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THE SEWA SISTERHOOD
How
Ela Bhatt created a pipeline of ‘blue blouse’ leaders that would be the
envy of most corporates
At first, Ela Bhatt refuses to be interviewed for this story. It's been 15
years since she stepped down from the Self Employed Women's Asscociation
(Sewa), she says, so it's best I leave her out of it and meet the new
people at the helm instead. When this is gently conveyed to me by one of
the new people at the helm, I'm confounded. You can't be serious, I say
plaintively. How can I do a story on Sewa without Ela Bhatt? But as the
appointments with the other key women at Sewa fall into place one by one, I
realise they are serious. I arrive in Ahmedabad without a plan to meet with
Elaben. Mirai Chatterjee, one of the senior-most people at Sewa and the one
who helps co-ordinate the appointments, tells me, "We've never had a
culture of one supreme leader at Sewa. Elaben believes in collective
leadership. That's why she wants you focus on the present day
leaders."
It takes some persuasion to melt the collective
Sewa heart, but I finally do get an appointment with Elaben on my second
day in Ahmedabad. It clashes with a long-scheduled meeting with the
chairman of one of the city's largest corporates, but he graciously adjusts
when told it's for Ela Bhatt. So it is that I make my way to 'Toy House',
her residence, located in an enclave that has managed to survive Ahmedabad's
rapid urban development.
At 80, Elaben has lost none of her energy, or her
puckish sense of humour: "I did not want to wait till people started
saying buddhi theek se sun nahin salti, dekh nahin sakti (the old lady
can't hear, can't see). I completely stopped going to the Sewa office when
I retired in 1997. If I went, everyone would come to me and the new leaders
would not get attention. And I am so pleased with the way things have
turned out. Our original 'white blouse' leaders have now made way for 'blue
blouse' leaders. All the members of Sewa's executive committee are now from
the working class."
The white blouse (as in white collar) cadre at Sewa
includes women like Mirai Chatterjee, who joined the organisation 30 years
ago, right after graduating from Harvard University with a degree in public
health. She recalls finding a note from Elaben waiting for on the first
day, which simply said "Welcome to Sewa. I hope you enjoy it
here." Here was an organisation that aimed to change society by putting
working woman at the vanguard. For a true blue feminist, what was there not
to enjoy? "I knew it was the place for me, right from the first,"
says Chatterjee, who is now chairperson of Sewa's insurance cooperative.
"The discussions we would have, the deep insights I gained, the whole
atmosphere was so powerful. Elaben believed we were not just an
organisation, but a movement. She was a mentoring leader, who believed her
most important first job lay in creating more leaders."
Sewa has a number of co-operative institutions in
its fold, including a bank, but at its core it remains a trade union, where
the supremo is the general secretary, an elected post that Elaben held till
1997, after which it went to Chatterjee and then to other members of the
core white blouse team. Now the post has gone to Jyoti Macwan, who comes
from a family of agricultural workers in Gujarat's Kheda district, making
her Sewa's first blue blouse g-sec.
I manage to catch Macwan late in the evening at the
Sewa Reception Centre just as she's preparing to leave Ahmedad for her home
in Anand. "The greatest thing about Elaben is that she makes you feel
like an owner," she says. "Our members don't think of Sewa as an
organisation run by someone else. Every worker has a feeling of ownership
and anybody can take a leadership role. The personalities of our general
secretaries have been different over the years, but these details are not
so important when you have a common vision."
Macwan, who has been with Sewa for 26 years, recalls
one of her first meetings, where Elaben drew a chart showing what a small
percentage of society's wealth was controlled by women, though they formed
50% of the population. "That thought has stayed with me ever since.
Elaben told us our goal was to correct this and work towards equal
distribution of wealth." she says.
With a goal that ambitious, who has time for petty
differences? The ability to unite women from different classes through a
common vision is arguably one of Elaben's greatest successes, one that
corporate leaders can learn from. "Ours is a sisterhood," she
says. "I have never made distinctions based on class. When I pick
someone, it is on the basis of their brains. And I see to it that they work
in the field, so they truly understand the needs of the workers."
