 I'd like to welcome everyone to a session that's very close to my heart, which is also so topical that it is the global conversation, whether it's on Euronews, whether it's at the World Economic Forum across the globe, and very, very central to the conversation that we've been having here at the India Economic Summit. We know how important and key it is to drive women's labour participation for ensuring economic growth. The gender parity, wage gap, debate, it's all, pretty much anyone seems to talk about when we talk about women or mention the word women anywhere on the planet, whether it's at Laguna Beach, whether it's in New York, London, Paris, or here in Delhi. India's numbers, interestingly enough, especially of the past decade, seem to have been held up as some sort of an anomaly to global trends. It's that head scratch, I'd say, to say the least. I mean, everyone brings it up saying it's got the lowest female participation in the workforce, not in the world. The WEF numbers are also thrown about a lot in headlines, 139th ranking out of 145. And then you add a little bit more spice to that, and you say, oh my God, the only countries behind it are what? Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria. So that really brings you back to the point where someone says, okay, this is a problem, but if you close the gender gap in the workforce by 25%, and this is an ILO report that suggested this, you can increase the GDP by $8 trillion, and if you do it very quickly. All very nice numbers to talk about, and we also talk about societal issues, and all the reasons why we're not able to achieve it, which is not anything new to anybody in this room or anyone in the world. So what do we need to do, truly, to make that growth happen, increase the participation rate, whether it's from government policies, or whether it's businesses and the actual policies they implement internally. So we've got a wonderful panel to talk about this. Manisha Garotra is the CEO of India, of Mollus. Manisha was the former head of UBS in India and worked with the bank across the world, and was also prior to that, heading up Barclays Investment Bank here in India. Al Rajwani is the CEO and managing director of Procter & Gamble here in India, but you've worked in multiple markets for P&G for, I won't say for how long, because that would just be very rude. And I'll just mention some of the countries that he has seen and brings this international perspective. US, China, Canada, Korea, Pakistan, West Asia, the list just goes on. And his understanding of both developed and developing markets is going to be very useful for this conversation. De Paligoyankar needs no introductions, but for our audiences across the world, I will say it. CEO and joint managing director of Wellspun India. She's driving the growth of this textile business to a billion US dollars globally. It is an amazing achievement. De Paligoyankar has also been selected as the member of the Walmart home supplier council along with some other global leaders. Mr. Amitav Khan, also a man who needs no introductions here in India, but for our audiences around the globe, he's the author of Branding India, an incredible story. He's been the key driver of headlines like Make in India, Startup India, Incredible India, God's Own Country campaigns, and currently is the CEO of Niti Ayog, which is the national institution for transforming India. And he was still recently the secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotions here in the country. So I've had my word. I'm going to put it out there to all of you. And maybe we can start with you, De Paligoyankar. The question, how can companies and the government work to make sure that 48% of this population not just enters the workforce, but stays and grows? Yeah. You know, thank you. When you talk about the government, you talk about the country. I think, first of all, as businesses, what are we doing about it? Can businesses be the agents of change? I think, and that's what we need to talk about and start from there. We are one of the youngest, you know, country in the world, and 50%, and as you rightly said, I mean, women, if they get employed. So for us at Wellesbury, I'll just talk about one example, which I have is very, very strong. We did a project with one of the biggest retailers in the world, where the girls were, you know, involved in multi-skilling. And there was this girl called Avni, who was chosen out of thousands and thousands of girls who were trained, and she moved from, you know, she went from Anjar to Arkansas and spoke about her experience. And that was just so powerful. I mean, she couldn't even dream of going out of Anjar to Bombay, and that was something that created an aspiration for so many girls in that kind of a vicinity. Apart from that, I just will quote one more small example. So when we talk about textiles, and when we talk about, you know, manufacturing, you just don't talk about a setup. You talk about communities, because it influences the communities around you. So we have these villages whom we work with. We work with the Smart Village Initiative there, but a special mention would be a project that we do is fun, where we are vocationally training these women who have actually long forgotten the kind of art and craft which they were doing. So they're vocationally getting trained. They are being, you know, they have the ability now to, you know, operate their bank account. And if you know about Gujarat, it's basically a cotton grown area, and you know, children are not allowed to go to school. So if that woman is earning her own living, her child is definitely going to school. And that is a very important story, which I like to talk about all the time, because if I talk about, at Well Spun, around, you know, around 20% women are women, 20% workforces women, and we have already trained 1,200 women for this initiative at Spun. It's amazing that she talks about it. And don't think I've forgotten our final panelist here, because I wanted to come to you, Pranju, and introduce you, because it's quite appropriate to bring you in at that point. Pranju Singh is a CEO of Adeco, which is an HR solutions company here in India. He's worked globally and is quite appropriate to bring you in at this point, because you worked at McKinsey, Honeywell, you've been an army officer, you've seen a range of issues across the board. When you look at it from having worked in the army, now working in HR solutions, and working with both the Indian and the global view, how do you react to what the party is saying? Does that resound with you, with what you're seeing in the marketplace? Thanks for the