Women's Day 2022: Six takeaways from Arundhati Bhattarcharya’s book 'Indomitable'

Arundhati Bhattacharya - former SBI chairperson, and current chairperson and chief executive officer of tech giant Salesforce India - at the WEF annual meet in Davos in 2017. (Source: Reuters)

Arundhati Bhattacharya, the first woman to chair the State Bank of India, has written an engrossing memoir documenting her impressive professional journey. Titled Indomitable: A Working Woman’s Notes on Life, Work and Leadership (Harper Business, 2022), this book will regale you with its light-hearted moments, and move you with lessons worth imbibing. Here's a peek at some of those lessons:

1. Devise a strategy to keep irritation at bay.

Early in her career, Bhattacharya learnt that talking about her family was a foolproof way of rejecting unwanted attention from “over-enthusiastic male colleagues”. She began to find delight in dampening their enthusiasm with conversations about her father and brother. At that time, she was not married but she learnt later that talking about her husband and children was even more effective in driving away men whose interest she couldn’t care less about.

2. Do not make generalizations based on gender.

Though Bhattacharya worked with men who made her life difficult, she did not let that affect her perception of men in general. In her book, she acknowledges male colleagues who were “helpful and cooperative”. She writes, “Many a time, they would delay their own departure in order to see me home safely. Many of them spent extra hours going over the nuances of difficult credit applications and gave me the benefit of their hard-earned experiences.”

3. Hang in there; patience pays.  

Once upon a time, Bhattacharya had a boss who liked “changing almost every second word of any letter or note” that she drafted. This shattered her confidence. Within six months, she made up her mind to ask for a transfer. On the very day that she was about to approach the HR department, she got news that the boss had been transferred. She writes, “Seeking a transfer on the grounds of inability to get on with one’s boss would definitely be viewed with some degree of suspicion. One of my seniors put it rather well – he said one can’t choose one’s parents or bosses. The only redeeming feature was that bosses changed often.”

4. If you choose to get married, pick a man who respects your career.

Bhattacharya’s parents had a love marriage, and her siblings chose their own partners. They hoped that she would find herself a suitable match, and kept asking her whom she would marry. When she met someone she liked, she checked that he “was sure he wanted a career woman as his wife”.

Before this, she'd met a suitor who'd wanted to marry her “so that he could get a loan to buy a flat.” Another suitor liked everything about Bhattacharya except her job. A third suitor’s family objected to the fact that Bhattacharya’s parents had had an inter-caste marriage.

5. Familiarize yourself with local behaviour norms and sensitivities.

When Bhattacharya was posted in New York, her bank hired a local agency to investigate a case of sexual harassment. The agency concluded that “the male worker (an Indian expat) was not at fault when he asked the lady co-worker (a US citizen of Indian origin) to accompany him to a ball game as this is accepted behaviour in the American workplace.”

The same man had also approached the woman with a proposal for the marriage of his son with her daughter. According to the agency, this “fell under the definition of sexual harassment”. This seemed unusual to Bhattacharya. She reasoned that, in India, an invitation to go watch a game was likely to have been treated as “an unwelcome advance”. On the other hand, a proposal for a child’s marriage would have been treated as “normal behaviour”. 

6. Use your position of influence to improve the lives of others.

Bhattacharya takes pride in having launched a home loan product called SBI Her Ghar for women. They were promised “a .05 per cent lower rate of interest should the house be bought in the name of a woman or if she was the first holder of the title.” She also spoke to the board about instituting “a two-year sabbatical for women employees for child and elderly care.” She got some negative feedback, suggesting that she was perpetuating stereotypes.

After considering it for a while, she decided that “affirmative action” for women was necessary “given the realities of the situation”. This provision was later extended to single men as well because she discovered that they were facing similar issues. 

She writes, “The other women-centric initiative I put in place were introducing free cervical cancer vaccines, creating joint living spaces for female staff serving in rural areas and ensuring that we appointed either a gynaecologist or paediatrician at each of the LHOs (Local Head Offices) so that women could get medical support in their offices.” 

A year before her retirement, when Bhattacharya noticed that the list of India-based officials being posted abroad did not include women, she asked her Deputy Managing Director the reason for the same. He told her that “very few women had applied for these positions”. She was not satisfied, and wanted to change the situation. She amended the man’s Key Result Areas (KRAs) to include “mentoring women and enthusing them to take up challenges”.