Monday, December 31, 2012

WOMAN SPECIAL.......... THE SEWA SISTERHOOD


  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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