introduction. On the lighter side, at least, I'm moving in the right direction. I'm moving from organizations that have a very low on gender diversity to HR solutions. So from the army to HR has been a big transition, almost zero to nearly half. So our industry is well-poised. What we can, of course, do is much more, and of course, as you said, there are, of course, societal challenges that need to be faced, and we will, of course, do a lot about that in a due course of time, but that is the biggest bug fear, if you really ask me. And then would be what the corporations can do, because it's a work environment that we create. The government can only be advised that they can form a policy and let us know that here's what you need to do. A lot of people are not even adhering to those. Very recently, the government came up with a good initiative of extending the maternity leave for women to six months. As a business leader, it really hurts if you look at it from that perspective of business leader, that I'm having an employee, but I'm paying that employee, but I'm getting nothing out of that employee for half a year. But in the bigger scheme of things, I can retain that employee, I can ensure that the person stays with me, and of course, there's continuity, the cost of changing employees that gets eliminated. So one's got to look at a holistic picture and at the end of the day, this is such an intractable problem, largely because every country that you go to, and in our country, every state, the specific district also you go to, the dimensions will change. So they've probably got a fantastic example coming in from Anjar. If you go five districts away, it could be a very different story and that's how diverse our country is. So it's very specific solutions that we need to go very micro level. Like I said, the government can be overarching the corporations and the employers. The multinationals might be a little bit more developed on that. From my experience, I see that they are harking towards increasing the participation, ensuring what else can we do to ensure that women stay on in the workforce. But as you go down the sectors, down the tier two, three cities, from MNCs to small and medium establishments, there's attitude changes. So it's inside each one of us that we really need to change. So if you look at it from our industry, there would be certain companies that you know are more favorable towards this, some others aren't. And it is not, you can't really blame the company. I moved to HR from industrial sector. Industrial sector is massively underrepresented and it is not for want of trying. Frankly, I was leading a business, India's leading infrastructure automation company and I tried my best to increase the participation. It just won't happen. Some women would show up and say, oh, I thought it was an IT job. You wanted to go to construction sites, can't do, fair enough. So there are certain challenges that we do have but and there are certain sectors that are mired in it. But there are certain that can get out of it. And then of course, if you have a leadership like what probably the public is providing and maybe the other senior ladies would provide, it can be done. Al, have you found that? When you look at it, PNG's approach to situations here in India, is it very different to the diversity inclusion packages that you've put in place around the world? You've won awards for it globally. Is there a difference? I think what's similar is the core principles are the same. So proctor and gamble, diversity and inclusion is a core principle. Why? It's the right thing to do and it's good for business. And if you have any doubt about that, you can't succeed. So it is the right thing to do. All of us agree, it's good for the country. GDP goes up, right? It's good for societies. It's good for families, income increases. But it's good for business. And not just because some productivity number increases is because a diverse team delivers better results. The data is out there. US companies that have women on the board perform better. Now it starts with the commitments. So let me just talk a few examples, right? You want me to do a global thing. It's a little credibility first, right? So we have 40,000 women. 43% of our management globally are women. One third of our senior management are women. By the way, this is a big change was when I started with the company 36 years ago. When you looked at the annual report 36 years ago, it was all men wearing blue or gray suits and red ties. Today is like a United Nations and one third of them are women. One third of our board are women, okay? In India, 50% of the workforce is women. 30% overall is women. 40% of my leadership team is women, right? Now let me tell you three examples of where, if you're committed, you can make things happen, right? So 2003, I moved to Saudi Arabia. That time, there was no women working at Proctor & Gamble in Saudi Arabia. After a lot of work, we got Linesers number one to hire females in Saudi Arabia. This is one of my proudest accomplishments. Every time we were management wizard, I showed them these Linesers. It's in Arabic, but it says number one, right? Today, 15% of our workforce in Saudi Arabia are women, right? When I worked in Korea in 2000 to 2003, it was a very male dominated culture. I worked with two young ladies who were product managers at the time, Eske Lee and Joo Young Kim. The last two managing directors in Korea have both been women, and these two women. Joo Young Kim is the current managing director of Korea, right? One coming closer to home. We built our plant in Hyderabad four, five years ago. We decided that 30% of the workforce would be women. At the time, there was a low in Hyderabad that women could not work the night shifts. We worked with the government to change it. We started with 30%, and we've now increased on it, right? So when corporates are committed, governments are supportive, and I can tell you today, with the likes of Amitabh Khan, and I'm not just saying it because he's here. Are you sure? I'm sure. And with the right Gujaratis in power, because I'm a Gujarati, right? With Prime Minister Modi. With the commitment you have, corporates feel like you have a partner, you can partner with, to make a step change in this area. Which is very different. Very different. So I think it's all about intention on both sides. And once the intention is there, the commitment is there, you'll find a way. Amitabh, this is the question that then comes up. Is this a checkbox mentality for the government that we have these statistics? It's not great for international reputations when you are considered an