She’s Unstoppable

IN THE ANNALS of Indian business, Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad is a unique organisation. In 1959, seven women in a chawl in Girgaum, where regular lower middle-class people resided, got to­gether and decided to start selling papads. Making the papads by hand themselves, they dried them on their terraces and then sold them. The market lapped it up and demand increased from both consumers as well as other women who wanted to earn a livelihood. Despite starting off with no expe­rience of marketing or sales or distribution, these women learnt it all on the job. As televi­sion started becoming widespread, the Lijjat Papad ad that featured a puppet became a rageand a catch­word as its song, ‘Karram Kurram Kurram Karram’, started rolling on Indian tongues. At present, the cooperative Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad has branches all over India and from seven the number of women who are part of it has risen to more than 45,000. Its annual turnover is said to be over `1,600 crore. Where manytraditional industrial houses folded after liberalisation, not only did Lijjat hold its own despite competition from every corner of the country, but it also thrived.

Lijjat affirms the ability of women to excel in business but it is also a symbol of just how long it took in Indian history for women to be able to do something like this. It is hard to come up with names of women in the world of entrepreneurship in the initial decades after Independence. It is a different story now. As International Women’s Day is being celebrated, almost every section of Indian society and economy is witnessing an increasing presence and im­pact of women. In wealth creation too, it is seminal. In 2022, Hurun India published their Hurun Women Rich List and noted: “Wealth of the women featured in the List has almost tripled during the last year. The cut-off for the new List is INR 300 crore, as against INR 100 crore in the last List. The cumulative wealth of the top 100 in the List surged by 53% to INR 4,16,970 crore from INR 2,72,540 crore in 2020. Almost one-fourth of the List constitutes new entrants. The cumula­tive wealth of the women wealth creators contributes to 2% of India’s nominal GDP.”

Progress has been similar for the women workforce in corporates. In the past, a few did go to work but it was usually in limited areas, such as being secretaries, stenog­raphers, teachers, etc. The middle and top corporate rungs were entirely men. That has been changing at a blistering speed over the last few decades. Every year, consultancy firm Grant Thornton comes out with a study that looks at the status of women in senior management positions. This year’s report has just been released and it shows that 34 per cent of senior management (SM) positions in the coun­try are women. But to appreciate the leap, one has to turn back 20 years. In 2004, the corresponding number was just 12 per cent. In 2014, it had become only 14 per cent. The last 10 years have seen an extraordinary jump. The report also notes: “In 2024, only 3% of Indian businesses had no women in SM positions, while 6% had at least one woman in an SM position. This marks a significant improvement compared to previous years, with 35% of firms having no women in SM positions in 2004 and 42% in 2014.”

All this is not unexpected. Even if Indian society dragged its feet, the Indian state, for all its flaws, has been for a long time committed to the idea of women’s education. It began at the primary level and then a minority within that started going for higher education. Once there is parity of education between man and woman, then the main hurdle of women not even being there at the starting point of the race is bro­ken. Economic liberalisation happened and, as an entirely new wave of businesses was born and industries rapidly scaled up, there was demand for a qualified workforce in which women were welcomed.

There was a time not too long ago when in a class at an engineering college, you could count the number of females with your fingers. That was true all the way up into the new millennium. Just about a decade ago, the percentage of female IIT students in their BTech programmes was less than 10. But then the government made an active policy of increasing the numbers. By 2020, it had managed to bring it up to 20 per cent. Last year, in an answer to a question in Parliament, Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar had stated: “With a view to improving female enrolment in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Government had decided to increase female enrolment in the B.Tech. programmes of IITs from 8% to 14% in 2018-19, 17% in 2019-20 and 20% in 2020-21 by creating supernumerary seats. Accordingly, the female enrol­ment in IITs for B. Tech. Programmes was achieved as 15.3% in 2018-19, 18% in 2019-20 and 19.8% in 2020-21.”

IN THE INDIAN education system, there is a culture of engineering students viewing business management as the next step on the career trajectory. Women not shying away from engineering also led to them getting into business management courses. They account for one-third of students on a rough average across all Indian Institutes of Manage­ment (IIMs). Once women from elite engineering and man­agement institutions began to populate the best businesses of India, it was just a matter of time for leadership roles to follow within them.

It was the same story at work when it came to the admin­istrative services that govern India. While the first female In­dian Administrative Service (IAS) officer came soon after In­dependence in 1951, it was an entirely different story when it came to Indian Police Service (IPS) officers. Twenty one more years would have to pass before Kiran Bedi broke that glass ceiling. Women’s representation in the police force is still low at around 10 per cent. An article on Ashoka University’s Centre for Economic Data and Analysis website provided some numbers: “India has been aiming to ensure at least one woman in every three police officers for years now. Based on the recommendations of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (set up in 2005), the Central government has been issuing advisories from time to time asking states to in­crease the representation of women in police to 33 percent of the total strength. Yet, despite this push from the top, that target remains far off. There were 2,17,026 women officers in India’s police as of January 01, 2021, the most recent data avail­able shows. Together, they made up only 10.5 percent of all police officers in the country.” But there have been advances in recent times. In 2010, for instance, the figure was under 5 per cent, half of the present.

