just so tough to see the two people i love the most you know suffering quietly and i just feel helpless right now i don't know what to do and my dad also my dad like normally doesn't cry and all that but he's like you know for for me when i'm going through something it's fine i can handle it but when i see my own daughter the one i love so much going through something it's 10 000 times worse so i think for me that was the time when the healing started but you know we just as a family just let it out just spoke stopped trying to fake it just were very honest with each other and that's where the healing kind of started that's why i started getting back in the right headspace and now everything's going good i'm playing hockey too so yeah and i'm on the show so yeah and heaven's got a plan for you man yes like that's that's what it is with with how serious you are about just your career again the one thing i


are about just your career again the one thing i figured is like the setbacks and all kinds of professions and i'm no one to give you any cricket advice by like a country mile but um just just do what you've done to get you know the things that got you to this point are going to carry your story forward and uh i think a part of you carried that nervousness into this house also that you thought i might ask you about it or something that could be the reason you're nervous so let me just like be very upfront with you that thought hadn't even crossed yeah no i know i know but i just felt so comfortable that and the only reason i spoke about it like you said someone watching one person or something they hear it and might give hope to them or just help them and why not we we wanted to have this conversation with jemima because of your energy and what india knows who is yeah and you're india like no no you're india i


you're india like no no you're india i don't want to make this cliche but you know what i mean like yeah whoever's in your social media loves your energy i can vouch for the fact uh that you're one of the most professional uh people i've met generally across professions and uh you know as long as you know that abilities are god-given god's gonna look out for you and when the time is right of course even the ability will will do what it has to do so don't don't like doubt yourself because you've got like a lot of people believing in you thank you so much that means a lot to me you you'll be fine thank you okay and enough of this evil foreign we'll go any signing of notes for uh for the people watching this like what do you always say just just say a punchline the people will be like this 21 year old is giving us gyan over here [Laughter] you had fun yeah i had a lot of fun thank you


fun yeah i had a lot of fun thank you so much thank you for being so chill yeah i'm glad you came on the show and i genuinely hope that just your vibe inspires people a lot thank you so much thank you thank you see you bye okay cool see you guys so that was the episode for today everything that i said to jemima on this episode i meant from the bottom of my heart there are things that we notice as podcasters as hosts of these shows that you may not notice by consuming the content created through these episodes there is a certain deeper degree to which you feel podcast as compared to regular content but there's that one deeper degree that only the podcaster knows about and that's why we do these outros to tell you guys about the real vibe of the person and the conversation trust me uh while we recorded this podcast i was going through a phase where i personally was feeling a little burnt out with my own work but seeing this girl's


out with my own work but seeing this girl's work ethic seeing the way she looks at life seeing a sense of spirituality seeing a sense of motivation fired me up to kind of give my own life and my own career the same sense of motivation and professionalism i strongly feel that this was a conversation with a future potential captain of the indian women's cricket team and it was my honor to bring jamima rodriguez on the runway show make sure you follow trs on spotify every episode's available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world i'd love to know from you guys who else you'd like to see on the runway show and i also hope that you guys share these podcasts share these episodes with everyone you know because that's the only way we're gonna positivize this country thank you for listening and we'll see you soon [Music] you


hey guys this is a very special episode of the ranvi show we'll be addressing the russia ukraine crisis is world war three around the corner what's the history of this entire crisis what are the geopolitical angles what's india's role in this entire crisis for some reason i feel like indian media hasn't reported this scenario as much as it should and who better than abhijit chavda to kind of give us a commentary on whatever is happening from a geopolitical perspective in the world today this is trs make sure you follow trs on spotify every episode of trs is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world a very special geopolitical episode of the runway show all about the russia ukraine crisis but the history the present and the future addressed by abhijeet chavda enjoy [Music] welcome to the ranvi show again for the first time we're doing it remote because i think these times are super urgent and we had to get this episode out as


urgent and we had to get this episode out as soon as possible um russia and ukraine sir i feel it's not as reported in india as it should be uh what's your take on it what are you making of this whole situation well it's a very interesting situation right now very complex very fast moving situation what we are seeing right now as as of today uh february end of february what we are seeing is that the geopolitical analysts and observers and forecasters the past 48 hours they would not have slept much because so much is happening so many events have happened just uh very recently and things are moving very fast so what we have seen is that president putin of russia has recently uh announced that his nation is going to recognize the independence of two breakaway republics which are part of ukraine which is uh the two uh the two republics which is uh luhansk and donetsk so those two have been declared independent and russia has now recognized that so


