Why did you decide to move from banking into politics?
The catalyst for me was the November 26 bomb attacks in Mumbai. At the time, I felt it wasn't sufficient to just criticise and analyse: we needed to constructively engage in the process of politics.
So in 2009, I decided to run for national parliamentary elections, and I stood as an independent candidate from South Mumbai constituency.
A lot of people thought it was a crazy decision because politics was considered not very desirable. But that election was a very interesting time for me. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and learned a lot. Although I lost it, I knew then that this was something I was going to do for the rest of my life.
Why the AAP?
I was trying to search for a political party whose ideology would match mine. We looked at many different ones, had a lot of dialogue, because there was a political renaissance taking place in India post-2009. And the AAP is a product of that: people were saying politics matters, and it is important for us to engage in politics constructively, not in a traditional way.
Politically, the AAP leans towards the centre-left. How did that align with your corporate background?
This is a misunderstanding of the position of the AAP. When I first met him, Arvind Kejriwal explained it best to me: “We don’t believe in ‘-isms.’ We believe in what’s right for India.” And that’s a very simple way of putting it. Because that’s actually what we should look for.
In certain contexts, a certain policy may be right, in another context, some other policy is right. One of the things we both deeply believe in is encouraging entrepreneurship, because that is the future of our country.
We want people to succeed; we don’t believe money is bad – we believe money should be made in the right way, with ethics, with justice, with inclusiveness. And that’s something that I completely identify with.
Throughout your banking as well as political career, you’ve had a special focus on women. Could you tell us a bit about that?
Learning from the microfinance experience in Bangladesh, I mentored the bank’s microfinance programme in India and we had a very successful experience. We had financed 650,000 women. As Bangladesh taught the world, very poor women will have great integrity, great honesty, and will work together to support each other. And this has worked really well.
Tell us a bit more about your experience with these women.
In 2012, I told my boss I wanted to spend some time with some of the successful women in their homes to see what enabled them to be so successful so that we can replicate that model.
I wrote out to our partners asking them to identify successful women in these communities, and to ask them if they would host me. I didn't know what the response would be but many people from different parts of the country ended up writing to me.
So, I began this journey and for three months, I travelled across India by train, bus, landing in Gujarat, Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, – Uttarkhand – I was just crisscrossing the country.
It transformed the way I looked at the whole process. For example, when you frame a policy, you do so in a theoretical context, but the practical application can be so different.
There is the theoretical experience, but to live with these women and see their lives, their joy, generosity and the innovation and entrepreneurship is a completely different side.
It cemented my decision to really spend the rest of my life doing this.
I came away from that completely convinced that things are changing for the better. And that women have a really big part to play in this.
I noticed that irrespective of political affiliation, when women were in charge – whether politically or financially, things were better-run. Clearly, more women should be empowered.
How does that make a difference?
It is important that women are empowered financially, socially, and politically. If you empower them in one aspect, it cascades to the others. If a woman is financially empowered, her social status rises, and she has a greater political voice, and vice versa. It becomes a virtuous kind of triangle.
Banking can be more distant from the people than politics. Through your transition, what have you learned about your country?
First, there are no easy solutions. Ours is a large country and the solutions that are applicable in, say, Singapore or the US are not always translatable in the Indian or Bangladeshi context.
Second, change comes very slowly. We’re all impatient.
And lastly, There are really good things happening. There are good people everywhere – we all love our country. All we need are the avenues to be involved to do that work.
