Access to Capital summons the usual stereotypes :  big Corporates, the Investors, the Markets.  All these, I fear, I do not understand enough.  For me, as a grassroots organiser of women poor, self-employed in India, capital on one hand is abstract, impersonal, while on the other hand, capital is a strong social force.

What I know of capital is that it excludes and denies access to people in subsistence economy.  I would like to move away from both senses of stereotypes and create a space of freedom where we can look at capital, in a fresh creative way.

Within my worldview based on experience of SEWA and Women’s World Banking, capital is what is denied to marginals in a society because capital is a relation established by law that links money with citizenship,  in a formal economy.  Citizens who have access to capital carry different kinds of certificates including tax-form number.  Such capital excludes the marginal, the subsistence economy of squatters, hawkers, scavangers with whom I work, particularly with poor self employed women.  They do not have registered house number, rent receipt, license number, identity card or social security number.  The struggle through the Courts and often through street protests against fines and penalties or through demanding a supportive state policy enabling them to stand firm in the competitive market.  In fact, for acquiring legitimacy, a lot of their own capital goes into corruption, paying cash.  Corruption and bribe are one form of capital which no one talks about.

I would like to elaborate the idea of capital based on three assumptions.  First, Nature herself is a form of capital.  Two, the informal economy needs access to capital but is denied it.  Thirdly, subsistence economy to day needs capital as a form of survival but has little access to it.  And more importantly, it is the women who closely work with Nature (agriculture, water, forest, food..); the informal sector of the economy is predominantly women; and, it is the women who shoulder the subsistence economy.

Therefore,  I want to urge for a worldview that embodies community rather than individualism, subsistence rather than surplus, and, improvisation rather than institutionalised innovation that the experts talk about, to day.

Microfinance is today successful, in fact so successful that large banks and Corporates see it as the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.  But the new recent successful microfinance legitimised by the establishment lacks the spirit of the original innovation which is based on rationality, profit, stability.  What it lacks is the spirit of survival, community and trust.  That is the microfinance seeded by marginal women seeking to create a network of livelihoods.  These livelihood systems are embedded in a community just as certain skills and culture are embedded in community.  So, then, how do we ensure that the new capital does not destroy existing skills and livelihoods without bringing them acceptable better alternatives?  How do we ensure that the new capital will preserve Nature and local culture?  

Let me also emphasise two other points.  Just as skill is embedded in the family, and, knowledge in the culture, the capital that I talk about is embedded in community.  I want to see the hawker, the scavanger as capitalists.  But these are capitalists who seek small forms of surplus (profit) which enable survival.  I think it is the difference between the idea of work and a notion of livelihood.  Livelihood seeks to preserve Nature and community, while capital expressed in terms of economic choices might tend to destroy both.

There is also a political aspect of it.  Capital has to be seen as political right.  One cannot sustain right to life and property without a guarantee or entitlement to capital, especially when capital is necessary to sustain life and livelihood.  Unfortunately biases operate, here.  The hawker is legally treated as anti social,  a migrant though badly wanted is treated as illegal by Banks, city authorities.  But if they had access to capital, as our SEWA Cooperative Bank experience goes, they would create a different notion of capital. They would create citizenship for themselves and would be treated as citizens.  Because without capital, it is not just entrepreneurship that becomes difficult, it is citizenship that becomes improbable.

My approach to capital, I am not sure how much you may agree with me, goes beyond 'green capital' and microfinance.  Capital for all its innovation need to come out of its stereotypes. New ways of conceptualisation of capital is needed to create a fair world of rights, livelihood and stable peace.  The keywords of globalisation need a new meaning that allow for possibilities beyond the official, and particularly the officially 'economic'.  

My vision of capital is one such effort. Thank you.