Jayshree Vyas was a manager at Central Bank of
India, when Elaben asked her if she would consider taking a sabbatical to
work with Sewa Bank in 1986. Not one to do things by half, Vyas decided to
quit corporate banking and start financing the needs of the poor.
On her first day, Elaben gave her a desk in the
corner of a hall and told her to interact with as many of Sewa's member
workers as possible. "As a professional banker, I had to unlearn a lot
of things," she says. "Everything here was based on understanding
the character of individuals. They had no collateral to offer, they had
nothing in writing. But this was a bank, and a small one, so I had to
ensure the depositor's money was safe."
Vyas particularly recalls a meet with one customer,
a fruit vender. "She was selling mangoes and I asked her how much she
charged. She said she had been selling at Rs 5 a kg, but could now afford
to drop the price to Rs 3. When I asked her why, she gave me an amazing
explanation, which had to do with having covered her fixed costs and now
being able to earn a profit at variable cost, though she didn't use these
words. I've learnt more about finance from Sewa's members than I did from
corporate clients."
The bank has always been a project
to Elaben heart — she stayed on as its chairperson for a year after
resigning as g-sec of Sewa — but true to style, she never interfered too
much in its working. "Elaben has this ability look at the macro
picture and avoid micro-management, which is something the rest of us find
hard," says Vyas. "She would just ask me about a few key
indicators. Are loans being repaid? Are we able to pay dividend? Then she
would leave the details to us. She had complete trust in the people she
selected."
Elaben not only trusts everybody she deals with,
she has a knack for making them feel and know they are trusted. This
translates into empowerment and is a huge motivator, one that many
corporate chiefs have failed to appreciate. "Everybody has goodness in
them, waiting to rise up. Everybody knows when they are doing something
wrong. If they persist in doing something wrong, I do tell ask them to go.
But our job is to bring out the good part of people," she says.
Headquartered in an upscale building on Ahmedabad's
Ashram Road, Sewa Bank is now looking at the next phase of growth. Elaben's
views on this are clear cut: "The challenge is to remain small but be
a big force. We have to spread laterally rather than vertically. I would
rather have 40 branches of Sewa Bank spread across the talukas, rather than
one big branch in the city. I sometimes wonder if the present leadership
understands that. They are performance oriented managers, which is a good
thing in its own way. I lack that."
Reema Nanavaty joined Sewa 28 years ago, while
working on her Masters degree. Her first assignment was in drought relief
and she recalls being given boring liaison work with the government, which
left her feeling rather disillusioned with social work. Then she had a
meeting with Elaben. "I told her I had cleared the IAS exam and was
thinking of joining. She said to me, 'You want to be a collector? Why don't
you be a collector here?' She asked me go to Banaskanta district and take
charge of Sewa's relief work there. She challenged me and put a lot of
trust in me," recalls Nanavaty.
Nanavaty eventually spent over a decade working in
the hinterlands, first appalled by the living conditions and poverty she
found there, but then enthused by the indomitable spirit of the rural women
she met. Over that time, she moved from one district to another, each time
leaving behind a successor from the local women. "You have to live
amongst the community you are serving to gain their trust and understand
their needs," she says.
Much of Sewa's rural development work in Gujarat
relied on funding through state government schemes. That stopped abruptly
after the 2002 riots, when it fell out with the state government over funds
being channeled to certain villages at the expense of others on the basis
of a communal divide. "It was a tough call," recalls Nanavaty,
who is currently director of Sewa's economic development and rural
organising wing. "We lost Rs 200 crore of funding and couldn't pay
salaries for nine months. But Elaben said it was a choice between sticking
to our values or succumbing to pressure. We all agreed we should stand by
our values."
As a trade union and as a co-operative, Sewa
understands business and it understands money (hence this long article). In
the year that followed its falling out with the state government, Sewa
resorted to zero-based budgeting. It may have pared down some activities,
but it is now a self-sustaining organisation. Nanavaty is clearly
up-to-date with current business issues when she says, "We have a
remuneration policy where we maintain a 1:4 ratio between the lowest and
highest paid. That means we don't pay as well as most NGOs, so we don't
always attract the best talent. But those who do join are passionate about
the work Sewa does."
