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Micro-finance crusader Jaya Arunachalam wins Jamnalal Bajaj Award

SME WORLD Desk
Oct 2009

Padma Shri Dr. (Mrs.) Jaya Arunachalam, President, Working Women's Forum (India) and the crusader of poor working women's emancipation has been selected for the prestigious Jamnalal Bajaj Award for 'outstanding contribution for the development and children'.through various programmes and activities initiated as a mass movement.

This award, instituted in 1980, in memory of Padma Vibhushan, Smt. Jankidevi Bajaj, consisting of a cash Award of Rupees five lakhs, a trophy and citation is given annually to a woman or women for outstanding contribution to uplift and welfare of women and children and/or Gandhian constructive work.

Working Women's Forum (India) is a social organization initiated in 1978 to develop the total human resource potential of poor women workers in the informal sector, both in the urban and rural areas and in three Southern states of India. The Forum unionized vendors, hawkers besides fisher women, landless women, lace makers, beedi rollers, silk weavers, agarbati workers, embroidery workers and several other working class women, providing them platform to voice their needs.

As a testimony to this effort, Dr. Arunachalam joined the former U.S. President Bill Clinton for a two-day meet last year as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Asia Meet at Hong Kong to share the exemplary work of WWF and her commitment to work for poor women and children in other parts of India also. She was also invited by Madam Hillary Clinton to receive the award of Vital Voices Global Leadership for Economic Development at Washington in 2005.

The experiment of WWF spells success and proves that poverty is not a barrier for poor women to become an agent of social change. The programme of micro-credit initiated by Dr. Arunachalam has benefited a large community of poor working women in the country affording them a fresh lease of life, confidence and a sense of dignity. She was equally concerned about human rights violations such as femake foeticide, infanticide and child labour.

The Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation was established in 1977 in the memory of Jamnalal Bajaj, a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi. It was inaugurated on 4th November, 1977 by Shri Morarji Desai, Prime Minister of India. For Shri Morarji Desai, it was a time for remembering the past with fondness and nostalgia. He blessed the Foundation for what it set out to do -- the spread of philanthropy and promotion of Gandhian values and constructive work.

In a message on the occasion of the 1982 Awards Presentation Function, Smt. Indira Gandhi,Prime Minister of India observed: "In order to realise our hopes, the spirit of service must widely permeate our society. Of late there has been a tendency to look to Government for lead, whereas the inspiration should come from persons of the kind that the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation honours for their contribution to constructive work, the service of women and the application of modern knowledge to rural problems".

Freedom fighter, social reformer, humanitarian and a devoted follower of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he 'adopted' as his father, and became his 'fifth son', Jamnalal Bajaj took an active part in India's freedom struggle. But his forte was the constructive work propounded by Gandhi. Jamnalal also undertook pioneering work in the field of Go-seva (Cow protection), uplift of the 'dalits' or the downtrodden, education of women, propagation of Hindi, spread of Khadi (hand spun and hand woven coth)and the development of village industries.

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