anomaly to global trends for women's participation in the workplace. And do government policies then have to drive it? Or are you the foundation, the support? And how do you support corporates? Not just with programs in the villages, but across the board. How do you view the way this particular administration is handling the participation of women, especially what's happening in the last 10 years? Firstly, women contribute just 24% of India's GDP. The worldwide average is close to about 48%. So India needs a very conscious policy of gender parity. If you look at this government, it's focused very heavily on a program called Beti Bachao, Beti Padao. Save the girl child and educate her. You know, the challenge is a huge challenge. It's a challenge of education. It's a challenge of infant mortality. It's a challenge of maternal mortality. It's a challenge of nutrition. These are vast challenges. And the challenges, you know, because India is a very large country. You must understand the dimension of it. It's bigger than 24 countries of Europe. So the southern part of India does well, the western part of India does well, the eastern part of India does very badly. So you need to dramatically change the picture in seven states of India and about a hundred districts of India. And I think there's a huge emphasis being laid on this in terms of education, in terms of nutrition. And I think this will make a huge, huge dent, simply because there's a real conscious attempt at focusing on the girls. I mean, in terms of providing them cycles to go to schools, et cetera. But in the last few years, I've seen an overwhelming change. I mean, every single opportunity that girls have been opened up to, they've outperformed boys. Every single competitive exam that has been opened up, whether it was medicine, whether it is... But the numbers are still dropping. But the numbers of participation are still dropping. In some areas, it's a historical issue. It'll take time. I mean, don't expect quick results. But over the next five to six years, you'll see, I mean, look at my college. When I went to college, it was an all-mails bastion. Last year, when I went to the same college on merit, 92% in that economics honors of St. Stephen's College, 92% of the students were all girls on merit. And the principal said that if you want the college to remain co-ed, you have to give 10% extra marks to boys. So I was quite surprised, became a controversy. But when I went to Christ College in Bangalore, I saw only girls all over, everywhere. So I asked the vice chancellor there, the only girls here, he said, no, it's a co-educational college. Despite the fact, and there were hardly any boys. He says, we give 15% extra marks to boys, despite that they don't get in because the girls are just outperforming boys. I mean, look at the startup movement in India. I mean, there's one young girl, Pranju Bhandari. Look at, she started an app called Hello English. She's taught nine million Indians, nine million Indians through an app called Hello English, how to speak English in one year. Not a single school, not a single college has been able to do it in India. Look at a person like Meena Ganesh. She runs Portia, which puts old people, people suffering from different ailments in touch with doctors, et cetera. She's supported almost 25,000 patients, provided jobs to about 15,000 people. I mean, amazing amount of work is happening in the field. But this seems, Meena, to be a situation where there's another anomaly in India that you've just brought up, that in the financial services, in the STEM industries, where in Europe we struggle to get women into the financial services, it's a constant complaint. We have programs upon programs in the UK or across Europe where we try and get women into STEM. Here it's the opposite. So education is that the key because there's also a counter argument saying if a family is making more money, the woman doesn't have to go to work. I mean, where do you see it as in your industry and when you look at technology as well? Sure, I think education, of course, is a key part, there's no question about it. But I think also 25 years ago, when I set up, it was the opportunity. If you look at the domestic institutions, such as ICIC, et cetera, the client base became more women-centric and hence it was good economics, as was mentioned earlier, by all to have women in the business. Global firms came into this business and brought global practices of maternity leaves, paternity leaves, work out of home, et cetera, which was very unique to financial services. I don't think manufacturing ever could have thought of such things, you know, five-day, week, manufacturing thought six days and if you could pull out the Sunday, it'll be great too. So I think all of that really helped the women. Having said that, I mean, financial services has its own struggle. Other than the top 15, 20 women you see, we still struggle to retain women. We get a lot of women gender-neutral in hiring, so you're a start-off, it's great. But I think, you know, to Amitabh's point, it's the patriarchal feudal mindset. Just as soon as your incomes get to a comfortable level, the women just drops out. The mindset is the woman is the home-taker, right? So I think as a result of that, we still struggle in financial services and that's really the challenge on how do you make work out of home, five-day, week, Adi Goderij is in the audience and Adi was saying to me the other day that, you know, they re-skill women in villages, right, Adi, and basically run hair salons out of home. So a lot of that needs to be done and that culture and mindset needs to change in India because we are very much like, you must come to work six-day a week. I think government was one of the few early ones to have five-day a week. And I think in the IS community and state-owned banks, you see a lot more women than you see in the private sector. So a lot of mindset needs to change and also in financial services and that's why you need the whole, to your point, you need that public and private partnership. You know, it's the situation is so bad that you need to change mindsets at home. You need to create so much ownership for a woman's job, pride in a woman's job. We, for example, celebrate women's success by taking their families out, celebrating their success with the mother-in-law, father-in-law, mom, and you know, that builds pride. So I think a lot more needs to be done with just the tipping point, but I agree with Amitabh. The girls are way smarter than the guys in all our organizations. They'll have men for breakfast. I'm not gonna argue with that in any which way. I'd like to open this