Globalization and Economic Reform as Seen From the Ground: SEWA's Experience in India

Abstract

Globalization and Economic Reform have enormous potential for economic growth and poverty reduction. But there are at least three troubling features of these phenomena that have emerged over the last two decades—technical change which is biased in favor of capital and skilled labor; increased vulnerability and exposure to economic risks; and a shift of economic power towards more mobile factors of production. The core of the paper then discusses SEWA’s experiences with the impact of these global and national level forces at the ground level in India, SEWA’s responses to them, and SEWA’s strategy for ensuring that its poor women members gain rather than lose from globalization and economic reform.