Tamil Nadu IT Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan described the discourse surrounding women as patronising or retrograde, and lacking enlightenment. Rajan pointed out that despite the clear existence of an unequal society, too much of the debate either avoids acknowledging the challenges faced by women or fails to recognize their positive contributions.

Share Market Live

NSE

In a conversation with CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan at the Chennai Chapter of Future Female Forward (FFF), he highlighted the absence of critical indicators of progress, such as the percentage of girls receiving education and the representation of women in the workforce, in significant forums like the Finance Commission.

Rajan said that many discussions on women's issues lack substance and often veer towards archaic cultural beliefs or irrelevant ideologies. He called for a more meaningful, substantive, and progressive discourse that recognizes and addresses the real obstacles faced by women in society.

Q: In one of your tweets on Father's Day, you said that the day that you turned a father was the day that your life changed forever. I want to understand from you why you said what you did?

A: In my case I had an extended juvenile period. I was a student for many years, I was a bachelor till I was 37 and so I think I grew up very slowly purposely because I came from a political family. So the birth of my son really transformed my thinking to a much more holistic, to much more about the future, the world that my children would grow up in, it was there to some level but the sight of my son changed my perception of the world.

Q: As somebody in politics today, as somebody in government today, what bothers you most about the discourse that you see, when we talk about women?

A: It is patronising or it's retrograde, it is not really enlightened discourse. That's what worries me a lot. Clearly we have unequal society. And clearly women are by far the greatest share of the victims of bad outcomes in politics, in war and in every aspect of it. And too much of our debate, either avoids that or avoids the positive aspects.

Every single time I talk about the Finance Commission, I keep bringing this up, that nowhere in the Finance Commission, do we talk about the percentage of girls who are given education or the percentage of women in the workforce? We know statistically, macro economically, we know that to be one of the leading indicators of progress. Yes. Yet in all these 15 Finance Commissions, not one time have we ever touched on that as a measure of progress or the incentive scheme to get greater funds. So I worry that the discussions are not substantive. And they're either kind of talking about, some kind of historic, archaic, cultural, artifact, or the usual right wing nonsense.

Q: You said that the 15th Finance Commission doesn't measure and doesn't account for the fact that you need more women to be participating in the workforce, and how do you incentivise states to get more women into the workforce. What we are now starting to see across different state governments and across different policies and incentives are ways of being able to bring more women into the workforce. I want to understand from you with the example of the state of Tamil Nadu, what do you believe has worked? What is working?

A: I was thinking about this when I got the invitation. And I would say, there are probably four or five components and I'll talk from the most historic to the most recent. Historically Tamil Nadu, what was then the Madras Presidency, legislated relatively equal rights for women back in 1921. It was the first Presidency where women were given the right to vote. The first compulsory elementary education bill in 1921, covered both boys and girls. That's how long it takes to transform the shape of society. So I would say what got us really to where we are today started over 100 years ago.

And over time, from making self-respect marriages, so children are not seen as a burden and the cost of marriage, making equal rights to property, I'm talking about 1989, like 20 years or 15 years before the Union government legislation. And those kinds of artifacts on policies and legislations over decades, manifest themselves first. Statistically today if you look at our gender ratio, at least in my constituency, there are more female voters than male and around the state it is roughly 50-50.

If you look at the percentage of 18 year old girls who have graduated high school, or are graduating high school, the number is like north of 85-87 percent. Even in an economically advanced state like Gujarat that number is only close to 50 percent.

So these things take time because you have to transform a culture and you have to make it the new norm the new way of life. But I would say policy wise, across all governments, we have built the kind of societal platforms and utilities that help women engage in the workforce.

So we have a decent public transport department, we have relatively safe streets and areas where the policing is quite good. We have a noon meal scheme that we've had in some form or the other for 100 years so the children get fed without the women having to worry about cooking for them. We have Anganwadis. In my constituency, for example, in the last seven years, as I've been MLA, I've built probably 15 new Anganwadis, or rebuilt old Anganwadis. And therefore we provide childcare, which allows women to participate in the workforce. So these kinds of ecosystems kind of facilitate this.

