 Namaste, I'm Sarah Story, Deputy High Commissioner at Australian High Commission and I'm here today with Minister Manakshi Luecky, India's Minister for External Affairs and Culture, who has a magnificent background fighting and empowering women throughout a career, first of all in the law and now in politics since 2014. Thank you for joining us Manakshi and welcome to the lawns of the High Commission. Thank you very much Deputy High Commissioner, it's a pleasure being here, I've known many of your predecessors and we've been friends with each other, even in my earlier of time so it's always a pleasure knowing each other, getting to know each other, what we both stand for when it comes to women and rights of the gender. Yeah, absolutely. Shall we take a walk? Yeah, yeah, we'll be happy. This is about walking the talk, this interview is about what we are doing together and particularly hearing your views in the week of International Women's Day, which as you know Minister is celebrated around the world to note the achievements and advancements of women and girls everywhere. This is a long issue that we have looked at together and separately and so you have an amazing background in doing many cases involving women. What made you decide to go into the law when you first entered? That's a long story, so when I first entered I still continued to be for my living. I was a lawyer which was practicing taxation and criminal law but when my children came along and some incident happened and that girl approached me, there's a terrible case in the city and that's I think 2002 and from around 98-99 onwards I just kind of diverted to the subject and I laughingly say all women are feminists, any woman with her head over her shoulder is a feminist and feminist means what? You can have 20,000 shades of that. So anybody who kind of feels for the cause understands because as a woman each one has had her journey, has gone through some discrimination, has gone through, has sort of broken the glass ceiling in her own way, small way, big way, whatever way. The challenges one faces. Those are common across the globe and getting empowered yourself is part of the process. By empowering others you yourself get empowered because that's a voice to your own cause. So that's how I kind of got diverted onto this side and then the rest is history. You worked on a case in particular about the permanent commissioning of female officers. This is really interesting to me, can you tell me a little about this? So government opened up the forces for women and banalment into the forces in various sections and then finally this was a 10 year long battle in the court, in the Supreme Court. Some lady officers came to me and I looked at them, I found them very young and you know very smart officers. Some of them are today handling evacuation also. So these officers just, one was from the military army, the other was from the air force. So I went to my office and they said ma'am we want you to take up this case and I was that time part of my political beginnings you know on the political side. So I said sure let's meet up and I then took them to the party office also, spoke there, found out, is it okay, it's cause which we all stand by and let's take up the matter. The matter was basically within 14 years, less than 14 years of the service, they'll get retired. So the question is if one has been appointed as a short service commission officer, then your short service cannot be shorter than a male colleague. And the benefits which accrue to an officer, even a short service officer should be identical and once you are working so well that you've, the government has retained you for 13 years, what blocks you at 13 years? What what happens? Because post 13 years you end up becoming the commanding officer. So that's blocking. So if you don't become a commanding officer you could continue, because you have to sit for commands and certain exams need to be taken up and certain courses need to be done, few things have to happen. So there was kind of resistance on those issues and we argued on material, on facts, on principles and how parity is important and the judiciary was with us, even in the High Court and the Supreme Court, both times the court decided in our favour and when the Supreme Court says something everyone has to follow, so that's what happened. Oh that's an excellent anecdote and what a great outcome that you achieved. I feel very very very satisfied, you know, sometimes you feel few cases in life, it's like your moment, that's what you kind of stood for, that's what you fought and you got it. And you've made a difference. You've made a difference. So turning to your career, your transition to politics, what role do you think? Why does there need to be women involved in politics? What difference can it make? So I think one is of course women's participation for their own sake. Why should there be any reason? Why are men there? So women want to be there, they should be there, as simple as that. But on the little social moralistic ground I would say it's only good for everyone to let women achieve what they are capable of. It's always a good decision making when you see diversity at the workplace. So we keep talking about diversity at the workplace. But the biggest diversity is getting more women on the workplace. So let's have more women on the workplace because that's, I always say, I said the biggest minority in the world are the women. Because when you see the places of power, when you see places of eminence, when you see places which can make a difference, you see less and less women. So if women are on those spots, they will make a difference in the decision making simply because their experiences are different. Yes. Their living methodology is different, their concerns are different. So I would say that if I have to set up a team, who would I set up? I mean, do I get the similar looking, similar sounding people, similar thinking people? Then my decision making will be faulty. I have to get all sides. So when you have to get all sides, why are you keeping women out of those all sides? So one is that. On the other front I feel, even historically, politically, it makes sense to have women. So I would normally say, when people would say, oh, you speak on women issues. I say there are 20,000 other issues on which I can speak and maybe speak better than men. Some of the men and some of the men may speak better than me on the women issues. On gender, you should see more men speaking about it. That's what parity is all about because women concerns are not women concerns. These are human concerns. These are family concerns. These are children concerns. These are concerns of society at large. So why should men not participate on gender issues? Let more men talk about it. Let more men demasculinize themselves and feminize themselves and let more females masculinize themselves. Why not? So that is what parity and equality is all about. So minister, you've recently released a book as I understand it about the unsung heroes, the women of India's independent struggle. I'm really interested to hear what a woman hero looks like to you. To me, a woman hero looks, you