Gandhi lauded Bhatt for dedicating her life to the cause of uplifting the most poor, vulnerable and marginalised working women. "She has helped them to transcend their circumstances and step on to the ladder of economic opportunity. India's civil society has produced many great organisations. Few have been as potent and as far reaching in their impact as SEWA," said Gandhi, who also chairs the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust. Gandhi said Bhatt had articulated the alternative development trajectory that does not blindly imitate the West. President Pranab Mukherjee said rural backwardness, can be addressed only through concerted efforts to create equality in access and unearth the potentialities hidden in people. Bhatt's work has underscored this approach to socio- economic upliftment, he said. "We must strengthen the systems and processes that facilitate women to take control and claim ownership of their lives. To lend true meaning to empowerment, we have to expand their freedom of choice," he said. Mukherjee said he was convinced that Bhatt's example will spur many more initiatives in the country and elsewhere, aimed at renewal of society and all-round development of people. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who chaired the jury for selecting the awardee, said he believed Mahatma Gandhi's ideas on 'swaraj' have been Bhatt's touchstones as she set out on her journey to form the Self Employed Women's Association in 1972. Singh said Bhatt was in many ways carrying on the unfinished work of Mahatma Gandhi in the area of winning economic freedom and self-reliance for women, who constitute about half of the country's population.
