and their power of unionizing led to an efficient collective fight for their rights as workers. Empowerment of SEWA members is more effective as they attained empowerment from a common struggle without the government’s intervention.
In a Focus Group interview, one of the authors witnessed how SEWA members go to international conferences to present their work, run successful small businesses, build houses for their families from their earned money, approach government officers, banks for their demand, etc. We did not find this type of confidence in Mission Shakti members.
Let us give a recent example where the Odisha government introduced the Subhadra scheme, which promises that Rs 10000 will be transferred to the bank accounts of women beneficiaries in two installments every year. Many economists of Odisha started arguing that this scheme tended to become consumer-centric and may not empower women economically, which is quite contradictory to Mission Shakti’s objective.
Overall, this policy shift regarding women’s empowerment is top-down. We did not witness any Mission Shakti members state their support or apprehension in this regard. It is just the opposite in the case of SEWA women. They raised their voice in policy and law formulations that affect their livelihood opportunities.
SEWA’s role in advocacy is a phenomenon. SEWA played a very effective role in bringing the Indian Street Vendors Act 2014 after decades of struggle. The Act recognizes, regulates, and protects the livelihoods of 4 crore street vendors, 2 lakh of whom are SEWA members.
Even this year, before the Union Budget 2024, SEWA wrote a letter as the women’s biggest trade union in India to suggest Union Government:
a) form climate resilience funds for the poor workers of the unorganized sector
b) make budgetary allocations in 2024-25 so that the social security reaches the workers of the unorganized sector
c) to ensure technical coherence and interstate management mechanism to ensure portability of ration cards and other identity cards
d) to allocate budget for the secured employment scheme like the National Urban Employment Guarantee Act (NUGA) in the urban areas for the unorganized sector works as per the unanimous recommendation in 43rd International Labour Congress.
SEWA also had suggestions to Union Govt. in sectors like construction, beedi workers, etc. Many of the demands have not been met, but they present their demands with clarity, courage, and conviction, which no one can deny.
On Leadership
Ela Bhatt’s visionary leadership, her fifty-year tenure of commitment, creating an environment of grassroots-level democracy through organizing proper elections for all the posts, and creating a pool of leaders by empowering them with voice, visibility, and validity made a significant difference. Ela Bhatt believed in collective leadership, built a brigade of leaders, and she never believed in one person’s show. It helped SEWA to grow. In the government system of Mission Shakti, this sort of leadership is very rare. Government Officers need to learn this kind of leadership.
Women Empowerment 2.0
We identified a few common challenges of WSHGs and cooperatives, like getting loans at low rates of interest, having proper market linkages, and having adequate exposure to training for attaining skills in marketing, IT, etc. Unionizing and advocating for better policies and laws by the WSHG groups to the power centers are very important, apart from the progressive approaches of the government.
The progressive approach of the government towards women’s empowerment should focus beyond creating committed vote banks. We would like to see the present state government empowering WSHGs of Mission Shakti in building strengths of unionizing and advocacy like their SEWA counterparts.
Bringing SEWA Bens for training Mission Shakti women can be a real game changer to build confidence to talk to the power centers, enhance their learning curve, and bring the next level of empowerment to Mission Shakti women. The present political party ruling Odisha started its journey by positioning itself among voters as the ‘party with a difference’.
We are expecting a real women’s empowerment 2.0, which would be more impactful and different than the earlier Odisha government’s policies. However, the government’s focus on women’s empowerment needs to be more progressive beyond vote bank politics.
However, a few challenges regarding WSHGs and cooperatives remain the same. They have challenges getting loans at low rates of interest, having proper market linkages, and having adequate exposure to training for attaining skills in marketing, IT, etc. WSHGs of Mission Shakti need to learn the strength of unionizing and advocacy for better policies and laws.
SEWA can be a role model for the WSHGs regarding raising their voices to the government and other power centers. Bringing SEWA Bens for training Mission Shakti women can be a real game-changer to build confidence, enhance their learning curve, and bring the next level of empowerment to Mission Shakti women.
(Dr. Goutam Saha is a faculty at NIFT, Bhubaneswar and Dr. Satya Narayan Misra is a Professor Emeritus, KiiT University, Bhubaneswar. Views expressed are personal.)