declared independent and russia has now recognized that so that is tantamount to in a way annexation of some parts of ukrainian territory of course there is more that russia is eyeing and they have given a number of historical and other reasons for to justify their claims on this territory so that's what's happening right now the nato the americans are pushing back they are very unhappy about it but there's nothing it looks like they can do right now to stop this from happening they don't want to see a war nobody wants a war wars are dangerous they are destructive so the russians essentially have have achieved something a significant not small territorial gain without resorting to war they have been saber rattling and all that and they used a certain timing the winter olympics were happening in beijing in china and or the entire world's attention was focused there at that time they started this pressure point on eastern europe the chinese are also imparting some pressure on


the chinese are also imparting some pressure on taiwan we know they have been escalating their incursions the past few months so it looks like there has been this coordinated effort a double pincer movement a two-front war threat the kind of threat that we in india face all the time so the same sort of thing has been uh orchestrated by these two countries in cooperation with with each other and right now we are seeing that parts of ukraine are now going into essentially de facto russian control so one thing that came up in my research for this episode was the very very complex history of domestic politics that are happening in that region usually when we do these kind of podcasts with you we did one about the afghanistan crisis in hindi and i know you went back to the 70s to begin explaining that now in order for people to understand what's happening in ukraine now how far back do you really have to go because according to me you have to go really really far back


to me you have to go really really far back but uh so you're the historian so i'll let you kind of uh begin the story in your own way so i think to understand the roots of this conflict etc i think we may need to go back a thousand years and i can make it fast i will i don't want to go into great detail we need to concentrate what's happening right now but to understand the history of why this conflict happens we have to go back to the roots of the russian people so the russian people are well actually i think i should go back 2000 years and make it very big so the the russian peoples are a slavic people now the first uh historical attested record of the slavic people is in roman records in the first or second century a.d and they have always been settled in parts of eastern europe more or less and they were in indo-european people they used to worship the thunder god the rain god parjanya peron they


thunder god the rain god parjanya peron they used to call him and so on now uh so they settled in parts of eastern europe then there was this this is constant migration that happens the horns came from the east and also they were the the slavs were forced to move westwards and on then what you had is that uh there were these vikings you know the vikings those warriors from scandinavia so they kind of took over the leadership of the slavic peoples just briefly they were called the varangians their leader was called what was his name olaf the prince olaf i believe his name was or prince oleg i think prince oleg and his father was rurik the the the leader of the kievan rus so the ruse the name of the russians it comes from these varangians these uh vikings who called themselves roos and they became the leaders and that's how this they these slavic peoples are present in russia their ancestors came to be called rus and


russia their ancestors came to be called rus and they were in present day uh present-day ukraine moscow etc all that and then for some time what you had is that the russians were under the mongols after the expansion of genghis khan the mongols took over russia and for quite some time a couple of centuries at least they were under mongol rule then again they became independent now this territory called ukraine it has been occu it has been settled by skeithians islands horns bulgars mongols starters all these people in the 14th century what is now ukraine was called little russia now in the 17th and 18th century russians serbs greeks etc settled there and they called this region novorossiya which means new russia and later it came to be known as ukrania or okra which means the russian border land all right so it's always been a russian territory this is history there is nothing controversial about this it's always been russian territory now the


about this it's always been russian territory now the ukrainian language it emerged out of this region at some time it is just another slavic language you can consider it to be a dialect of russian in some way it's very similar and so on sounds the same and it's more or less the same right so that so that is the uh history going back a few centuries and now uh after the 1917 russian revolution uh this uh the the bold civics came to power lenin stalin all these people trotsky and so on uh was taken care of earlier that doesn't matter so the ussr started taking shape at that time socialism communism all that and these various so-called soviet republics were organized in in a variety of ways just for administrative purposes so a lot of russian territory was given over to what is now called ukraine ukraine was an administrative division within the ussr and the constitution of the ussr was such that technically each soviet socialist republic within the ussr was


