Prior to being accepted for the AIF Banyan Impact Fellowship, I had planned to submit applications for law school in the United States in the fall of 2023. My goal was to become a Public Defender—an attorney who represents people accused of crimes who cannot afford to pay for their own legal defense. When I accepted my Fellowship position with the Vikram Sarabhai Centre for Development Interaction (VIKSAT), I decided to pause my career plans and leave my options open. I made this decision for two reasons: 1) I wanted to be wholly present as I acclimated to living and working in India and 2) I wanted to remain open to new career opportunities and possibilities that might emerge from working in the development sector in India.
VIKSAT’s Work with People’s Institutions
In my blog “Facing Poverty: Learnings from Indian Non-Profits’ Livelihoods Lens,” I wrote about how VIKSAT’s work with the network of People’s Institutions it has built in Gujarat’s Sabarkantha and Banaskantha Districts has increased the incomes of project participants. While conducting Focus Group Discussions for an impact assessment of one of VIKSAT’s projects, I saw this impact firsthand. The impact people spoke about was not just financial. Women who were members of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) shared the profound impacts that participating in SHGs had on their lives, including giving them the independence to spend their own money without asking their husbands for permission, the confidence to speak with government officials about their problems, and the conviction to advocate for their daughters to go to school.
Labor Unions in the United States
The model of using SHGs, Village Organizations, and Farmer Producer Organizations would not work in the American context. However, working with VIKSAT has led me to think that expansion of national or state-level labor unions could play a similar role in transforming American communities. Matthew Desmond points out in “Why Poverty Persists in America” that as union membership has shrank from “nearly a third of all U.S. workers” in the 1950s and 1960s to roughly 6% of “private-sector employees” today, working-class wages have suffered—“workers with a high school diploma made 2.7 percent less in 2017 than they would have in 1979, adjusting for inflation [and] [w]orkers without a diploma made nearly 10 percent less.”[1] In addition to the economic impact that unions have for union members, and even non-union laborers, [2] labor unions can also help to develop the leadership capabilities of members. Union members thus become capable self-advocates and community leaders invested in the well-being of the working class.
My Future Plans
Working with VIKSAT has opened my eyes to the possibilities that are created when economically and socially disadvantaged people join together in collective institutions. This made me want to commit my career to working for a similar cause and approach to community development. By working outside of the legal sector for the first time in my professional career, I have also realized that my primary intellectual interest still lies in the legal field. What I have learned from VIKSAT’s work with People’s Institutions has led me to pivot slightly and pursue a career as a union lawyer in the United States.
Footnotes
[1] Matthew Desmond, “Why Poverty Persists in America,” The New York Times, last modified April 3, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html.
[2] Desmond, “Why Poverty Persists in America,” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html.
