Maya Dayal has used research
papers and pamphlets presented at workshops and seminars and
also unpublished case studies and surveys to write the book. The
sincerity of the work can be judged from the editor’s apology
for a sketchy bibliography. The work tends to bring out the
spirit of participation and empowerment through self-help and
involves the reader with it. Maya takes us through the ups and
downs, struggle and evolution of SEWA.
This work has
come up in collaboration with the Mahila Sewa Anasooya Trust (an
offshoot of SEWA). In the beginning, Meera Chatterjee of SEWA
gives a foreward on the work and summarises the structure of
SEWA. Maya Dayal introduces SEWA with interesting facts about
it. ‘It was started in 1972 as a reaction to non-recognition
of the self-employed women as labourers.’ Today, it has over
3,00,000 women workers as its members (two-thirds are rural and
one-third are urban). With a third being Dalits, one-third
Muslim and a third ‘backward castes’. When we read about the
cooperation between different religious communities that exist
in the functioning of SEWA in Gujarat it is difficult to
understand the eruption of hatred which has taken hundreds of
lives.
The book offers
us very insightful and interesting details about the schemes
undertaken by SEWA. Maya has divided the work into seven
chapters. One each on introduction, conclusion and a post-script
on the earthquake of January 26, 2001. Four chapters are
dedicated to SEWA’s child care, health care, housing and
insurance schemes. Interesting statistical details help the
reader to peep into the organisational structure and the success
of SEWA. The brief case studies bring out the experiences and
reaction of women and make the work even more absorbing.
The book gives
clear details about the sources of finance, SEWA’s
collaboration with the government and its conflict which help
the reader to analyse SEWA closely. She points out through a
SEWA survey that 98 per cent of the mothers involved in Shaishav
(creches) gave their children iron and folic acid and vitamin A
supplements. Significantly, all these schemes are sustained by
women themselves. One is wonderstruck at the success of health
and housing schemes. Dais are trained, health awareness
camps are undertaken through "know your body" schemes.
There is indeed a lot the present-day government in Gujarat
needs to learn from SEWA.
The book
eulogises SEWA’s success in providing pucca houses to
self-employed women, which are registered in their names. This
is something which always remains a distant dream for most of
the women working in the unorganised sector. It shows us how
insurance has transformed the approach of these women towards
their lives. They feel secure and confident after they have been
insured of sickness, death, damages to house and work tools and
materials through group insurance schemes administered by SEWA.
All these
projects have indeed kindled a new hope in the lives of
self-employed women. The book shows us how women at SEWA are
getting empowered. They are taking important household
decisions. The work stimulates the imagination of the reader and
instils a new faith in the indigenous methods which could be
applied to empower women at grassroots. This experience can be
of immense use to social activists, policy makers, researchers
and a general reader too who is interested in understanding the
dynamics of self-reliance through self-help.
This book, however, suffers
from an important limitation. Maya Dayal seems to be greatly
influenced by SEWA and eulogises its achievement throughout the
work. She hardly leaves any space for criticism and epitomises
it as an ideal for NGOs. This robs it of any scope for critical
evaluation which the reader could indulge in. This book, at this
juncture shows that there is light at the end of the dark
tunnel. That there is hope if the Gujarati spirit which has been
brought out in SEWA resurfaces and all communities work together
for the empowerment of the common man.
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