●●○ medium
There is no confirmed −; independently verified + decide the position (A). No unreachable strike-through.= non-additive meter
Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA): Organizing self-employed women in the informal economy. Most of India's working women are in the informal economy — street vendors, home-based seamstresses, cart-pullers, waste-pickers. Placed outside labor law, they have no safety net or bargaining power. Ela Bhatt (a lawyer, Gandhian, and head of the women's wing of a textile labor union) launched SEWA in 1972 to organize them as a trade union. “Poverty is powerlessness.” It reached 7,000 in three years, and registering as a union was itself a major fight. SEWA built SEWA Bank (1974, recognized by the ILO as a microfinance movement), sector cooperatives (joint purchasing, joint selling, skills), and systems for health, maternity, death, and insurance, and contributed to the passage of the 2013 Street Vendors (livelihood protection) Act. It now has about 3.78 million members across some 20 states — India's largest single trade union — with a federation spreading to other countries. In 2024 it launched parametric insurance paying women who can't work in extreme heat. The letter is A; certainty is medium. Unconfirmed concerns are placed under “Watching.” (As of 2026-Q2; estimate based on public information.)
Main narrative
Most of India's working women are in the informal economy — street vendors, home-based seamstresses, cart-pullers, waste-pickers. Placed outside labor law, they have no safety net or bargaining power. Ela Bhatt (a lawyer, Gandhian, and head of the women's wing of a textile labor union) launched SEWA in 1972 to organize them as a trade union. “Poverty is powerlessness.”
It reached 7,000 in three years, and registering as a union was itself a major fight. SEWA built SEWA Bank (1974, recognized by the ILO as a microfinance movement), sector cooperatives (joint purchasing, joint selling, skills), and systems for health, maternity, death, and insurance, and contributed to the passage of the 2013 Street Vendors (livelihood protection) Act. It now has about 3.78 million members across some 20 states — India's largest single trade union — with a federation spreading to other countries. In 2024 it launched parametric insurance paying women who can't work in extreme heat.
One person’s story (N1)
+ before → after
A street vendor or home-based worker, “invisible” to the formal economy, can for the first time declare “I am a worker” with a SEWA union card in hand. She opens an account at SEWA Bank and gains small loans and maternity/health provisions. Under the 2013 Street Vendors protection act, a permit shields her from arbitrary eviction and officials' harassment. From 2024, on days when heat reaches dangerous highs and she can't work, an insurance payout arrives — even in loss, she is no longer alone.
Source nature: Right Livelihood Foundation / P1 international award. Positive effects are not used to offset negatives.
Positive / negative effects
+ effects
- Founder Ela Bhatt received the Ramon Magsaysay Award (community leadership, 1977), the Right Livelihood Award (1984), the Padma Bhushan, and more. SEWA Bank is recognized by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a microfinance movement, and a synthesis of external and internal evaluations by Chen (2004) and others reports that many members had greater job stability and diversified economic activity after joining. Harvard Kennedy School and the World Bank have also featured it.P1 academic/international body / ILO / Harvard Kennedy School (CID) / Chen 2004
− effects (confirmed)
- No confirmed −.
- Independent quantitative verification of member-level income/job stability; effect differences in rural organizing; sustainability of the various schemes
A second look
Membership (about 3.78 million) and effect assessments include company/internal sources, and independent quantitative outcome evaluation varies by area. Research (Chen 2004 and others) finds that many members report greater job stability after joining, while also noting context-dependent difficulties — e.g., in rural organizing with weak bargaining power, some lost their existing low-wage work.
Sources
How to read this assessment
- Reachable upper bound (ceiling): a confirmed − sets the ceiling, and independently verified + decide the position within it. + do not cancel out −.
- The weight of evidence is not symmetric: only confirmed − are counted; the volume of disputes or allegations goes under “Watching.” + are counted from independent evidence, while an organization’s own PR is treated as “reference.”
- Size is not value: scale is not used in the assessment. Matters that stay within money or competition—investors, shareholders, sanctions, trade secrets—are also excluded.
- The letter (assessment) and certainty (how reliable the information is) are separate axes.
This is a translation; the Japanese version is authoritative. The assessments here are generated automatically by AI based on published criteria. The operator does not alter individual results. Because they are AI-generated they may contain errors, and they are opinion and commentary, not statements of fact. Where evidence is insufficient, the entry is marked “On hold.” Requests for correction are accepted via the form.
Terms: Narrative Value = an assessment (A–G) of the distance between the story an organization tells and its reality / Ceiling meter = a visualization of the reachable upper bound / Watching = unconfirmed matters not counted / Protected stakeholders = people, animals, nature, and future generations. | Generated by: AI | As of: 2026-Q2 | Back to top