JOIN USArundhati Bhattacharya leads by example
Arundhati Bhattacharya made history when she became the first woman to chair the State Bank of India (SBI). She faced many challenges before she got that coveted job. Some of these have been chronicled in her memoir Indomitable: A Working Woman’s Notes on Work, Life and Leadership. Arundhati has written a candid account, sparkling with humour and enriched by a lifetime of experience that paved the way for her to take up the leadership role.
I was surprised to learn that she was called a “Chairman”, not “Chairperson” after her appointment. In the book, she recalls, “I had asked for my visiting cards to be printed as Chairperson, State Bank of India.” The bank’s legal department informed her that the SBI Act (by virtue of which the Imperial Bank had been converted into SBI in 1955) did not mention any such designation. She had to settle for “Chairman”. The law was coded with gender bias. It had not anticipated that one day, the bank would have a woman as the boss. While Arundhati was happy that the position “exuded an aura of authority,” she was also deeply aware of the responsibility that had been thrust onto her shoulders. She writes, “I was the first woman chair of this 210-year-old institution. Would this entail having to prove that I deserved to wear the mantle? Would there be heightened expectations from the women in the institution and even from those in the industry?” She was worried but she did not let these questions destroy her peace of mind or shake the confidence she had built up over decades.
Earlier in her career, Arundhati was required to move from a branch in Kolkata to one in Kharagpur, closer to her husband. Since she was going to be either an accountant or a branch manager, her signature needed to be circulated. She writes, “As per the bank’s rules, the signature had to be legible yet unform, and so after trying a few times, I gave up and opted to just write my name in my regular handwriting… I doubt whether men have ever faced such an issue, but for women, it was one of the passages to adulthood. We would suddenly have a different surname and would have to change our signatures to adapt to this change.” On another occasion, when Arundhati was posted to New York, her boss was terribly annoyed. He too got a foreign posting but at a location where the bank ran very small operations. It was not as prestigious as New York. Going by Arundhati’s account, the man was thoroughly uncooperative. “This magnified the issues he had with me,” she writes. He refused the leave that she had applied for. He did not allow her to attend the pre-departure training. He also denied her the allowance people are given to “wind up their establishments” before moving abroad. She had to chair a consortium meeting on her last working day.
Arundhati’s life is an example of the belief that persistence pays off. If she had given away her power to insecure men at work, she would not have survived long enough to chair the SBI. It seems that her ability to laugh, even amidst difficult situations, kept her grounded. On the lack of pockets in women’s attire, she writes, “Our shapeliness can get distorted by bulky items stuffed into pockets, and so it was decided not to have pockets at all. As a result, we are doomed to purses and handbags that seem to have magnetic properties for attracting odds and odds. Ultimately, they grow so heavy that a tryst with spondylosis is almost assured.” Arundhati does have a way with words. May she write many more books.
(The author is a journalist and book reviewer.)