Leading change
A silent revolution is taking place in India today, inside corporate boardrooms and in the rural hinterlands, in IT parks and in micro-credit schemes, in policy-making circles and in kitchen collectives. The central characters in this unfolding drama are women who have said no to the constraints imposed upon them. Women changemakers India is not a slogan. It is a lived, documented, and expanding reality.
But their story is not only one of personal strength and defiance, it is also one of the impact that a single woman can have on an entire system when she decides to lead. When women lead, people follow; when women innovate, industry takes notice; when women refuse invisibility, the world must look again.
From the Ground Up: Chetna Sinha and the Mann Deshi Foundation
The drought-afflicted areas of Satara, Maharashtra saw a former social activist, Chetna Sinha, attempting something that was economically unfeasible according to most banks, lending money to women in rural communities who lacked any collateral, credit rating, or employment.
Establishing Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank in 1997, she became instrumental in launching India’s first bank that was registered only for women in rural areas. What was initially a small co-operative is today an organization that has evolved into a movement and the foundation, which developed concurrently, helps more than 5 lakh rural women entrepreneurs through banking assistance, entrepreneurship development programs, and business schools for women in rural communities.
Her initiative is an example par excellence of what women changemakers in India can do when provided with the right means and support. This initiative did not depend upon any existing infrastructure but developed one from scratch. From selling vegetables in the local market, these women now manage their own supply chain business, dairy cooperative, and catering company. The bank has provided loans amounting to thousands of crores, all with higher repayment rates than the country average.
Though her astonishing achievement she has been recognized globally with her invitation to speak at the World Economic Forum held at Davos, the efforts have been thoroughly local in nature. This case study teaches us that transformation need not start in metropolitan cities. At times, transformation starts from within a drought-affected village through one woman who rejects financial exclusion as her destiny.
Breaking Ceilings in Corporate India: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
While rural India has its Chetna Sinha, corporate India boasts its Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, who founded and is the executive chairperson of Biocon Limited, which is India’s leading biopharmaceutical company.
She began Biocon in 1978 in a rented garage in Bengaluru for a seed investment of ₹10,000. She came back to India after completing her master’s degree in brewing from Australia but found it difficult to get a job as no one would employ a female brewmaster at the time. So she decided to become her own boss.
Today, this multinational organization operates in the United States, Europe, and other emerging economies. The company has been at the forefront in making the biosimilar insulin and cancer medications available at an affordable price to people living in poor countries, thus going beyond just earning profits.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw exemplifies the women changemakers of India not only because of her success story, but also due to the nature of that success. Throughout her career, she has always advocated for the interests of women in science and technology, access to quality healthcare, and greater diversity in business. She has guided the rising talent in women-led companies and addressed the problem of gender discrimination in finance.
The story of her struggle, starting with the refusal of potential employers to hire her up to creating company worth millions, is inspiring but educational as well.
The Larger Pattern
Both these narratives, from different geographies and different sectors, have this one thing in common. Both women realized there was a missing element, a lack of access to finance, health care, opportunities, and neither of them just stopped at realizing it; rather, they chose to construct what they thought was required. That is the defining quality of women changemakers in India: they do not simply identify what is broken. They build what is needed.
Throughout India, this story plays out. In the sectors of education, health care, climate change, and even information technology, women are not just following someone else’s lead. They are leading.
There are a lot of challenges in front of India in terms of development, including inequality, access, vulnerability to climate change, and poor infrastructure. However, the success stories of Mann Deshi and Biocon, among others, indicate that women changemakers in India can be an effective resource to combat these challenges.
The revolution is quiet. But it is unmistakable