up to the audience and I'd like to hear your thoughts, your questions for our panel. Do introduce yourself and also who you're addressing your question to and make it quite short because I'd like to squeeze as much as I can out of the session. Anybody? Oh, that's a question right there. Hi, okay, I'm gonna stand up. I'm Sanviana, I'm from the Adeco group with Priyanshu and I just wanted to direct a question to the two female leaders here. It's really lovely to see that a lot of women are taking leadership roles, but something that I've noticed and I think we need to focus on is we don't have role models in middle management and senior management. It's great to look in the newspapers and TVs and find people at the CEO level even though the percentage of that is really less. How do we encourage women to take those roles, those management roles, which would get them to that CEO level and not drop out after they've gotten to that income level and they're satisfied because if I want to look at the top people in my organizations, they're still mostly men and they're not enough country managers in a global perspective for a woman. You probably want to take that. You know, that's a very interesting question and when you even talk about middle management, I think for us in manufacturing, it also starts from the grass root level. I mean, for me, I'll start off and I'll take this question from the grass root and then take it to the middle management. First of all, I mean, I have girls coming in from all over the country to work at Wells Fun in Gujarat. We have a girls hostel. And we have around 500 girls. So we give them free lunch and dinner, but it's a subsidized breakfast. There were girls who were saving that 10 rupees so they could save that and send that home. And it was something that just touched me because when I go and just talk to them, it was something which I felt that, so the thing that I would take on from here is that how can organizations like us look at and understand the needs, what are needed. So we basically looked at not only taking away that subsidy, but also educating them online, giving them opportunities to graduate and take on leadership positions, giving on positions where we can, you know, when I talk about Wells Fun, I will take an example at Wells Fun, not about when you talk about middle management, do we have people who could mentor them and guide them? Do we have policies which could have, and then we talked about the maternity policy of those six months, can we have that kind of an opportunity for them that yes, you can work from home, we will embrace you back into workplace. I think that's what needs to be done, otherwise they'll be completely discouraged. And as I said earlier, I mean, there are these various programs where, if we can have them have an opportunity to multi-skill and hence also have opportunity where they can be mentored by the seniors that could really help them, I mean, that's what I would leave it. I'm with up the question then as when you look at government policies, how could that be complementary? Because maternity leave, paternity leave, it's a big issue even in the European Union, I mean, we have a tough time getting this through 27 countries, I'm being politically correct about this now thanks to Brexit. But how do you as a government then support that company from making all the choices it has to because it does affect top and bottom line? So government itself, government has to be the key catalyst according to me and the government itself and the government as an organization which makes a vast difference has pursued a very, very broad-minded policy of maternity leave and hopefully every single corporate will pursue that and I see great signs of this. I mean, I was recently, I'd visited the JCB plant which is a hard-core manufacturing plant. I mean it manufactures all the construction material. I went to their tool room and all the tool room mechanics were all girls from local villages, all girls. And they said they were the finest tool room mechanics better than the boys there. I mean, you go to Cummins, they've created a whole engineering college for girls. But that's again corporates putting the rules in place. I'm just asking about government policy. On the government side, I think what the government has done is to really focus on key things. With the dropout levels of girls at a young age is very high. Key thing is make education a very exciting venture for young girls. Ensure that they keep coming back to the education. And I think there's a whole focus on several states of India. I mean, states which have done well have, I mean, look at a state like Kerala which in terms of physical quality of life index has been the number one state in India. It's simply because every single woman is 100% educated, every single woman works. And therefore that's the lesson for each one of the other states of India. And I think the key focus has to be, to my mind, the lesson, the focus for India has to be nutrition because there's an inter-generation cycle of lack of nutrition. The focus has to be on infant mortality and maternal mortality. And the focus has to be to ensure that the girls go through education and get into. That is really the crux of it all. If you've cracked that, and that's where the government plays a role. If you've cracked that, then the rest of it follows. Al, you had something to say. Yeah, I wanna build on the government part. So we are in the feminine care business. And what happens is a lot of girls drop out when they hit menstruation, right? And we educate four and a half million girls yearly on menstrual health. And what I've seen recently with the government's girl-child policy, a lot of chief ministers are becoming interested in how do we extend this to government schools, right? So what do we need? We go in and we take one teacher for school and make her the expert on menstrual health. Then we go in with our programs, showing the girls how to use the pads because their mothers did not, right? Also we found it's very important to have toilets, girl toilets in the schools. And that's why the government's initiative on toilets is right on. Because if you have the right pad, but if you don't have a toilet, the girls will not go to school. And if they start missing a week of school, pretty soon they fall behind, then they drop out, right? This is where I think a good example of partnering between government and corporates, right? Now one thing I would add also, I think it's great to have female role models. I think it's great to create networks for support. We've tried mentoring at a regional and global level where our