…
Armal Ali lives in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, India.
The family of 11 occupy a breeze-block shack with no windows. Ali works
all day at a hand loom, sitting cross-legged on the ground, making
embroidered saris that are highly prized across the subcontinent. But
local residents know too well that such work wrecks eyesight and causes
chronic backache.

Ali hopes that his daughter Ousma, 9, will lead a
different life. “Nothing special,” he says, “but at least sitting at a
desk, for instance, with plenty of light around her.” He would also like
her to speak English, like “the people in suits who talk about money
all day on television”.

When you are lacking in “good jobs” women can progress only at the expense of men. Fortunately, the private sector already values women as employees and is responding strongly. Unfortunately, violence aimed at women is causing immense harm by restricting employment hours, especially the peak hours during evenings/nights when clients/teams in the west are available for interaction.

…
The formal/organized sector is the benchmark for middle class gender
bending. It is here that employment is stable; compensation is adequate
and working conditions bearable. It is not as if nothing has changed
since 1947.  

Formal employment has increased, albeit marginally, and
today is around 29 million or just 5% of total employment. Whilst women
have benefited disproportionately, their share in formal employment
increased inadequately from a low 15% in 1995 to a miserable 20% today. 

The average Indian woman looks for succour from just four public
horrors; (1) the lack of public safety in the street and often also at
home; (2) informal gender bars for education; (3) biased job recruitment
and assessment and (4) rigid work environments, which do not recognizes
their multiple roles as bread winner; home stabilizer and comforter.
Their effective participation in the public space needs to fit in within
this framework. 

 
….technology is the biggest gender bender but the government
does not use it strategically.  

Monitoring outcomes effectively and
improving access to services are two sorely neglected areas.  

Policing in
India continues to be a low tech, “danda” swinging profession.Why
cannot an FIR be filed electronically, with a phone number attached for
authentication, thereby putting the onus on the police to follow up with
the complainant? Why are mixed gender police patrols, armed with smart
phone access, to record and report crime and access the crime database,
not visible to citizens? 

Why are blood samples not collected at home in
rural areas by mobile agents of laboratories and reports sent
electronically to users? Why are interactive phone based health and
education counselling services, on the Tamil Nadu pattern, not scaled up
nationally? Why do development babus still not have specific household
specific, annual targets for the multiple social benefit schemes of
government? Why do they have the discretion to fish for beneficiaries?

regards

What is striking about Manju Bhatia’s profile is that she comes from a low profile background, is only 27 years young and running a 500 crore business. India needs more women like this to assume leadership in new areas understood as “mardon wala kaam”. Also it is not possible (neither practical) to dream of a class-free and caste-free sister-hood but these ladies can take a free-wheeling approach- derive their strength from traditional and modern society as well.

Enter Manju Bhatia, joint MD of Vasuli Recovery, an all-female loan recovery agency. “Women are given respect all across the country, we are not
discounted,” she said in a telephone interview. Really? Yes, she
countered, “Look at our banks, from ICICI Bank to Dena Bank to the State
Bank of India, they’re all led by women.”

No surprise if Bhatia identifies with the likes of Chanda Kochchar
and Arundhati Bhattacharya because they too, like her, have blazed their
trails in male bastions. Perhaps, it is this unprejudiced world view that made her entry into a male-dominated business–of loan recovery–easy.

At 27, Bhatia’s Vasuli handles recoveries valued at over Rs 500 crore
annually, with more than 250 staff in 26 locations across India. The
company has come a long way in the eight years since it first began
operations, with a monthly income of Rs 25,000, eight employees and one
client, the State Bank of India. It now boasts most of the country’s
publicly owned banks as clients.



As a 16-year-old growing up in Indore, Bhatia began working as a
receptionist at a pharmaceutical company the day after her last
twelfth standard board exam, in 2003. In no time, she was handling
accounts and trading in raw materials. Over the next two years she learnt the inner workings of the
business, including how to get export licenses and increasing the client
base, while getting her bachelors in law. It was then that her boss and
family friend Parag Shah asked her to help out with his loan recovery
company, Vasuli.“There was only one client then, State Bank of India, and they
provided a list of defaulters,” Bhatia said. One of the defaulters was a
high profile minister, whom Bhatia decided to tackle. “The bank said he
won’t be accessible at all but I just called and got an appointment,”
she said. It turned out the minister had no idea he’d missed his loan
payments and the matter was sorted out in no time.


She decided to get into the recovery business full time and started
populating her team with women of all ages and for all roles – from
revenue licensing to legal procedures to recovery agents and everything
in between. In 2007, Bhatia moved the company to Mumbai to be closer to
the major banks.



But, there have also been stray instances of violence that forced
Bhatia to now send recovery teams with police protection and
videographers. During a visit to a factory near Aurangabad to carry out
an inventory, the workers at the site locked Bhatia’s employees inside
the warehouse. Another time even the police weren’t of much help as the
defaulters rained down acid on the Vasuli employees and accompanying
police officials who had come to make collections.

But the dividends have made it all worth it. Bhatia’s success in
giving women purpose and putting their skills to constructive use pushes
her everyday. She had a real victory when talking to the Police
Commissioner of Kolkata about security protection last year. “I explained what we did and he was very interested,” she said, “and
then he asked if I could take on the widows of officers who had died in
duty so that they would have a revenue stream and come out of their
depression… I was very overwhelmed and said yes immediately.”

From smaller accounts and agricultural equipment, Vasuli has now
added property auctions to its retinue of services offered. Bhatia
continues to challenge herself by pursuing her PhD in law alongside
running the business.



On being asked what her advice would be to women entrepreneurs she
said, ”Belief is very important…if your mind can conceive it you can
achieve it.” She illustrated her point by describing how family members
mocked her during the early days of Vasuli and how her conviction helped
her carry on.

regards