Opinion - News Analysis   

Poor women get the Nobel Prize

Ela R. Bhatt

Development without keeping the poor and women in the centre will neither remain "fast" nor "inclusive."

MOHAMMED YUNUS of Bangladesh has shown that poor women can take the lead in development. When Mr. Yunus first started Grameen Bank, he started giving loans to men, but the repayment rate was poor and Grameen Bank could not grow. He then observed that women were borrowing and repaying much better than men, and he allowed women to take the lead. Today, 97 per cent of Grameen Bank's borrowers are women. In addition, women take the lead in the bank's other ventures of telecommunications, handloom, and energy production.

There is a lesson for India. Our Eleventh Plan is being formulated at a time when the economy is taking a leap ahead into fast growth, and at the same time being a vibrant democracy the process is one of inclusive development. However, one of the country's greatest resources is not recognised or appreciated. The crores of poor working women have the ability and enterprise to move the country out of poverty, but policy makers are afraid to let them take a lead.

There has been a major change in the country in the last 20 years. In the years after Independence, there was a multiplicity of political and economic interests. Now the economy is being increasingly dominated and controlled by big, global, and single-vision corporate interests. Their voice and approval are taking over the debates, discussions, and dialogues around the direction for India's development.

Our educated urban elite, the emerging market centres, control and command far more power than any single social or political group ever did in our democracy. Helped by the media and the economic clout of not only national but global corporations, this new middle class is turning away its attention from the poor and poverty-removal finding it "boring"; or even worse there is a belief, a pretence, that poverty does not exist any more.

But development, without keeping the poor and women in the centre, will neither remain "fast" nor "inclusive." Our economy is balanced on unequal wheels — one of the jet aircraft and another of a bullock cart. These wheels can push the economy ahead but imagine its pace and the nature of the ride. By investing in our poor, in their work and future, India will, in fact, get sound and reliable wheels to make its faster journey towards development.

The poor and women, especially, the poor women are the key to India's faster and sustainable growth. We see this among SEWA's eight lakh members in India. When we invest in the poor and their enterprise to come out of poverty we, in fact, invest in their social, economic, and political development, their maturity as citizens and in their empowerment. Such decentralised but real empowerment makes both the economy and democracy grow faster.

Similarly, we have also seen that by investing in women we make growth integrated, we develop them and their family, for now and for the future, in economic and social measures. Further, investments in women are both "high yield and low risk": an ideal investment any nation can make. They are high yield because they generate direct and indirect returns longer and faster. Low risk because they are less likely to be pilfered, wasted or siphoned off. We know this through the experience of thousands of SHGs in Tamil Nadu, from several large Government-NGO initiatives such as Basix in Andhra Pradesh and DHAN in South India.

Investments in women stimulate local markets as well as make welfare measures more effective and accessible.

But how do we do this? It is not by expanding the size or budget or the scope of the existing Ministry of Women and Child Development, but by changing its role from being a pioneer, advocate, and demonstrator to that of a monitor and evaluator of all sectors of our economy.

The Ministry must mainstream various women's economic programmes into the respective Ministries and take upon itself the task of gentle but persistent monitoring of their performance through audit, rating, tracking, and reviews. We do not necessarily need a separate department for women but we need to see women mainstreamed in each and every initiative across national economy and our democracy.

Monitoring the Ministries

The Ministry of Women and Child Development can rate levels of attainments of gender goals for each Ministry in terms of "little or no progress"; "awareness of needs"; "development of solutions"; and "acceptable integration." Let Science and Technology, Home and External Affairs, Rural Development and Industries, all other Ministries be rated on this scale, annually and develop measures to improve higher rating.

Such efforts can be taken up with the help of women's groups, both representative or membership based as well as the research and advocacy groups. The data for such rating may come from analysing annual reports and reviews of Ministries; assessing the extent to which gender is mainstreamed in annual plans and strategies of various programmes and so on.

Most Ministries have gender mainstreaming low on their priorities. Most mainstream Ministries are also not concerned about the poor. Poor women tend to fall out of the range of vision of the leadership in these Ministries especially those concerned with economic development. However, we call on the Government to have a commitment to strive for the next five years to directly focus on poor women in all our economic sectors and see if we achieve "fast and inclusive" growth. Shall we call it India's Five Year Solution?

(The writer is Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), Ahmedabad.)

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