SEWA, of self-employed women

Laxmiben lives in a slum area in Ahmedabad with her four children. She supports her family by carrying cloth parcels on her head in the downtown cloth market. She inherited this work from her mother, and has done it all her life. Although Laxmiben's earnings are small and insecure, she is well respected among her fellow workers and the market's shopkeepers because she is the vice president of SEWA Bank – a women's cooperative set up by the nationwide Self Employed Women's Association. SEWA has been gaining strength in its work of helping to lift women out of poverty since 1972.

Laxmiben is part of India's vast informal economy, which includes door-to-door vegetable vendors, rickshaw pullers and rag-pickers, as well as garment and paperback makers, beedi rollers and food processors. In rural areas, the landless agricultural labourer, the woman crafts-worker, the silkworm farmer or the forest worker are all part of the crucial informal economy, which accounts for nearly 93 percent of the total workforce in India. And over half of them, 53 percent, are self-employed. Women constitute roughly 40 percent of this part of this economy, although official statistics often report significantly less. At the same time, informal-economy workers are extremely active economically, accounting for about 60 percent of India's GDP, over 50 percent of national savings, and about 47 percent of all exports.