TEAM



Economy of Nurturance

More +
 Nearly three million working women in India belong to the Self Employed Women’s Association that began as a trade union in 1972. Since then, SEWA has organized poor women across India, seeking “full employment” for its members. Through solidarity, mutual cooperation, and women leadership, these home-based artisans, vegetable vendors, junk recyclers, farmers, construction workers and cooks have started small businesses, established microfinance institutions, influenced domestic laws, and informed international policies. Their actions have disrupted the structural stranglehold on their lives, providing freedoms that allow them to move towards better futures. 

The nationwide lockdown in India in response to the pandemic in March 2020 upended their lives. As their homes were barricaded and workplaces disbanded, their hard-earned gains risked being reversed. Dependent on daily wages to put food on their plates, not working was not an option. They overcame the digital divide, contested unjust state policies, rescued standing produce from the fields, distributed essential groceries, led vaccination drives, educated their children,  and even launched a new insurance product to prepare their members for climate change. Their solutions preserved their livelihoods, often also benefited others, and harmed none.

The timeline to your left and this exhibition illuminate how fifty years of organizing, of women’s empowerment, of problem-solving, and of centering the needs of the poor in all decision-making, allowed the women to navigate the greatest public health emergency of our times, when society and state failed them. The actions of SEWA’s members unveil alternative imaginations of social contracts, mutual obligations, and dignity in work. These lessons from the poorest amongst us, remind us that the new paradigms we seek to replace the current rules of engagement, are already in bloom. 




























Kartikeya Bhatotia (Research)
Shariq M. Shah (Graphics)