The consequence of that is you get this multiplier effect or these virtuous cycles. For example, if you look at industries, one of the reasons we have such a high percentage of women in the workforce is because those kinds of industries where they employ women in high numbers, like the garment portion of textiles, the non-leather footwear, like the Nikes, Adidas, the electronic assembly, like the Foxconn and Pegatrons that make iPhone, those who employ women a lot are based here, because they know they have a workforce. So you get this, virtuous cycle, that those kinds of companies set up here. And therefore you have this natural fit.

In our government, I would say in the last two years, we have tried to take this to the next level. So now, for example, we have changed the program that used to give you benefits for weddings and should you stay in school, or should you stay in college, we made that into a scholarship to make you stay in school or make you stay in college instead of paying you out like Rs 50,000 after you graduate and when you get married, now we say we'll pay you Rs 1000 a month, as long as you stay in college. So you know, it's even more direct incentive for education and is far more progressive.

Q: To keep girls in school and college and not make marriage the only goal they have to achieve is a big cultural mindset shift as well.

A: I announced that in my budget a year ago, and I said exactly this, I said at one point maybe getting married well was the ultimate ambition. Now, independence, employment, skills are the ambition. So we changed the program, we no longer incentivise education as a means to marriage, we incentivise education as a means to self-reliance and productivity.

Recently, we started a year ago, free breakfast scheme on a pilot basis, now we're expanding that. We did it for government schools, elementary schools, and now we're finding that a lot of middle class people are saying, why can't the government offer that to us because it's not just a question of cost, it's a question of time of day, how many mothers have the capacity to make hot breakfast for children at six o'clock or seven o'clock in the morning. So we have tried to pioneer in our own time, but we have this huge legacy going back decades that I think contributes to this outcome.

Q: You are talking about some of the incentive schemes that that have been used as intervention to try and make it easier for women and let's be very clear about it, the access deficits are huge, and especially when we talk about women, the challenge for women to manage different roles, different responsibilities, within the household and outside in India specifically, the burden continues to disproportionately fall on women. Now in terms of intervention, did it surprise you, for instance, in Karnataka, when they announced the free bus service for women, the kind of backlash that there was against it?

A: That is what I can't understand. We announced the free bus rides, and we got really very positive - in 2021, when we came to office, the chief minister announced it. And we found it greatly increased, to be fair, not at the higher end of like IT or banking or accounting, but at the lower end of domestic work, and like MSME work, it greatly increased the participation of women.

And we recently had a study done by the planning commission when I was still in charge of the planning department, and that study showed that the average woman saved almost Rs 1000 a month by traveling free on the bus because we have passes and subsidies and all that.

But that's not the really interesting thing. The interesting thing is, it gave them independence, that they could go to work without asking for anybody to take them anywhere, number one. Number two, the bulk of the savings went into providing better nutrition for their children. I mean, it's not a lot of money, but at that level of income, even those extra few Rs 100 a month or Rs 1000 a month, can make a meaningful difference.

So, I was quite shocked actually, why there was a backlash in Karnataka, because we had some teething troubles on operation, we continue to have some issues on the unions and the transport and all that, but these are all minor issues. Broadly, society welcomed it. So that I think, is a very clear indicator. If you have the right culture for decades, then it's easy to take the incremental step, if you try to leapfrog where you haven't been doing all these things, maybe not as many or not as well, and you suddenly try to do something, then you get backlash. And I was actually quite shocked by the backlash.

Q: Speaking about the road ahead, and you talked about incremental changes, and some of these changes that you just articulated, fall in that category. But we also talked about the fact that this is also a state that is encouraging entrepreneurship, it's encouraging, particularly female led entrepreneurship, that is also one of the aspects that we've put down as a strategic imperative as part of India's commitment to the G20 presidency. What do you believe governments can do to nurture? Do governments have a role in entrepreneurship, in nurturing entrepreneurship? And specifically women led entrepreneurship?

A: I would say yes, to both, I will say yes, generally, but I'd say particularly in India, because, again, women face more barriers to entry or access problems than men. Number two, they are generally less well-off and less educated. Still, even though I say the ratio is what it is.

So in our case, our broader initiatives first starts with education. First get as many of them into school, as many of them into college, then, of course, as many of them into the workforce, but as you know, in a country like India, it is not realistic that all of them are going to get employed. And entrepreneurship gives us that that kind of bridging of creating productive people without having to worry about do they have this qualification or that skill, because always from hyperlocal to local needs of the economy are filled by entrepreneurs.