female leaders, okay? But this doesn't take away the responsibility of the male managers. As a managing director of Procter & Gamble, I have to do succession planning for my lead team. I get to choose who those people are, including my own replacement. And it is my job, my responsibility, to make sure that women are well represented there. So do we need men heroes at the workplace, your frontline managers, your male board members, your immediate supervisor? Is that what we're targeting? The hero dad, the hero manager? Is that the cultural mindset that we need to take? That he takes it in the workplace and then takes it home? I don't know if it's agricultural mindset, but it is, without it, it will not work, right? So if you're a company that has no women, how are you gonna jumpstart it? Because again, getting the women in is half the job. Retaining them is very important, right? So how are you gonna create the support system? How do you tell men how they're gonna behave? In a supportive way, how are you gonna tell them that you're gonna have zero tolerance for sexual harassment, right? Because this is what women are worried about, right? Security, harassment, right? This is our job as leaders, right? And then once you get the virtual cycle going, the women create the networks and the support and we can tap into the regional, global, I think we can go into other companies for mentorship, right? But that doesn't take away my responsibility, right? Because this is absolutely critical. If I believe it's the right thing to do and right for business, just like any business strategy, I'm committed to it, I will execute with excellence, right? I think it starts with this, my three. Without this, I think you will not make progress. Manish, have you found that as a woman CEO that you have to empower the men in your organization to be the heroes for the women who are under them? Because we are missing that middle of women leaders in middle management. So do you have to go out and give them that empowerment message to say you have to be the hero for people under you? Completely, I mean, there is no question that you have to have the men in the organization take ownership for the success of the women. You drill down onto the men that this is good economics, this is good for the organization. Diversity is good at the board level, at the management level. Our clients, for example, P&G may be a client, it's somebody who caters a lot to women. I can't just send a male team. I mean, I don't think very highly of me. I've just sent a male team to pitch my business to him. So you know, drill down into the men, make them the heroes, make them retain the women, don't form boys club at lunch tables, et cetera. You know, the minute the girl walks in, stop talking. And you know, it's just, you just make, integrate the woman and make her feel part of the team. I think it's one of the key things that all women say to me when they quit that they feel that there's a big boys club even in investment banks. And I think that's really very important to drill down into the men who at home are told they are the best thing in the world. And you know, the woman is not nowhere close. When they come to work, they have to shed that mindset. And one of the other things I just wanted to comment on was, you know, I mean, I've said, government really has to do a lot more. And one of the key areas I believe they have to do a lot more is in the security, et cetera, social security. You know, a lot of girls and women, young women quit because they just don't feel safe going home in the night. And it doesn't matter that your organization provide cars and buses, et cetera. They just, I think even what's happening in the country, that's a big cause because you know, investment banks tend to work 20-hour days. During crunch times, we work midnight, 4 a.m. And you cannot let the girls in the organization go earlier because that's exactly where the whole, you know, the whole purpose fails. So I think that's somewhere where we really need more help from the government just in terms of, and a lot of it is mindset change, but you know, a lot more, a stronger system to the security is important. Amitabh, that's an issue, isn't it, infrastructure? No, no, I think one of the key things the government is doing is ensure that every single benefit of the government, whether it's houses, affordable housing, whether it's direct benefit transfer, whether it's scholarship, everything goes in the name, in the account of the mother. That's a very big catalytic change. I entirely agree with Manisha that safety and security is a key issue. And it's very incumbent upon municipal government, governments, and the state governments to ensure that it is 100% safety and security award. One bad incident, it has a huge demonstration impact and therefore it's very, very important that this is done. But you know, I mean, across the board, if you look at governments, there's a huge, huge policy shift in favor of women. I mean, look at the number of self-help groups we've constituted, the number of women in rural areas who today got jobs because of the self-help groups and they've really been the catalyst of creating great economic activity, 30 million self-help groups in this country. I mean, it's a unique case study of how women have lifted households above the poverty line. I mean, the Western world doesn't talk about it. The Western world doesn't know about it, but women in states after states, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh are responsible for lifting households above poverty line simply because they formed cohesive self-help groups and created an economic activity. You know, for many years, I worked in the traditional fisheries sector of Kerala. That sector was totally transformed by fisher women who took fish from the beach level, took it to the colonies that sold them, but we created, as government, we created fisher women buses. And they ensured that the fishermen, they knocked out 17, 18 levels of middlemen. They ensured that the returns to fishermen goes up from 10, 15% to about 85, 90%. This is all the role of traditional fisher women. Therefore, self-help groups, traditional fisher women across the country, have made a radical difference to the lives of women. And these are un-talked-of stories. Is that something we can take away that the West is missing a critical element of learning that we can get from things that are happening in India where the sad story is heard, but we don't hear of the small successes that could be the life lessons? I would say there are these small successes that are there which could really be big stories for