While Sewa does attract women who are passionate
about the movement it represents, it also gets applications from those who
just want to be associated with the brand. This set usually drops out after
being asked to work with Sewa's members in the hinterlands for a few years.
Besides, as a new generation of blue-blouse leaders takes up the reins,
Sewa's dependence on the white blouse workers is set to reduce.
"Elaben's nurturing style is actually very conducive to growth. She
incubates talent. We are constantly building capabilities and skills in
order to create leaders who can take charge of new initiatives," says
Mirai Chatterjee.
By its very nature, the collective style of
leadership is slow. It involves keeping everyone informed, having lots of
meetings and decisions through debate and discussion. Nobody understands
this better than Elaben, who says, "It's not an easy process. Managers
find it difficult. But in the end, I believe it is worth it. We are
organisers and the process is essential to what we represent."
Subhadraben Patel is an example of the outcome of
the collective leadership process. She's just taken charge as chairperson
of Sewa's healthcare co-operative, a position that was earlier held by
Chatterjee. She speaks no English and only a smattering of Hindi, but
that's never been a big problem when she has travelled abroad to Thailand
and Sri Lanka for conferences. "I enjoy working in a group. I like the
attention we get from the audience when we attend a conference in a
group," she says cheerily.
Subhadraben has obviously grasped an essential
truth: symbolism counts. Elaben puts the idea across in a different way,
but the insight is the same: "If our working class women go to meet
the Prime Minister, it makes no impact. If I go alone, it makes some
impact. But when we go to meet the PM together, it makes a great
impact."
Through changing times, Sewa has held closely to
another symbol that goes to its Gandhian roots. Its members still wear
handloom fabric, though it is no longer cheap. Old timers like Chatterjee
and Nanavaty took to it naturally in their salad days and never gave it up.
But today's young women are prone to asking why. "You can't shove it
down their throats anymore, but you can persuade. Polyester may be cheaper,
but it doesn't stand for something, like khadi does," says Chatterjee.
In Gujarat, the khadi-clad women of Sewa are
actually quite a force. Rickshaws never overcharge them and buses tend to
stop for them wherever they are. "When you wear khadi you make a statement,"
says Elaben. "It means you're working with the poor. It means you
believe in using local material. It gives you an identity and brings
discipline to your life."
Elaben herself remains a symbol of Gandhian
philosophy in action. Today, having handed over Sewa to a new generation of
equally committed leaders, she is engaged on other work. She is on the
Board of the Reserve Bank of India. She is a member of The Elders, an
international organisation of statesmen, peace activists and human rights advocates,
brought together by Nelson Mandela in 2007 and is field testing the
"100 miles principle" which says that consumers and producers can
and should be brought close together so that all primary needs are met
within a 100 mile radius. And she plans to write her second book, after We
Are Poor But So Many. "I'm busier than before. And I am so glad I
don't have to sign papers any more," she says.
12 RULES OF THE SEWA SISTERHOOD
1 Remember the vision: the betterment of society through the empowerment of women
2 Understand the customer: live amongst the people you are trying to serve
3 Build the leadership pipeline:
a leader's primary job is to
create more leaders
4 Create collective leadership: don't allow for a culture of one supreme leader
5 Stress the process: organise meetings, arrive at decisions through
discussion and debate
6 Leadership over management: efficiency is good, but not at the expense of the larger
goal
7 Empower young people: let people know you trust them to do a good job
8 Focus on key parameters: keeps tabs on a few important things, don't micro-manage
9 Never compromise on values: money is useful, but it's not everything
10 Don't stress salary: there are still people out there who are passionate
about a cause
11 The more the merrier: move in large groups — it creates impact
12 Wear khadi: Use the fabric to make a powerful statement wherever you
go
Dibeyendu
Ganguly CDET121221
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