Take the armed force in which women have had mini­mal presence traditionally. The pendulum is swinging there too. Even if combat roles still remain out of reach, in other spheres their numbers are increasing. In January 2023, the National Defence Academy (NDA), where officers get schooled and inducted, started admitting women. The gov­ernment’s Press Information Bureau (PIB) said in one of its releases then: “Armed Forces have opened entry for women candidates in NDA with 19 cadets including 10 for Indian Army joining the academy every six months. First batch of women cadets has started training in NDA with effect from July 2022 and second batch has commenced training with effect from January 2023.”

The march of women in India has reached a critical mass because it is now self-fuelling. Because women have an education and earn, they are as important a consumer base as men. Thus, the market needs to cater to them. This leads to additional resources coming their way. And it cuts across classes

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In 1952, when independent India first participated in the Olympics, there were four women and 60 sportsmen in the contingent. Of the four, two were track-and-field athletes and the remaining were swimmers. It would take 48 years before an Indian woman would get a medal when Karnam Malleswari got the gold for weightlifting. Since then med­als have come in badminton, boxing, and wrestling too. These numbers are considerably more in other interna­tional competitions like the Commonwealth Games, but what is noteworthy is participation. If in 1952, Indian women accounted for only 6 per cent, in the 2020 Olym­pics they were 44 per cent. Two years ago, PricewaterhouseCoopers came out with a report titled ‘Rise of In­dian Women: Towards Excellence in Sports’. It spoke of a quiet revolution in women’s sports and noted, “In­dia’s performance at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics was its best ever, and we saw maximum participation across sporting events. This was also the first time that we won Olympic medals in six disciplines—hockey, wrestling, boxing, badminton, weightlifting, and track and field. Out of the seven medals won by India, women bagged three medals—a performance which can now be the springboard towards even greater success for women athletes on the global stage.”

Unlike many other fields, in arts and culture, women did not have to build their presence or position from scratch. Take Bollywood. In the first Hindi movie, Dadasaheb Phalke cast men to play the roles of women. By his second movie, he had a female actor. Women quickly found a footing and Devika Rani, in fact, was one of the moguls of Indian cin­ema even in pre-independence times. It was still an over­whelming male industry catering to male sensitivities and it remains so to some degree, especially in terms of female leadership. Ormax Media comes out with an annual study, ‘OWomaniya!’, on gender diversity in Indian entertainment and its report last year looked at 135 director/CXO positions in the top 25 media and entertainment companies in 2022 and found that women accounted for only 13 per cent.

A STUDY BY NIKKEI Asia last year, however, also found that the share of women-led movies was in­creasing. The article said: “A Nikkei Asia analysis of 1,200 Bollywood movies over the past two decades shows an uptrend in movies with women in the lead: 25% today com­pared with 10%. Such movies are one in four today, up from one in 10 in the early 2000s, a trend accelerated by streaming services.” And in terms of success, these movies fared just as well as male-driven ones. Nikkei Asia wrote: “Around 77% of female-led films were profitable, compared to 72% of the rest. On average, the return on investment (every dollar/rupee generated for every dollar/rupee spent) was higher for wom­en-led movies. They returned 1.89 times the money invested, compared to an ROI of 1.75 for the rest.”

The march of women in India has reached a critical mass because it is now self-fuelling. Because women have educa­tion and jobs and earn, they are as important a consumer base as men and, therefore, the mar­ket needs to cater to them. This then leads to additional resources coming their way. And it cuts across classes. Take politics. There are reservations for women at almost every level of elections which makes them an in­creasingly powerful force in shaping the nation. But there is also the flip side—the decisive importance of the woman voter. Earlier, women voted on the direction of men but now they often decide who comes to power. Policies that deliver benefits into the pockets of women get rewarded. A case in point is the long reign of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik who used self-help groups to increase the earning prowess of women and have found in them a strong political base. Last December, the State Bank of India (SBI) came out with a research report that predicted women’s voter turnout would overtake men’s in the not-too-distant future: “In 2019 the voter turnout further increased to 62 crores, of which 30 crores were women. In 2024 total voter turnout at the cur­rent rate of polling could touch 68 crores, of which women voters could be at 33 crores/49%. In 2029 total voter turnout at the current rate of polling could touch 73 crores, of which women voters at 37 crores could be outstripping registered men voters at 36 crores of registered voters/>50%.” And if the march of women continues in India, the historical lead of men in many other fields will also evaporate soon.

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

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