From Sarees to Smartphones: Mirai Chatterjee From SEWA On How Rural Women Are Redefining Digital Adoption
SEWA women embrace blockchain and digital tools, co-creating solutions and pushing for deeper tech adoption in grassroots cooperatives.
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Mirai, thank you so much for joining me. So before I dive into the financial inclusion work that SEWA is doing, can you tell us a little bit about the kind of work that you're doing, that's one, and how many people you support and in what way today?
Sure, good to be here. Well, there's SEWA, and then there's the several different sister organisations and entities, one of which I head. So SEWA, as you know, is a national union, and also a movement now of 32 lakh women workers in the informal economy spread across 18 states.
And SEWA gave rise to several programmes, which in turn gave rise to several entities, mostly cooperatives, which provide financial services, healthcare, child care, and many more. So I'm the lead for our social protection programme, which includes healthcare, childcare, and insurance. And as I said, all these are done through cooperatives, which are sustainable.
They are used run and managed by the informal women workers themselves.
And tell us about some of the challenges that you face or the path that you see in building out or expanding the base that you have and in ensuring higher integrity in the transactions that people do who are part of your system?
Well, of course, the biggest challenge, and if I may say the first building block is what we at SEWA call organising, which is building unity and solidarity, building the sisterhood. And once that unity, solidarity, and sisterhood is built, then all other programmes, including our financial services are built upon that, because trust is the basis. And now with a 53 year track record, our members and we are grateful for this.
Our members trust us implicitly and save in SEWA Bank or insure with Vimo SEWA , our insurance cooperative, or take health services, health education, health awareness, and others from our health cooperative, which also provides low cost medicines and Ayurvedic medicines. So the basis of all this is trust, which of course is hard won and built over years of organising and building membership based organisations like cooperatives, as I said, which the women themselves run.
And if you were to now pick up financial inclusion as one aspect or for that matter, health services, how are you working on creating secure digital identities and creating the linkages between the services or products that are offered in the marketplace with their needs?
Well, one of the things that we found is that government, both the state government and the national government, have many poverty alleviation programmes, including public health programmes and allied programmes like pension, food security, and so on. But the issue is, first of all, that women don't know about them, so they need the information. And the second issue is that they need support in navigating all these systems.
And perhaps the biggest challenge of all is the documentation. A lot of documentation is required for our public schemes, our welfare schemes. And of course, now more and more people have Aadhaar card, but by the way, not all of them do.
And there are several barriers to accessing an Aadhaar card or some other document, including the fact that they don't have birth certificates, marriage certificates, and so many more other issues. Another major issue is that when they do with all this difficulty get hold of the documents, sometimes they are misplaced, sometimes there's a fire and they are lost, or they move houses, and then in that process it's, and by the way, moving houses is very common, they are somehow misplaced or lost in the whole process. So for us, what's very important is, first of all, to inform our members and help them navigate the system and collect the documents.
And we do this through what we call SEWA Shakti Kendras, which are information and support hubs embedded in the communities, in urban mahalas, neighbourhoods, and also in the villages. But as I said, safeguarding the documents, and the documents should be in women's hands, in their control, and digital, this is very important for us.
And how does blockchain help in your understanding in bridging some of these gaps?
Well, we were very fortunate to link up with the Algorand Foundation. Mr. Anil Kakani reached out to us, and we attended one of his seminars, conferences in New Delhi, a couple of years ago. And frankly, we had no idea about blockchain, and also less idea how it could be useful to women at the grassroots level, our members.
And then we started a dialogue. And what we found is that blockchain could be of great use to women at the grassroots, by digitising their documents, by connecting them to DigiLocker, which of course we've done, by creating an app. So our Aagevans, or grassroots women leaders, who actually facilitate this whole process of connecting to welfare schemes, can keep track of which member has which document, at which time.
Currently, all of that is being done manually in registers. It takes time, it takes a lot of effort, and it limits how we can expand and reach out to more and more women. But I think one major thing that attracted us to blockchain was the democratisation of data.
