“Whether for profit or for non-profit our involvement relates to benefiting people” one of his very famous quote which you can hear him saying in the video here. One man, One dream, One organisation “Grameen Bank” . Being a professor he could have easily chosen to sit back, relax and lecture on “how to eradicate poverty in this world” instead he chose to do it himself by establishing grameen bank, a bank which gives out small amount of money to poor people who want to start a business. These business ventures may be small like opening up a tea shop, a tailor shop but they are a big for the people who are starting it because the income they gonna generate out of it will change there life forever. Pull them out form the dungeons of  poverty.The idea of microfinance lives with an idea of inclusive growth, where we concentrate on the bottom of the pyramid, the term made popular by C.K Prahlad. The logic is simple if you treat this strata of society as beggars, they will remain so. But you empower them, do a bit of  hand holding then they can create wonders.  I would like to share a small incident that moved me a lot.

I somehow managed to miss my train for mumbai (i do it everytime, miss trains, miss busses, loosing tickets in the train, forgetting ATM pins etc. i am that perpetual poor guy that you see in a bollywood flick who always managed to get into some trouble..:) )..i was in Guntakal and wanted to catch Udyan express to mumbai, it was early morning i think around 3 or something. I missed my train and had to wait on the station. Desperately wanted to have tea but couldnt find any stall open that time, suddenly a boy, i think aged 16 appeared like an angel and asked me if i wanted tea.  I said yes and took a cup and given my talkative nature i started asking him question, what does he do apart from selling tea and stuff like that and what does he dream of becoming one day. I was surprised to hear him,he told me that he do 4 different jobs(i can hardly manage to do one!). First he drops newspaper in the morning, and whatever he earns from it goes to cook meal at home (he told me a trick of  putting in inserts in the newsaper to make some extra buck, there was a sparkle in his eyes when he was telling me this.).Second, he supply packaging material (rope, plastic etc) to the daily vegetable haat (Sabzi mandi..yeah i know hindi too). Third, he  cleans up a small school in the evening daily along with his other freinds. And the fourth he sells tea on the station. I asked why he cant do just one and find ways to make more money out of that. He said that last two job he is doing is to collect money to open up a tea stall on the station. Because one of his distant realtive works in the railway, and he has promised him to get him a license to do so. That is his dream a stall on the station, and he feel it will be his day, a day when he will feel that he has arrived, he has made a mark, the day when he will feel that he is breathing in a free country!

Microfinance is just the thing that the doctor prescribed, it could fast forward and save poor Raman from all that labour and lend him money to start a tea stal or whatever else he can dream off.  Grameen  bank is just doing that and something  similar is done being done in India by Vikram Akula of SKS Microfinance.

Let me know what do feel about this or your story that you want to share with all of us here.

Ela Bhatt’s childhood was spent in the city of Surat. Her father, Sumantrai Bhatt, had a successful law practice. Her mother, Vanalila Vyas, was active in the women’s movement. Bhatt attended the Sarvajanik Girls High School in Surat from 1940 to 1948. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the M.T.B. College in Surat in 1952. Following graduation Ela entered the Sir L. A. Shah Law College in Ahmedabad. In 1954 she received her degree in law and a Gold Medal for her work on Hindu Law. She then taught English for a short time at SNDT Women’s University, better known as SNDT, in Mumbai. But in 1955 she joined the legal department of the Textile Labour Association (TLA) in Ahmedabad.

Ela Bhatt is currently living in Ahmedabad with her family, which includes her son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons. Ela Bhatt’s daughter is settled in USA in the town of New Haven with husband and son and a daughter.

In 1956, Ela Bhatt married Ramesh Bhatt (now deceased). After working for sometime with the Gujarat government, Ela was asked by the TLA to head it’s women’s wing in 1968. In this connection she went to Israel where she studied at the Afro-Asian Institute of Labor and Cooperatives in Tel Aviv for three months, receiving the International Diploma of Labor and Cooperatives in 1971. She was very much influenced by the fact that thousands of women related to textile worker worked elsewhere to supplement the family income, but there were state laws protecting only the industrial workers and not these self-employed women. So with the co-operation of Arvind Buch, the then president of TLA, Ela Bhatt undertook to organize these self-employed women into a union under the auspices of the Women’s Wing of the TLA. Then in 1972 the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) was established with Buch as president and she herself as the general-secretary.

She was one of the founders of Women’s World Banking in 1979 with Esther Ocloo and Michaela Walsh, and served as its chair from 1980 to 1998. She currently serves as the Chair of the SEWA Cooperative Bank, of HomeNet, of the International Alliance of Street Vendors, and of WIEGO.

She is also a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation.

She was granted an honorary Doctorate degree in Humane Letters by Harvard University in June 2001.

Ela Bhatt was also awarded the civilian honour of Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1985, and the Padma Bhushan in 1986. She was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1977 and the Right Livelihood Award in 1984.

Check out SEWA’S site here http://www.sewa.org/