the Western world because I think when we work in India, it is from the bottom of the pyramid. I mean, today, when you're talking about even sexual harassment or social security, I mean, I'm just going to take that time to just say that. But have we also done and taken time to have our blue-collar workers also have training? We have training and skill development. Have we thought about even training them about respect for the women? Or are they working with their other colleague? Have you done that? I think that's very, very important that we take that forward. Secondly, I think as companies, I mean, I would say at Wells Fund, we just, as you're talking about Kerala and Andhra Pradesh and self-help groups, we just set up an exclusive Katansu unit, and it just started a week back, run by women exclusively. The security guard is a woman, the driver is a woman. So I think if you give them that empowerment and a feeling, I think even when you talk about social security, I think let them take care of themselves. I think that is very, very important. I think we had a question from the back. If we can get a mic to the back, please. Hi, my name is Udkarsh. I'm a global shaper from the New Delhi hub. I'm curious to learn how the platform economy or the gig economy will further empower or disempower women. Because they're self-defined hours and the future of jobs might mean that people can define what jobs they want to take. They can be micro-entrepreneurs. I'm curious to see what that will lead to. And the second part, if there's time, I'd love to hear ideas of ways to overcome unconscious bias which actually exists in many circles that don't know that there are. Prayanshu, do you want to take the first part? How does the gig economy change the situation? All right, so in my view, we've talked a lot about how there have been differences or gaps in the opportunities that a boy or a girl had, basis their socioeconomic divide or where they came from, what education they got, and then Mr. Khan also talked about the infant mortality and female mortality, et cetera, in terms of birth. What the gig economy will try to do is eliminate a lot of those gaps. Because as we've talked, if you look at the educational systems, et cetera, the girls are kind of outperforming the boys since I was in school. I've been seeing that happen. But after you go a little bit, then the flexibility or the inflexibility the workforce starts hitting, then the new economy gives you a lot of flexibility to work the way you want. So we'll eliminate a lot of those traditional obstacles or bottlenecks that the women experience, and I would think that should be a good one. In fact, Mr. Khan's examples of what women are doing in terms of empowering others are pretty cool on that front. The only gap that we have is a lot of these stories that we have from India. When they go westwards, they are more feel-good stories than learning a lesson stories. Because the problems that we have here, as Mr. Khan very correctly brought up, are just so basic that when a European mind starts solving for them, they don't even understand that the government of India or the people here have to start at the very foundations where Europe was probably a hundred years back, or maybe never, you never know. So we need to have some great stories which are lessons learned that we can actually export from here. And that's where I think the gig economy or the new age ideas could really come take us up to par with the more developed world. You know, I spoke about self-help groups and fisher women, but I don't know how many of us are even aware that the best electric motor vehicles in India, the best electric bikes in India made by a women entrepreneur in Coimbatore, that's Ampere, it's a women entrepreneur who makes the best electric bikes in India. You know, when the tsunami flood hit Tamil Nadu, you know, the government failed to locate people who were distressed and to provide food packets. It was a women entrepreneur who runs a social innovation called social cops who assisted the government of Tamil Nadu in reaching out to these people. And the first unicorn right now, an e-commerce social shop clues is led by a woman here. So I mean, look at the great success story of Google, of internet sathis. It's all a story of women in the field level. I mean, it's a remarkable story of what the Western world has failed, has succeeded in India. And it's all about internet sathis and rural areas. I want to take a second question, which is how do you address societal biases, right? I think one good way, you know, it's all about fear of the unknown. You know, when I came to India two years ago, I had a very big bias about how the place was gonna be. And when I came here, I felt much more comfortable. You know, first of all, I felt like a majority the first time in my life, which was very good, right? But I think also, as business people, as government, we can take on some biases, right? So there is a bias around when a girl menstruates, she's unclean, and she shouldn't go in the kitchen. So we came with a movement called Touch the Pickle, which was by a whisper brand. And it started a discussion about menstruation is a completely normal bodily function. Without it, none of us would be alive, all right? Then for our laundry brands, we came with Share the Lord. So as both husband and wife are working, the husband can't become the same lazy person who sits there and gets everything soft to them. They have to do Share the Lord, right? We have something called It Takes Two for a Pemper's brand, which is like, as you're raising a child, right? And both of you are working, I better change my share of diapers, right? Okay? And we've got something called Being Girl, which is a whisper brand again. You know, they really went alive at the Olympics, which is letting girls really express themselves as girls, participating in sports, and we have such good role models in India, right? With the Ritual Olympics, right? So this is, I think, another way of confronting those biases in a way that starts a conversation, and with social media today, the discussion happens. Now, who are we talking to? We're talking to the parents. We're talking to society who holds this bias, right? These young girls and young guys, they are okay, they are moved on, right? But we're trying to address it at the roots, right? And I hope that we can make a difference in a small way with these kind of conversations happening, right? And the government, of course, is supporting us. When Prime Minister Modi declares, you know, that girl child is an important priority for the government, it's sending a message, right? So