Third July: International Day of Cooperatives

Dr. Eugene D’Souza, Moodubelle
Bellevision Media Network

03 July 2010: The International Day of Cooperatives has been observed every year on the first Saturday of July since 1995, the year that marked the centenary of the establishment of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA). This year the day is observed on 3 July which happens to be the first Saturday of the month.

Cooperation and cooperative movement has become part and parcel of modern life both in urban as well as rural areas. The cooperative housing societies, credit societies, banks, dealing with consumer items, agricultural cooperatives, milk producers cooperatives, etc. have provided the much needed support to people with meagre resources and means.

Cooperatives can be defined as autonomous associations of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprises. Co-operatives are democratically owned and governed enterprises guided by the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity.

Robert Owen has been regarded as the ‘father’ of cooperative movement in England. He was a socialist. After acquiring the New Lanark textile mill from his father in law, Owen along with his associates improved the working and housing conditions of the workers and created a model community. He suggested that ‘villages of cooperation’ should be founded which would be self-supporting. The ideas of Robert Owen greatly helped in spread the cooperative communities not only in England but also in other parts of Europe and the United Sates.

Robert Owen

Though the first Cooperative Societies Act was passed in 1904 in India, the cooperative movement in the real sense began to take roots only after India attained independence. Today, cooperative movement in India is the largest in the world. The movement has spread to all walks of life, such as agriculture, horticulture, credit and banking, housing, agro- industries, dairy, consumers, etc. The first major cooperative movement in India was introduced in the Kaira District of Gujarat which ultimately led to the establishment of Anand Milk Union Limited (Amul) in 1946. Today, this movement is replicated in 70,000 villages in over 200 districts in India. There are more than 500,000 cooperative societies in India that cater the needs of workers making the Indian cooperative sector as one of the largest people’s movement in the world.

‘Cooperative enterprise empowers women’ is the theme of this year’s International Day of Cooperatives. Cooperatives play an important role in responding to both women’s practical and strategic needs. Whether it be through women only cooperatives or cooperatives made up of women and men, they offer an effective organisational means for women members and employees to raise their living standards by availing decent work opportunities, savings and credit facilities, health, housing and social services, and education and training. Cooperatives also contribute to the improvement of the economic, social and cultural conditions of women in other ways as well such as promoting equality and changing institutional biases.

In respect to the theme of ‘Cooperative enterprise empowers women’, it would be appropriate to review the largest women’s cooperative movement in India, Self-Employed Women’s Association of India (SEWA) founded by Ela Bhatt, a noted Gandhian and civil rights leader in 1972 in Gujarat.

Dr Ela Bhatt

A lawyer by profession, Ela Bhatt was born on 7th September 1933 in Ahmadabad. She joined the legal department of the Textile Labour association (TLA) in Ahmadabad in 1955 at the invitation of two of the organization’s founders, Anasuya Sarabhai and Shankarlal Banker. In 1956, Ela Bhatt married Ramesh Bhatt. She temporarily gave up work due to the birth of her children Amimayi and Mihir.

Ela Bhatt returned to work in 1961, and worked for some time with the Gujarat Government and was later asked by the TLA to head its Women’s Wing in 1968. She went to Israel where she studied at the Afro-Asian Institute of Labour and Cooperatives in Tel Aviv for three months, receiving the International Diploma of Labour and Cooperatives in 1971.

Ela Bhatt was very much concerned about the fact that thousands of female textile workers worked elsewhere to supplement their family income. While there were state laws to protect those who were solely industrial workers, there were no legal safeguards for the self-employed women. Thus, with the co-operation of Arvind Buch the President of TLA, Ela Bhatt undertook to organize these self-employed women into a union named Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) under the auspices of the Women’s Wing of the TLA wwhich was registered in April 1972 with Arvind Buch as its President and Ela Bhatt as its Secretary.

Presently the SEWA movement has spread in several states of India with a membership of nearly 1000,000. SEWA members are women who earn a living through their own labour or small businesses. They do not obtain regular salaried employment with welfare benefits like workers in the organized sector. The chief aims of SEWA are to organize women workers for full employment and self reliance and to bring into mainstream the marginalized and poor women in the informal sector and lift them out of their poverty. The main office of SEWA is located at Ahmadabad in Gujarat.

Ela Bhatt also founded SEWA Cooperative Bank in 1974 which now reaches out to around three million women. She was one of the founders of Women’s World Banking in 1979 and served as its Chairperson from 1980 to1998. In 1989, she was the first woman appointed to the Planning Commission in India. Prior to this, she was a member of the Rajya Sabha and also served as a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation for a decade.

Ela Bhatt’s many honours and awards include Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan from the Government of India, an honorary Doctorate degree from the Harvard University, the Right Livelihood Award, the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Care Humanitarian Award, Legion of Honour from France. She was also named to the Elders Project by Nelson Mandela. Ela Bhatt was nominated for Niwano Peace Prize for 2010. Her book “We are poor but so many: the story of self-employed women in India” was published by the Oxford University Press.

Mrs. Hillary Clinton at SEWA

The dedicated and tireless work of Ela Bhatt in organising the women of Gujarat in self-help movement has served as a model to several cooperative endeavours in many parts of India. At the grass root level the cooperative movement especially involving women has been taken up in many villages including in Karnataka where needy women are trained in various trades and activities by which they can supplement the family earning and have a decent and dignified life for the entire family. Thus, the theme of this year’s International Day of Cooperatives ‘Cooperative enterprise empowers women’ can be understood in relation to one of the largest and most effective cooperative movement in India initiated and led by Dr. Ela Bhatt.