And as you know, well, MSMEs are the greatest job creation engine by far. Large corporates are kind of flashy, and provide high quality jobs which maybe trickle down or have second tier effects. But the bulk of job creation happens in MSMEs. And as you may know Tamil Nadu has also the highest number of women entrepreneurs. And as a percentage of entrepreneurs, women are more here than everywhere else.

Now, some of that is because of all this ecosystem. Some of that is the government taking conscious decisions. So we have something called the Tamil Nadu Women's Development Corporation. In my last budget, I announced the Tamil Nadu Women's Entrepreneurship and Women's Startup Mission, to particularly focus on getting them to the right place. And I think the bulk of our self-help group (SHG) movement, really has been a good breeding ground for the kinds of skills and then you have to do micro efforts.

So in my constituency, for example, about a year or a year and a half ago, we kicked off a state-wide program to teach accounting kind of compliance with tax and basic management with partners like TiE and other networks. And we started in my constituency, but it's going around the state. So we have special focus. We give special benefits both in terms of loans, interest subvention for education, for business loans. In many ways we try to facilitate women entrepreneurs. Just now I've returned from Hyderabad, this weekend, they have a WeHub which my friend KTR pioneered, and we are going to partner with them, we're going to sign the MoU shortly.

Q: So, We Hub in Chennai?

A: We have collaboration. We have a scheme funded by the World Bank, which was our initiative which is a women's entrepreneurship development program, but we see no need to reinvent the wheel. They've done some good work, so we want to partner with them, and leverage their learnings and their kind of systems and move it forward.

Q: I'm glad to hear that you're not trying to reinvent the wheel, because that's exactly one of the other aspects of this program is to exchange notes on best practices, what's working, what's not and to take the learnings from there. As IT minister, does it worry you that in an era of now AI, and so on and so forth, the gender gap is going to get worse, because when we talk about access to technology, when we talk about things like access to a device, in large parts of the country, in large sections as a society, it still is largely with the man of the house. Does it worry you that the gender gap will widen as we move into a more tech driven world?

A: This is a worldwide problem, right? It's not a Tamil Nadu or India specific problem. But I would say at least in Tamil Nadu, we have two or three advantages, this notion of social justice or equal access started with women only then went to communities like backward oppressed and all that. So all our schemes are designed to bring equity in some way or the other. Even now, the scholarship schemes, in the admissions we give preference for people who come from government schools, from Tamil medium, from rural areas, first generation students. So what we're trying to do is make society more level.

But in the area of tech, particularly in skill development, we want to make sure that 50 percent of all of these high end skill trainings go to female participants in the skilling program, and we want to help them get like IP, patents, those kinds of things. We want to help them facilitate with that.

This problem, I think is worldwide problem, but you have to start fixing this very young. It's very hard for us to come and do intervention if you don't have close to 50 percent of the graduating polytechnic, ITI and high school students be women, then it's very hard. We are close to that.

Now the question is, how do you transition from there to the workforce and some of that is skill. Then you have another problem, which is because as you said, women take on these big roles at home as mothers, as homemakers, then a lot of them have disruption. And this is true, even in America where I worked for many years. A lot of people in banking, or in academia take time off to raise children. So through the Women's Development Corporation, we are kind of reskilling and making them re-enter into the workforce, an initiative that we're just getting started. I think those kinds of special programs that can help people have non-linear careers would help a lot.

Q: We are talking about gender parity. Gender parity in Indian politics. Unattainable?

A: It is a very difficult subject. In local body politics we're now at 50 percent reservation. So for example, my city has a lady mayor and 50 percent of the councillors are ladies. But when you try to mandate these quotas, you get some success but it takes probably two, three cycles.

I will tell you exact example. If you look at these 50 percent reservations, a reasonable number, maybe even a majority of these 50 percent are the wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters of the otherwise politically strong person and that's not great. But what happens is, once they get this job for one year, two years, three years, certainly five years, they start realising that constitutionally it is the person who sits in the hall, the person who signs the paper, that's the one who has the real power. And by the time they come to the next round of the cycle, they start realising that they're the one in the driver's seat, and it's not really about going and asking anybody.

So in my consistency, in my district, I always give priority to the individually qualified and the individually capable person, not just because it's the right thing to do philosophically, it is the right thing to do practically. At the end of the day, we have to run the meetings inside the city council. And if I have somebody who's just a rubber stamp, I can't actually make sure that the meeting is run properly.