again, it's, I think, a joint responsibility to confront those biases. But we have to be patient. These things take time, right? And we have to stay with it. It's gonna take a while to get there. The infrastructure, all these policies will always take time. We've got another question here. Can you get a mic? Yeah, hello, everyone. I'm Rekha, a global shaper, and I also work in Patna, Bihar, in the rural areas with Wynn and Wynn Farmer and the youth. So my question comes from that area. As everybody said, and yes, there is a lot of improvement in education system, and girls are outperforming everywhere. So we are seeing a lot of enrollments and with the kind of schemes which is happening for girls, a lot of girls are coming forward. And with those schemes, we are giving them wings and aspirations at rural level, at village level and district level. Yeah, I'll just come into that. But after 12th, or at max, after graduation, very few girls are, you know, fortunate enough to go to graduate schools for graduation in rural areas. So even if they are able to complete, they do not get opportunity to get associated in the workforce of the India. The reason being, we really, really do not have too much of job opportunities at district level or panchayat level, and girls usually do not get opportunity to migrate to other spaces, be it cities or even to other districts. Usually, there is a very small chunk. So how our policies is planning to tackle this problem to give this job opportunities at the district level or at the rural level? Because everybody cannot come to city. So how we are trying to do that? Okay, let me rephrase that question to kind of ensure that we get viewpoints from all sides. I mean, from a government perspective, that's quite important because these women can't move. From a corporate perspective, especially, say for example, banks, tier one, tier two, tier three cities in India, and you're, you know, professionally in manufacturing, how do you make this happen? If I can start with you, and then I wanna get Pranj's ideas of how can you get everyone on the same page? So I was just analyzing the data for the Mudra loans, which is a self-employment scheme of the government of India. And across the three schemes of Mudra, I was quite amazed to find that 74% of the loans of Mudra have actually flowed to women entrepreneurs. I mean, I was really amazed. You know, so women entrepreneurs all over India, and it's not about just Eastern part of India, it's all over India, are becoming great self-entrepreneurs. Is that a government position, Amitabh, that this is now in the rural and the district areas, it now comes down to creating jobs by doing it yourself, by being an entrepreneur in India in these levels? So there are several schemes of government of India. One is, of course, the Mudra loans. All state governments assist and support through the self-help groups, which is a very, very huge movement across states in India. I think, thirdly, I think the entire emphasis is that it's not just about schooling till the school level. That's the point which was being made. That in the skilling programs of the government of India, where we've laid down skill qualifications, women become a very integral part of the skilling movement in India, so that they become adequately skilled for a vast number of jobs, to be able to get good quality jobs in India. And it's not a problem of unemployment, it's a problem of low-paid jobs, and how do we skillate and enable them to get higher-paid jobs? I went to this Centurion Skill Institute in Bhuvaneshwar, and I was really amazed. You know, Cafe Coffee Day, Centurion Institute was training about over 150 girls. So I asked them, what happens to them? And they were all being trained on coffee machines, serving all soft skills, and it says all of them are hired by Cafe Coffee Day. So what I'm finding is that skilling, their linkage to institutions and to companies is getting very well dovetailed, as would be happening with Procter & Gamble, as would be happening in many other things. But you know when this big disruption happened in India of demonetization, we were pushing for digital payment. One of the great things in India is that everybody has a biometric, unlike the Western world, 99.9% has biometric in India. Wherever we succeeded in digital payment, look at Krishna and Godavari district of Andhra, or you look at Jharkhand with the tribal women, the acceptability of digital technology was much quicker, much faster in women, rather than men. And it succeeded in Krishna and Godavari district where women went to buy ration, but also doing cash in, cash out with the local ration card dealer who was also the banking correspondent, is much quicker. Women's ability to accept technology is much quicker, much faster than women. The question then comes up in manufacturing then. How do you, what kind of gains did you see as a company and how do you translate it and trickle it down to the rural and the district regions and create the jobs? Because there seems to be a demand supply mismatch then. You know, there, I think for us, we have done skill deployment. I mean, today, I'd say we train around 10,000 youth every year and they get absorbed in our organization. And I think that's where it starts from. And also online training, if you have the, you know, we have this online IGNU. IGNU is a kind of a scheme which is there which actually enables you to graduate and you don't need to go to school for that. I think that becomes a very important aspect. And I think for me, I think for us as an organization, skilling has been very, very important at all levels, which actually we took it on, not only at the grassroot level, but also the middle level. Did you actually see an impact on your bottom line when you put these processes in place? It did, because I'll tell you why. Because when we talk about textiles, there's a lot of attrition that happens. If you start skilling people, I mean, for example, weaving. Weaving, if you don't have the right skill, your efficiencies drop. And if that drops, it impacts the bottom line. Cut in soup, again. So I think if you train them well and you give them the infrastructure that is required in the terms of, you know, their children, their education, their nourishment, I think that really has a lot of impact to the bottom line. Anisha, I know we only have a few minutes left. So give me an idea of what you think needs to be done ASAP, not just at the grass roots level, but at the very height of high tech, high education services to get women in India back into the workplace and not be the anomaly that, you know, all of the headlines in the