each soviet socialist republic within the ussr was like a nation on its own technically and they had the right technically to succeed but under somebody like stalin even the dream of succeeding out of the ussr could not occur so it was a very uh centralized state the ussr now what stalin did was he added some russian territory to the uh president to ukraine for administrative purposes after the second world war it was i think khrushchev who added crimea which is a russian territory to ukraine for administrative purposes and the situation went on until uh the dissolution of the ussr so what happened is that earlier you had very powerful leaders like stalin and so on later on as is as is the story with every empire every great state you have weaker leadership and so cracks begin to be visible so so what happened is that the subsequent soviet leadership was not very good at managing the economy the nation became decrepit and so on in the


the nation became decrepit and so on in the 1980s cracks began to be very visible the economy was in the shambles the west was doing very well and so on and then mikhail gorbachev comes into the picture uh if you look at here the way they regard him even today in russia it's not very very nice they don't they don't think very highly of mikhail gorbachev because he presided over the destruction of the ussr he is in some corners even alleged to be a western agent so what happened is that in 1989 91 in that period the ussr disintegrated and the leadership was so weak that all these republics declared independence one of them was ukraine ukraine became independent and the deal was that whatever foreign debt external debt the ussr owed to other countries russia would take care of that but in exchange for that all these breakout republics they would hand over all the ussr national assets to russia including nuclear weapons right so


national assets to russia including nuclear weapons right so that's that was the deal and ukraine became one of these independent republics independent nations they handed over the nuclear warheads weapons etc and they kept on getting lots of aid subsidies from the from from russia so it's about in the last 20 years or so they've got about 250 billion dollars of subsidized aid from the uss from the russians and so on so that is the situation now what happened is that typically uh so until 2013 uh you had waldo valodimir zelensky who was the president in ukraine now in 2013 2014 there was this euro maidan revolution that happened in ukraine so this is essentially you could what happened is that the elected president uh i'm sorry it was not volatilizing who was the president sorry so that's the correction young so this guy who was the elected president he was deposed he was forcibly removed he was ousted in this revolution and a


removed he was ousted in this revolution and a pro-eu nato government was installed by early 2014 by february 2014. so this is essentially a pro-nato regime change it's essentially a coup vladimir putin sees this as a coup and a former actor and comedian zelinski became the president of ukraine so this happened sometime in february 2014 and immediately by the end of february 2014 what you see is that there is this emergence of pro-russian unrest in ukraine especially in the east in the south parts of ukraine which have lots of people a majority that are russian-speaking and they identify themselves as russians the population and even if you look at the whole of ukraine today what you find is that there are lots of russian speaking people people who consider themselves to be ethnic russians not ukrainians and the funny thing the curious thing is that ukraine has not held a census for more than 20 years for some reason because then these these


than 20 years for some reason because then these these demographics will become very apparent right so these are just facts okay i'm not taking this side or that side i'm just telling you what the way i see it the way i read it so what you have in 2014 february onwards is there is unrest right there is this resistance towards what's happening in ukraine uh so in march 2014 crimea was annexed by mr putin uh it which which like i said was traditionally a russian uh territory and then there is this war in this region it's called the donbas region which is east and south ukraine right so in 2014 itself two independent republics were proclaimed the luhansk people's republic and the donetsk people's republic so this is the uh the eastern part of of ukraine and the southern part of ukraine right southeast uh and so on so that's what happened so these two republics declared their independence obviously they were aided and


declared their independence obviously they were aided and abated by the by the russians right uh then you had a referendum that happened that happened in 2014 itself donbass status referendum which sought to legitimize the establishment of these two republics right then then you had all this fighting that was happening between the pro-russian militia and the ukrainian forces some terrible things happened in 2014 this malaysian airlines flight 17 was shot down they thought it was something else and it was a horrible thing which happened so that was a terrible tragedy that happened at this time then in september 2014 there was the first minsk agreement between the warring side between the russians the ukrainians and some other mediators it was a 12 point piece plan in september 2014. within a couple of months it was totally like it collapsed by by early 2015 the whole thing collapsed because in november 2014 you had the general elections that were held in the


