The 1977 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership

RESPONSE of Ela Ramesh Bhatt

I am here to thank you personally on behalf of my family, my colleagues, and the members-workers of the two organizations to which I belong, namely the Textile Labor Association and the Self-Employed Women's Association—popularly known as SEWA, in Ahmedabad, India.

I belong to an ordinary middle class family, brought up and educated like other girls. It was the most significant moment in my life when I was drawn towards my toiling sisters—illiterate slum dwellers, but economically very active, powerful and cheerful—from whom I obtain all my strength, knowledge, answers and hope. It is at their insistence that SEWA as a union, SEWA Cooperative as a bank and SEWA Trust as social security, have come into being. Working with them takes me towards a realization that God is everywhere.

Is it really the few big dams, or huge industrial plants or metropolises that change the face of the world? No, even a small uplift in the capacities of the people is able to bring total change in the world.

Most often human capacities are underestimated by us, hence we put blind faith in machines which lead to centralization of money and power. Even the present structures—legal, economic and social, including trade unions and cooperatives—fail to cater to the needs of people. Let us ask ourselves, for whom do we build our towns, roads, industries, markets, schools and laboratories?

The hard struggle that men face in a life of poverty is harder for women who most often work at the expense of their families. For the woman the economic problem of earning her daily bread is linked with her entire social and physical life.

From humble experience I have learned that it is possible to organize, without too much elaborate technique or expense, poor self-employed women workers for self-help. Women are ready to be organized and are capable of utilizing assistance and ideas if exposed to them.

The trade union movement has promoted the growth of the organized industrial sector. In developing countries industrialization and unionization have proceeded hand in hand. The benefits of development have reached the organized workers, but the share of the self-employed poor has yet to grow.

In Asia a very large number of women are participating in the economic activities of their countries. The industrial unions and social security cover a very small, insignificant part of the total number of working women. We hope this will be a turning point for the labor and cooperative movements to act unitedly for the emancipation of working women from economic, social and political suppression.

This Award has reassured us that we are on the right track in our endeavor, and has given encouragement not only to SEWA members, but also to millions of self-employed women workers elsewhere, to organize themselves and realize the power generating from association outside their homes.

Therefore the 1977 Ramon Magsaysay Award is an honor to the non-industrial, self-employed women and men of Asia who are not destined to live depressed forever. A new challenge has emerged for those running economic organizations and also for social workers.

I am proud to receive the Award on behalf of the self-employed women who are the real recipients of it and for whose advancement this good money will be used.