For the last three years, Valli Arunachalam has been waging a strange battle with her family patriarchs over the issue of a board seat. Last October, she was forced to move the courts after the group’s all-male board comprising her uncles and cousins, voted unanimously to reject her plea to be inducted into the board. And now, even as the matter is in court, she has had to file with the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for a waiver of the minimum shareholding requirement of 10 percent which would allow her to maintain her case against Ambadi Investments Ltd (AIL), the holding company of the Murugappa group.
For the record the 59-year-old Valli Arunachalam has a doctorate in nuclear physics and is a technology consultant to Fortune 500 corporations. Given her credentials as a professional as well as the fact that she, along with members of her immediate family, owns 8.21 percent stake in AIL, there’s really no reason why she should have been denied her asking. What’s more there is now a clear Supreme Court ruling stating that daughters have equal coparcenary rights in a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF).
But then, Valli, the eldest daughter of the conglomerate’s late executive chairman MV Murugappan who passed away in 2017 without a male heir, is a woman and traditional Indian families frown upon women’s participation in the business. Last year, Vinoo and Shanoo Hinduja, the two daughters of the ailing Srichand Hinduja, rocked the family’s carefully crafted image of togetherness when they sought a split of the business in a reversal of the accord signed years earlier by their father and his three younger brothers, Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok.
For years, we have seen the unseemly sight of male heirs in India squabbling for spoils of the family fortunes. There’s hardly a major business family in the country which has survived intact beyond the third generation. Yet, the moment a few brave women stake their claim to be considered as part of the business in their own right, all hell seems to break loose.
Not only does that reek of chauvinism it also flies in the face of overwhelming evidence. Even a cursory glance at businesses led by women shows that when circumstances place them in leadership positions, they’ve actually outperformed their male counterparts.
Take Biocon, for instance, which has been single handedly built by Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw into India’s largest bio-pharmaceutical company. Or even Thermax where Anu Aga was forced to take over after the untimely death of her husband Rohinton Aga, just one year after the company had gone public. Thermax’s performance over the next few years should have put at rest any doubts about women’s leadership qualities. There are examples galore. At Apollo Hospitals, Preetha and Sangita Reddy have created one of the finest health services firms in the country. Place that against the destruction of shareholder wealth at Fortis under Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, male inheritors to the Ranbaxy group, and the extent of the prejudice becomes evident.
Had this bias been affecting only a handful of large business families, perhaps it could have been contained. After all, Valli and Vinoo are powerful women in their own right, well equipped financially and professionally to take the fight to the family patriarchs.
Sadly, the tragic fallout of this treatment of women is being felt far more acutely at the lower end of the spectrum with World Bank data now showing that female labour force participation in India at 22 percent is among the lowest in the world, below even countries like Saudi Arabia whose treatment of women has always invited global censure. India’s numbers pale in comparison with the 49 percent participation in Mexico and the 56 percent in Indonesia.
These numbers aren’t just a reflection of social attitudes. They have a massive impact on the country’s economic growth as well. There’s a reason why empowering women in the economy and closing gender gaps in the world of work are key to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development laid down by the United Nations. That includes their ability to participate equally in existing markets and their access to and control over productive resources.
The denial of a legitimate board seat to Valli Arunachalam and the declining rate of women’s participation in the labour force are two sides of the same sexist coin. They stem from deeply held notions of male superiority and complete apathy to the needs of nearly half of the country’s population.
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