Data and women's control, data that is safe in their DigiLocker, and that enables them to access all these schemes, on one hand. And the other hand, as I mentioned, to streamline our processes, be more efficient, and reach more and more women.
And if you were to look at some of the specific services, insurance is one example, I'm guessing. Where are the areas you see more wins in bridging this identity to service offering gap?
So, the same applies to our insurance programme, through our insurance cooperative Vimo SEWA. More and more now, all the documents required by insurance companies, and then of course, for our own identification purposes, so that we reach women who we are supposed to reach, we need Aadhaar cards. And again, the same issue arises, how to keep the Aadhaar cards, when they get them, to keep them safe and sound in a safe place in their DigiLocker and so on.
We already have an app in Vimo SEWA. In that sense, Vimo SEWA is a little ahead. During COVID, we went digital.
So, about 99% of all our processes are now done through the app, which is, you know, sales and marketing, enroling, collecting premium, claims processing, uploading all the documents, and then directly seamlessly transferring the claims monies into women's bank accounts. But we do see a role for blockchain here. And we're in discussion with the Algorand Foundation to see how this could best work for Vimo SEWA as well, now that we've done it for our health team, and created these digital health passports, as we call them.
So, tell us about the digital health passport. What are the main points of use? Is it frequent visits to doctors? Is it one-off hospitalisations? What's the normal nature of interaction with the health system? And where typically, I guess, the lack of documentation shows up?
Sure. So, first of all, we are involved in the business of primary health care, our health cooperative. And as government comes more and more into the public health space, which we very much welcome, our role is more health education, health awareness, and what we call referral, which is quickly identifying patients who need to be taken for referral to secondary or tertiary care hospitals, either at the block level, or in Ahmedabad city or wherever, the nearby big city where there's a tertiary hospital. And so, that's one of our main roles. And there's where PMJ comes in, Pradhan Mantri Jana Rogya Yojana, which many of our members have, being in the poverty sector.
But they need all proper identification, they need their cards, they need their Aadhaar card, and so on. And I think that's where blockchain comes in. Because again, these cards, not only do we help them access them, but then they're also kept safely in their own digi locker.
So, this is just one example. And it's not just in health. We also link our members with pension programme, widows pension, PDS, the public distribution system, and the whole plethora of welfare schemes that the government has currently.
So, welfare, and you did say that a lot of this is really, you know, bringing many of your members closer to schemes that are already in place. And welfare is the bigger bucket or the umbrella that covers all of this. What is outside it? Or what lies beyond this?
Well, we're still in this exploratory stage of both, you know, understanding blockchain more deeply, we've taken the first step in creating these digital health passports. And the way technology is evolving, it seems sky's the limit. So, we are still yet to see how this can be used in different ways.
But we are going step by step. So, right now, we haven't thought much beyond the digital passport, we're still in the stage of seeing how women can use these efficiently, when it takes time. But one thing I want to say is what's really important is that this was co-created.
I think this is a really good model, not only is the digital passport been created, but at every step, women were consulted, they gave their inputs. And you know, judging by our friends at the Algorand Foundation, they found it really quite illuminating. But I think also this could be used at the policy level.
Once we have a little bit more work on the ground, we'd like to share this with policymakers, because I think it can be groundbreaking for many across the country. And it definitely should be scaled up. The thing is that it needs a lot of attention, it needs a lot of trust, and it needs a lot of hand-holding in the initial stages.
But what we have found is that our members, our women, many of whom are not very educated, love technology, adapt very well to digital technology, and really are quite excited by it. It gives them a new status also in their villages or urban neighbourhoods, because they're doing all these cool things with digital. So all in all, it's been a really good journey so far.
And we're still exploring how we can use it more.
And you actually pre-empted a question of mine, I was going to ask you, you know, when you see how technology is being used by people, by some of your women colleagues who are not literate, or were not literate, and what you're saying is that they seem to take to it like a fish in water, fish to water. What are the parts that surprised you? I mean, I can imagine that many of them use it for financial transactions. But is there something that surprised you? And if so, does it offer more ideas in terms of what else one can do? I mean, not necessarily in the context of blockchain, but in general?