So if they're educated, if they're capable of debating in real time, if they have some sort of policy background, and in some cases, we have to go the special way. Like in Madurai, for example, the mayor has two degrees, can speak on a public platform, but didn't have public policy expertise. So what I did, I got an aide, who has a master's degree in public policy, had the council approver as an unpaid consultant to the mayor, and stay with her to help her go through. In two years, she's come up the learning curve dramatically. So you know, you have to take these additional steps.

But, you know, change is hard. I would say change in politics is harder, and change in politics where the education levels are not that high, are almost impossible. So if you take across India, I would say that is the barrier. You will find Kerala is way ahead if you look at how many mayors and MLAs, ministers, Tamil Nadu we could do a lot better, there are other places that are a lot worse than us.

Q: Is there a woman that has inspired you in life? And if you were to make one bold bet, I mean, you've talked about many of the initiatives that you've already taken, if you were to make one bold bet, to really further the cause of women to create a culture of equal opportunity, what would that be?

A: I think, my original professor when I was a graduate assistant, one of my PhD advisors, the two traders on Wall Street, who taught me the most, who took the trouble to teach me because I went relatively old, I was book-smart, but I didn't know the culture of Wall Street, all of them were women and a lot of them have impressed me and shaped my thinking.

So I'm naturally inclined to bring more women into the workforce- I did that when I was at Lehman Brothers, when I expanded the recruiting program at the Lehman Offshore capital market side away from IIT which were predominantly male, into the commerce colleges like SRCC, LSR, Xavier's etc and the ratio changed dramatically. It went from like 90:10 to probably 60:40 in two years.

I did that when I was in the DMK IT wing where I created special posts to make sure that we had women, deputy secretaries and women members. And I tried to push the envelope a bit but the system pushed back.

If there was one radical thing I would do, I would say that we must increase the exposure. A lot of women or a lot of girls, I'll give you an example, there was a Sri Lankan refugee, she was in one of the refugee camps and she got spectacularly good marks in plus two (Class 12). And she got her picture taken everywhere she went. Then somebody called me in my MLA office and said do you want to meet her? I said, no, I don't believe I need this extra publicity. This is not my constituency, she's from somewhere else. He said no, no, she wants to meet you with a pen. I said okay then let her come. I asked her what are you gonna do? She said, I'm going to study to be a chartered accountant. I wanted to be a doctor but I was told that because of NEET and the lack of quotas for refugees, and I could never be a doctor. So I decided to look for other fields. I'm going to be a chartered accountant. I'm gonna do correspondence degree and study to be a chartered accountant in real time as an apprentice. And, that will be my career. And I said, but how many chartered accountants do you know? She said I watched this guy on YouTube, and there was complete lack of exposure. She had no idea. So I said, listen, I'm an annual guest speaker at the ICAI, I know probably 50 percent of the top chartered accountants in India, not one of them took this kind of shortcut. If you really want to be a leading chartered accountant, you need a good education first, anybody can learn how to do the books, but a good education sets you how to think. So I had like an hour's conversation with her parents and stuff like that. And she said, it's too late. I said, don't worry, I'll get you the admission. My family left a good legacy. So I found one of the best colleges, they were happy to help her, I agreed to pay the fees. We got everything settled. About a week later, I went back to see her. And she said thank you, thank you very much. She walked out my office and they put a mic in front of her to ask her for an interview. This is a girl, one week ago, she said she doesn't want to go to college, she wants to be a chartered accountant through apprenticeship. One week later, she says I want to graduate top of my class here. I want to go to IIM, I want to get an MBA, and I want to be a financial expert like the minister.

So a lot of these people don't have that exposure. They don't have anybody to tell them that these are the paths in life. This is what connects the dots. So I think exposure is the core thing. My constituency, for example, ever since I was opposition MLA, we run career counselling, not just for the students, but for their parents, because many of these are first generation students and the parents are ill-equipped to tell them how the world works, what the prospects are, what the future is. When you're 15 to 18 years old, your views are so limited by your circumstances. My children can see a lot more of the world than somebody living in a refugee camp. So that gap, if we could bridge, I think we'd be much further along to realising the true potential. And because women generally have less access to education and exposure of the world, I think that could be a game changer.

First Published:Jul 24, 2023 11:51 PM IST