you had the general elections that were held in the donbass region which elected the chief executives and the parliaments of this region and by early 2015 by january february this protocol this agreement collapsed then in february they started the whole thing again then you had the minsk 2 protocol minsk 2 agreement which is i believe a 13 point agreement which was signed and it has never been implemented because the last two points about special uh special status that should be given to donbass it is interpreted in different ways by both the sides so there's never been agreement on that and there's been this conflict which is going on it is never become a hot war but there is this insurgency this conflict artillery fighting shooting all that's been going on since 2015 since february and so on now what happened is in 2021 there was an escalation of this fighting and that's continued until right now until 2022 and of late there's been this big russian military buildup on the ukrainian


this big russian military buildup on the ukrainian border on the eastern part of ukraine and what's also interesting is in december 2021 december last year the president of belarus essentially told russia that he was willing to to accommodate nuclear weapons again on on belarusian territory and the in december the i i think it's in december the constitution of belarus was very subtly amended which essentially says that belarus is no longer bound by new by the principle of neutrality and all that so what you can interpret this to be is that belarus is now technically or de facto annexed by russia that's what's happened belarus is no longer independent in in the truest sense of the of the world it is now essentially part of the russian orbit so belarus is now russian crimea is russian donbass is russian and the russians are eyeing more territory and they have justified it with proper historical president president mr putin last night gave


historical president president mr putin last night gave a long speech nearly one hour speech in which he laid out the entire uh history of what happened he blamed vladimir lenin for the way the constitution was created and the way the powers were given to all the ussr republics which in in a sense is correct what he said so that's what's happening what happened is that see in ukraine we had this weak government that was installed by the american-led nato which was a weak government wherever you don't have sufficient power there's a power vacuum and power is is an expansionist force it's like pressure so where there is a power vacuum some other power will come and take over so that's what's happening in russia the russians always have for the past 20 years they have they have lamented the fact that their great ussr broke up and that the fact that the nato has been able to take various russian orbit states into their orbit and i think there was


orbit states into their orbit and i think there was an agreement that was signed or it was agreed upon between russia and nato that ukraine belarus etc would never be incorporated into nato and now that agreement was on the verge of being broken and that's why this all this is happening and there's also a china angle because we are witnessing the uh the systemic coordination of activities now between russia and china so see as we know russia is no longer a great power from the economic perspective they are not no longer even in the top 10 economies in the world but they are a military superpower they have the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world they also have an enormous military strength which is the legacy of the ussr which as we know was a real superpower so although you the the russians may not be an economic superpower they are a genuine military superpower and the chinese are willing to bankroll them right the chinese need an attack dog in


them right the chinese need an attack dog in europe well i would not like to use the word dog but you know what i mean so they are using russia essentially as their enforcers in in europe and so these two nations i would not call it an alliance but there is certainly a core sort of cooperation and coordination that's happening right now so from mr putin's perspective this is a short to medium term game the coordination with china because if you look at the history of china and russia there is a very complex and interesting history right there also in the 1960s the ussr nearly nearly nuked china and they were prevented from by from doing so by the us and that is where the rise of china begins because the americans brought china into that orbit so it's a very complex history but china and russia had a very terrible land dispute the kind of land dispute we india and china have today there was fighting there was the osori river clashes in


was fighting there was the osori river clashes in the 1960s lots of people died in that so soldiers from both sides the russians prevailed later on there was a boundary demarcation agreement but the russians they regard that border dispute as not closed but dormant the chinese will reopen it at the appropriate time so china and russia are not natural allies they are natural adversaries but right now for the time being because their national interests align for the moment they are cooperating so that's the situation where we are in right now got it yeah i think the one uh sentence after highlight which has been my big geopolitical learning from you over all these podcasts we've done is that there are no real friends in geopolitics there are just alliances that suit your situation which is actually the question i wish to ask you so um we understand that uh china's interests right now are to be that global superpower because they are already the economic superpower in the world so when it comes to