know, the only image when you ask this question. I get an image of a Harappan bronze, which is lying in National Museum. There's this young girl who's standing like this. So I think in terms of appearance, that's what a hero looks like with a head held high, exhibiting confidence and being herself, being what she is like. So that's what a hero looks like. But when it comes to unsung women heroes of the freedom struggle. So I think every nook and cranny of India produced women heroes. In every field we had heroes, you know, just to set the context, right? Because all these ladies who for their time were doing a brave act for their country's well-being, for the people's well-being, standing their ground, need to be celebrated. Especially when India's celebrating 75 years of India's independence. So quite obviously the 75 year story must tell the story of women leaders as well. Which for some reason, that's why the book says unsung heroes. So women who sacrificed everything weren't even recognized. So that's also the story of India. And thus this on the 75th anniversary, the women who fought battle for the country need to be celebrated and that book came out for that particular aspect. And it's like a quick read, it's like a children's book, cartoons and things. So that at least people get to know of them, people get to remember them. And obviously these people didn't die for the country because they wanted to be remembered. But I guess those stories will empower a lot many women to work for the well-being of the society of the country, to step forward and do things, take the challenge, have the courage and that's the inspiration. I think at least you and me would appreciate those women who stood their ground and did whatever they could. Very inspiring. Yeah. Inspiring for many. Minister, as we are partners in the international stage, we are partnering together for a free and open prosperous Indo-Pacific. And we work together on promoting women's equality. How do you think as minister, countries can work together to promote women's empowerment? So of course on the international forum we have goal five SDG and all the right thinking people need to converge their energies on achieving equality and parity in terms of gender in their society. And there could be many experiments which we can do together. There could be many learning lessons from each other. I'll just share one because I know less about, one feels that there is more equality in your country. But I'm sure there are challenges everywhere and you are sitting in this position, I'm sure you've had to break your own glass ceiling to be where you are in diplomacy. So I mean whenever I meet anyone, I always look at it, she would have had her own struggle. Nobody makes it and no society permits it. So everyone has to go through their own battles and win them. So there can be a lot of learning experience from each other and a sense of friends holding each other's hand, not judging each other but holding each other and that's the difference of attitude which we all need to bring across nationalities and there can be no borders when it comes to women rights and we need to respect that. I love that line. Yes, we're uniting partnerships, not in judgment and measurement. So uniting partnership is a friendship of equality towards equality and thus many experiments can be learned from each other. For example, just to share one example, I was with many women leaders in one of the conferences many years ago. And I learned that in the corporate sector, women on boards, on the corporate boards is a missing thing. While people talk about women in parliament, nobody talks about women in municipality for example or in the village council for example. So I feel while in our case, we've got the highest numbers for past 75 years in terms of women representation in the parliament, we've got the highest. And participation of women in politics also, for example in 2014 was about 65% of women voted and in close to 67% of men voting. So there's a margin but that margin is not really negligible and in 16 states, more women voters voted than men. Out of the 29 states, 16 states, more women voted. So that means more and more women are kind of participating in the decision making process. In the sense of law, we brought a law where women directors became an essentiality. So I think a lot of people from across the globe can pick up that practice. That women director by law is imperative for every corporate sector to have. Now you'll see many companies which do not have women directors. So if that law can be introduced, we already have that law. We may have to work at greater participation in other places. So even in terms of municipal and local body elections, we started with 33% way back in the 90s. But today there are many states which give 50% to women. So participation of women at the local level and local leadership is pretty much equal to men. It has been your struggle and especially when I know that you sort of spent a great time in diplomacy. So diplomacy is considered very elitist in every society. It's considered, you know, people who make it there have very little work and more entertainment to do. They are constantly dining and lunching together and there's very little work. So I want you to describe that side which is away from the public gauge and your own struggle because I'm sure if you've made the cut too, you would have worked really hard. Well, thank you minister. That's an excellent question. I was fortunate enough to be selected into our ministry straight out of university. So I worked very hard to make that cut. I was very fortunate. As you say, I think that our society's ministry also is better with greater diversity in it. When I joined, the graduate recruits were around half-half in terms of gender split. But there were without doubt unspoken barriers to women being promoted readily just in terms of career breaks, et cetera. But also one thing I've noticed over the 26 years that I've been in diplomacy is that women's empowerment has become much more mainstreamed. It is no longer an issue on which if you speak out about it, it is considered unusual or annoying or un-politic. In fact, I think that there is greater recognition that women's empowerment is a mainstream issue and that it lends itself, as you mentioned earlier minister, to better decision making, better processes, more inclusive consideration of views. I think that another thing that has changed is that women are much more prepared to mentor and support other women. And one change that I've found particularly welcome is among senior men who have been much more prepared to be champions of change themselves and who by their leadership really promote change at lower levels. So that everyone feels that women are able to reach their potential and to optimize their potential which leads to a better outcome for everybody. But minister, I thank you so much for your time today. I know how busy you are with all of the hard work that you are doing on Ukraine and getting the students home. And I thank you very much for your time and I wish you all the best with taking that forward. Thank you. Thank you very much.