Few Indians can claim to be worthy of being called freedom fighters for the second freedom that Gandhi extolled Indians to fight for. Shashi Rajagopalan, who passed away on Friday, was one such. It is to the RBI’s credit that it included her in the central board — she was one of the greatest proponents of self-reliant financial security for the underprivileged. Shashi was a brilliant champion of thrift societies, extended to cooperative societies, led and populated by women. She would not like to be known as having built them, as her key words were always that this was the genius of the women, she was only a hand-holder. The real self-reliant cooperative movement — different from those run by the government—was her passion. These, she and my late husband Lakshmi Jain would argue, are the brick for economic empowerment. Together, they fought against the retrograde cooperatives and legislations that would reduce a people-led selfstrengthening movement into a bureaucracy. They both, one could say, died fighting against the Bill that is now in Parliament, which again tries to snuff out these real cooperatives. Shashi wouldn’t have agreed, but what made her different was what makes for the difference between an activist and a leader — she was brilliant. With her intellect, she empowered the lives and livelihoods she was championing. She was told she had breast cancer, but typically she reasoned that she did not want to take on ‘western medical support’. She was trying out homoeopathy and managed to contain the disease. As it worsened, she decided that she would dry it out by eating less, eating what she needed for just living. And she won. She celebrated her 60th birthday with a good Iyengar feast 12 days ago.
(Devaki Jain is a Padma Bhushan-winning writer who has worked in the field of feminist economics. She is the wife of Gandhian economist late Sri Lakshmi Chand Jain)
TOI
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