The modern woman in the present age occupies top rank and has attained immense success in all the fields such as sports, politics, performing arts, police, administration, medicine, etc. The rising number of successful women has a cascading effect, igniting a ray of hope in those who are still enslaved by a patriarchal system of society. Their success is a big motivation for millions of women who wish to break shackles and carve a niche of their own. On the occasion of Women's Day (March 8) we take a look at some of the influential women at the national and international levels.
Chanda Kochar: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ICICI Bank. Chanda was born in November 17, 1961 in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree from Jai Hind College, Mumbai. Later, she joined the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies for a masters degree in management. Chanda began her career in 1984 with ICICI Bank. She has worked in the areas of corporate credit, infrastructure financing, e-commerce, strategy and retail finance. She has also been consistently featured in the Fortune's list of 'Most Powerful Women' in business.
Kiran Bedi: Ex-IPS officer. She is India's first and highest ranking (retired in 2007) woman officer who joined the Indian Police Service in 1972. Her experience and expertise include more than 35 years of tough, innovative and welfare policing. A tough police officer, she didn't even hesitate to penalise the prime minister's car for illegal parking during the 1982 Asiad Games. Legends of honesty and selfless duty are woven around Bedi's personality. As the Inspector General of Asia's biggest Tihar Jail, she transformed the jail and humanized it within six months and turned it into more of an ashram. For these efforts she was awarded Magsaysay Award in 1994.
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw: CMD of Biocon Ltd. Biocon Ltd is presently one of the biggest biopharmaceutical firms in India. Under Shaw's s t ew a rd s h i p Biocon transformed from an industrial enzymes company to an integrated bio-pharmaceutical company with strategic research initiatives. Today, Biocon is recognised as India's pioneering biotech enterprise. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw was awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of India's highest civilian honors. New York Times called her 'India's Mother of Invention.' The Economist called her India's Biotech Queen. After the first IPO of the company in 1994 was over-subscribed by 30 times, Shaw was regarded as India's richest woman with an estimated worth of Rs. 2,100 crore.
Naina Lal Kidwai: Group GM and Country Head of HSBC India. She is the first Indian woman to have graduated from Harvard Business School. She was ranked third by the Fortune in their list of the World's Top Women in Business in Asia in 2000 and 2001. She is the first woman to guide the functioning of a foreign bank in India. Naina was also counted among the top 50 women in international business in 2003 and is considered as one of the most successful women in the world of finance.
Pratibha Devi Singh Patil:
President of India. She took office as India's first woman president on July 25, 2007. Patil's political journey had started during her college days. In 1962, Patil was voted "College Queen" of Mooljee Jaitha (MJ) College in Jalgaon. The same year, she got the Indian National Congress ticket to the assembly election from Jalgaon constituency and went on to win the election with a huge margin. She handled various ministerial berths after that. She was continually re-elected to the Maharashtra Assembly until 1985 when she was elected to the Rajya Sabha as a Congress candidate.
President of India. She took office as India's first woman president on July 25, 2007. Patil's political journey had started during her college days. In 1962, Patil was voted "College Queen" of Mooljee Jaitha (MJ) College in Jalgaon. The same year, she got the Indian National Congress ticket to the assembly election from Jalgaon constituency and went on to win the election with a huge margin. She handled various ministerial berths after that. She was continually re-elected to the Maharashtra Assembly until 1985 when she was elected to the Rajya Sabha as a Congress candidate.
Swati Piramal: Swati A. Piramal is vice chairperson of Piramal Life Sciences Limited and director of Piramal Healthcare Limited. She is the only woman president of Assocham in its history of 88 years. Dr. Piramal is the only lady who has been elected as president of any apex chambers. Piramal's business acumen and excellence is evident from the fact that she was introduced as a member to the committee set up by Yashwant Sinha to transform India into a knowledge power.
Suzanna Arundhati R o y :
Writer and act iv i s t . Suzann a Arundh at i Roy, a novelist and firebrand activist spent her childhood in Aymanam, in Kerala, being schooled in Corpus Christi. She came to Delhi at the age of 16 as a homeless entity, staying in a small hut with a tin roof within the walls of Delhi's Feroz Shah Kotla and making a living selling empty bottles. Soon after, she proceeded to study architecture at the Delhi School of Architecture. The God of Small Things is the only novel written by Arundhati Roy and it has catapulted her into fame the world over.
Writer and act iv i s t . Suzann a Arundh at i Roy, a novelist and firebrand activist spent her childhood in Aymanam, in Kerala, being schooled in Corpus Christi. She came to Delhi at the age of 16 as a homeless entity, staying in a small hut with a tin roof within the walls of Delhi's Feroz Shah Kotla and making a living selling empty bottles. Soon after, she proceeded to study architecture at the Delhi School of Architecture. The God of Small Things is the only novel written by Arundhati Roy and it has catapulted her into fame the world over.
Indra K. Nooyi: Chairm a n a n d CFO of Pe p s i - Co, US. I n d r a K . N o oy i has scaled new heights for the $39 billion food and beverage giant though new products and acquisitions. Nooyi was born in Madras, India, in 1955. After earning her undergraduate degree in chemistry, physics, and math, she went on to enrol in the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta and graduated with a business administration degree. She joined PepsiCo in 1994. For her impressive dealmaking talents, Nooyi was promoted to the job of chief financial officer at the company in 2000.
Kiran Desai: Novelist. A novelist who created ripples in the literary world through her writings, Kiran Desai first came to literary attention in 1997 when she was published in the New Yorker and in Mirrorwork, an anthology of 50 years of Indian writing edited by Salman Rushdie - Strange Happenings in the Guava Orchard - was the closing piece.In 1998,'Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard', which had taken four years to write, was published to good reviews. Eight years later, The Inheritance of Loss was published in early 2006, and won the much coveted 2006 Booker Prize.
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