Well, in one way, it did not surprise me, because, you know, we have been trying to put technology in women's hands for the last 50 years, frankly. And for example, Video SEWA is the first such cooperative, I think, anywhere in the world, and now many others are doing it, which is putting video technology in the hands of informal women workers who make films about their own lives. And then of course, they do a lot of digital, use a lot of digital these days, including editing, and so on.
So in that sense, it's not new for us. And we saw that from 50 years ago, that when given an opportunity, given a chance, women love to use technology, and are increasingly adapting to digital. I was quite surprised by some of my members who use digital so sort of easily.
One of them I'd like to recall, her name is Kamla Ben, and she used to be an erstwhile saree vendor, turned into one of our ace insurance promoters. And she only speaks Gujarati and so on. By the way, all of these apps and everything we have in several languages, Gujarati, Hindi, English, and for insurance also in Assamese, because we're working there.
And the way she adapted to it, there was a little initial resistance. But then once she began using it, she loved it. And I thought there would be more resistance from her. So that surprised me.
If you were to look at, you know, what are the technology asks? And what I mean by that is, what are the bigger problems that technology can solve in the in the context of what we've been talking about, which maybe it is not today, but should be trying to?
Well, I think there's much more we can do in financial services. I'm also associated with cooperatives, I lead the board of SEWA’s Cooperative Federation. And we have a long way to digitise our cooperatives.
And that's something we've been saying to the government, that there's a need to digitise our cooperatives so that processes all along the supply chain can be streamlined, we can be more efficient, it can help us increase our business and go towards financial viability faster. So I still think we have a long way to go. We've come a long way, but we still have a way to go, where these digital tools can be put in the hands of women running their own businesses at the grassroots, particularly informal women workers, there is still a digital divide.
As we all know, by now, if there's one smartphone, it's usually in the hands of the male member of the family. It's changing. Like all our Aagevans now have phones, all our grassroots leaders, they have their own smartphone.
But in many cases, this is not so. So I think much more digitisation, much more investment in digitisation, including in women's small and nano businesses, so that they can grow and thrive.
Is there an example that illustrates this from the people that you that you encounter or meet?
Sure. So we have a cooperative that we promoted, now it's being run independently by women farmers. They happen to be all Adivasi women, tribal women in South Gujarat, in Thapi district.
And they are, well, they've cooperativized the farmers, women farmers, and they do several activities. And one of these was, is, you know, selling of seeds and inputs for farming at low cost. They got a seed licence from the government seed corporation.
So they can offer seeds to women farmers at a much more reasonable price than the open market. But they needed to know how many farmers there were in their district. And, you know, what are prices of seeds and so on.
So we had a partnership with Digital Green. And we developed an app again, together with the farmers. So they were able to have do a little quick census of women farmers in their district, they were able to and still do find out, you know, digitally through WhatsApp through app, how they can, you know, what is it that women farmers need?
Which are the seeds? What are the quantities? So all of this helps them streamline their business and reach these services in a better way to women.
And also, we found out that many of them grow ladies finger, bhindi. And so now we're trying to find markets and get the best price through the app digitally also, so that they get a better price for their ladies finger or okra.
So, in a way, I mean, from identity to market efficiency, or finding, I mean, or creating the marketplace for efficient transactions and realisations. What are the kind of partnerships that you see going forward, or innovations that you've seen now in the context of blockchain, particularly to ensure that there is transparency, there is trust?
Sure. So, as I said, I think the experience with Algorand Foundation has been a really solid one. And seeing the experience, Vimo SEWA is next in line, our insurance cooperative, and so is SEWA Cooperative Federation.
They would like to work more with Algorand and similar organisations, but, you know, as equal partners. So that's really important for us. We've also had some interaction with the Infosys company.
And they have also helped us think through how we can digitise and also computerise our services and insurance much more. That was a little bit in the past. So these are some of the partnerships that have been solid so far.
And we've learned a lot from them. And I believe women have benefited from them. So we are looking for these kind of partners who will join hands with women at the grassroots.
And as I said, as equal partners, so that we can mutually learn and grow together.
Mirai, thank you so much for joining me.
You're very welcome.
