ADR Forum

vikas72 · Joined: 21 Dec 2007 Posts: 580

Swati Piramal

Men in Delhi! Swati Piramal, Assocham's first lady-President in 93 years laughs as she the recounts the questions she's faced - and not at the first press conference she's just addressed in her new role - on her decision to choose 100 women to head an equal number of the chamber of commerce's sub-committees, on finance, on heritage, on R&D, design, animation...Aren't men good enough, she chuckles, was the most common question.

A perfect beginning, you'd think, to be able to launch into her particular brand of affirmative action.

But isn't it true, I ask with that particular brand of grace only a journalist and a male chauvinist at that can bring to bear, that you're all here, okay mostly, because you're someone's wife, someone's daughter, someone's mother?

Piramal doesn't flinch, just rattles off some names from her A-list - Renuka Ramnath, Kalpana Morparia, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Ranjana Kumar, Juhi Chawla, Durga Jasraj, Naina Lal Kidwai which one of these women, she seems to ask, isn't there in her own right?

I tick off a few daughters/nieces/wives, but Piramal counters with their work, the positives. "I don't know if that's strictly true", she says of one individual, sipping the Darjeeling tea she's just been served at the Belvedere in The Oberoi.

From rediff