Western world like to shout about. So I think, you know, if you look at financial services, tech industries, et cetera, again, financial services probably, as I said, at the top end, there are good numbers, but at the mid-level, e-commerce technology, the numbers are really shabby. And I think one is the points that the government has to do, and Amitabh sort of articulated that very well. I think the patriarchal mindset is where we are really struggling. And that too, I think is somewhere where government needs to, you know, Beti Bachao is a great way, et cetera. A lot more of those programs need to do because really, I think where we are struggling today is in the mindsets at home, which is that, you know, the woman is just an income enhancer, the job is just good to get your good spouse, and you know, once you get the spouse, and that's it, move on. You need more people like Dipali to come and run businesses and become role models. It was to the point of, how do you appeal to the unconscious mind? I can't tell you the number of people who come and tell me that, you know, it's so good to see you working if my daughter can become like you. It'll be great. And of course, my daughter rolls eyeballs at that, but the fact is that you need to build more ownership in the success of a woman at every level, whether it's rural India or urban India. And I think as the mindsets change, you know, you'll see more success. Five-year plan, or let's say, three-year plan or a two-year plan of what can be achieved when it comes to the points that everyone's brought up about infrastructure, provide the security. Can anything be done in the near term and what can be done in the medium to long term that can be held up as an example for the West by the government? Number one, focus very, very strongly on nutrition. That's the biggest cause of this all. You can't afford, you know, you've created an intergeneration cycle of deprivation. You need to focus on nutrition. That's the key. Number two, focus on drop-out girls out of school. Ensure, and this requires a lot of hand-holding. This is the key role of both the government and the private sector to ensure that we are able to ensure that girls, students, complete their schooling. Number three, skill them. And number four, for the mothers, stop pampering voyage kids. The mothers are spoiling India by pampering boys. Don't tell my husband that. But Pranj, from your perspective, immediate needs that can address this gap and what needs to be done in the medium term to long term? What can be done immediately to address this gap is the toughest and also the easiest. The change is to start with each one of us. The government can provide this much. The corporations can do this much. We are a very diverse country with its peculiar set of challenges. We may not be able to go everywhere to maybe invest into factories so we can provide employment. We ensure that there are women leaders like Dipali who ensure that there should be enough. That's gonna happen in the middle to long to an extra long time. In the shortest period of time, if we can just flick the switch in our minds and become a little bit more rational, a little bit more logical, and understand that, look, it really makes sense to ensure that the kids, whether they're boys or girls, are exactly the same. And that's a massive radical shift that we need happening in our society. If that happens, you know, make a percentage point movement on that and alongside the basics of nutrition, we are pretty much on our way. The biggest gap currently lies in our minds alone. Our lessons that BNG or the rest of the world can learn from things and actions that are being done here in India, does something strike you that a harm moment, that this is a lesson we can take. It's not always West to East. I think, look, there are many, many things today going from India to the Western world, right? A lot of innovation is coming here. I talked to you about a few of the campaigns we've run here, right? And these are winning awards in Cannes, right? And they get replicated globally, right? So I think we can be an example, okay? I would say today that there's no place better to be than in India. Macroeconomically, demographically, with the policies the governments are coming in. If we can get this piece right, and really empower women and get them into the workforce, it's gonna take a good thing and make it great, right? And this will be lasting. And it'll be a societal change that we can all look back at and feel very proud about, right? So there will be, I think, you're right. We have to start with ourselves. And if we can do it right, I think it's gonna be wonderful. Debellie, what would you like to see as a final word for this panel? What would you like to see this government do in terms of policies, parental leave, maternity leave, infrastructure? And what do you think your company, for example, or companies that you associate with can teach Europe or the US? You know what? I think government has now set a platform for us. And I would not say that they haven't done enough, I mean, with the new policies they've taken on. And I think with Mudra, and you have Stand Up India, Start Up India, I think these are the initiatives. I think they'll take time to evolve. And I think those are the examples, actually, we can take to Europe, definitely. But from the perspective as an organization, as a corporate, I think, again, I would just say that we are the people who will have to be responsible for this change. We are the people who can really make that impact because of the kind of employment that we generate. So from skill development that we can take on, gender diversity, social inclusion, I think these are the initiatives that I would say that from our end, we should be taking forward. Government is setting up a platform, and I think we have to work as partners clearly to take it forward. Partnership seems to be the key no matter where I go in the world and talk about women, whether they're most powerful or the ones that want to be empowered. My thanks to this panel. I'm unfortunately unable to take any more questions because we have to wrap it up. But it sounds almost like this is a path that everyone in the world is taking, especially for half the population of the planet. And I am so glad we were able to have this conversation. There are lessons to be learned here. And I think the top and the bottom line of, not just the country, but banks, manufacturing, consumer goods, I think it all depends on HR policies and HR solutions. So thank you all very much for joining me. A big round of applause, I think, to this wonderful panel. Thank you.