economic superpower in the world so when it comes to russia in this whole situation is it money as the underlying force is it their own historical pride as the underlying force is it uh geographical expansion which will then lead to say money or say power like what is the actual underlying reason they're doing this anyway so there's a multiple multiplicity of reasons for this first of all there is the historical grievance that the territory that has been historically russian has been taken away from the russians because of the weak leadership of the 1990s 1980s 1990s so all this territory that was historically russian territory was given away lots of russian people speaking people lots of ethnic russians are stranded in other so-called other countries right now so mr putin seeks to reunify that mr putin i would imagine has a big ego for a man who commands such a large country so i think what he said what the this speech that he gave us that he was laying out his


he gave us that he was laying out his vision and plans for russia that's essentially what he is seeking right so there is one thing secondly the russians seek to rise again they were super they were a superpower today they have been destroyed in a in the economic sense mr yeltsin systematically destroyed the russian economy in the 1990s mr elson totally disintegrated the russian economy systematically it was not the it was not something that was like it was done on purpose right so mr putin has uh stopped the bleeding first of all and then he has revived russia to a certain extent but russia is still economically weak but they are econo they are militarily powerful so that's where this relationship with china comes in china is flush with money china as you say it seeks to become a global superpower right now it is the world's second largest economy i would not consider china to be a superpower the definition of a superpower is that a it's a country that controls


superpower is that a it's a country that controls the global systems the financial system the economic system the institutions and also it has the ability to intervene militarily anywhere in the world at 60 minutes notice so that's a superpower the chinese don't control the global systems they don't the global currency is still the us dollar the imf the w the world bank etc are all still controlled by the us uh even the un to some extent is still controlled by the us the chinese have infiltrated it a lot u n w h o unesco et cetera so they are doing it they're trying their best they they aim to replace the us and displace them by maybe 2050. that is the great hope that they have that is the great chinese dream that is the dream of mr xi jinping so he will use everything at his disposal to achieve this including a temporary relationship with russia when the time is right he will not want russia to rise too much obviously because that becomes a huge threat for


much obviously because that becomes a huge threat for him they have a long common border so that right now we are seeing a tripod actually we are seeing a slow bi-polarization of the world so typically your geopolitical commentators will say that we are seeing a multi-polar world right now that is a transient phase this the 2020s are a decade of great and very rapid change so we are very rapidly seeing this bipolarization of the world on the one hand we have the dragon bear which is russia and china on the other hand we have the u.s led global system in which india is still in to a large extent a part of it the quad and all those things but we are also quite close to russia we are not close to china of course but we are kind of part of the shanghai agreement shanghai cooperation seo organization the brics also so india is kind of somewhere in between our our great threat is china our great ancient old relationship is with russia our emerging relationship is with


relationship is with russia our emerging relationship is with the americans and everybody else so india is kind of caught in the middle but i think india is playing an interesting game right now because if you see uh yesterday the the the entire thing was announced by mr putin then the united united nations security council it held it held a meeting and many nations condemned this india refused to condemn the russian actions india said that all parties should ensure there is no violence and try to resolve this amicably peaceably with negotiations and talks and all that that sort of statement was made by india and you see this outpouring on twitter of all the think tank experts all the disposable freelance minions of the u.s state department who are pouring pouring squad on india but india is not sticking two principles are by what principles what principles is india supposed to stick to the only principles in geopolitics is your self-interest myself my national interest is


is your self-interest myself my national interest is paramount that's the only principle i'm going to follow because see when the when the pakistanis were bleeding india sliced by slice by slice did the americans impose sanctions on the on the pakistanis no they funded the pakistanis it was american money that was used to bleed india the americans used pakistan as a proxy to bleed india for decades right when the chinese or when the 2008 mumbai attacks happened did they condem pakistan did they take the name of pakistan and condemn pakistan no they did not did they impose sanction in pakistan nothing when the chinese did the big oldie incident the galwan incident the killed indian soldiers did the world condemn that was any sanctions uh passed on on china nothing so why does india need to take their side when when the same thing is happening over there india should adopt the same policy of staying neutral this is not our fight i don't have a horse in


is not our fight i don't have a horse in this race you guys take care of it we will urge peace and calm and negotiations don't fight that's all we should say so that's the stand india is taking and the west especially is very very upset with that especially the us so that's where we are right now hmm uh would love for you to shed some light on the us's interests in this whole game is it purely the fact that the dragon bear is getting more powerful is there even deeper interests so the us uh the last 30 years has been the sole superpower after the collapse of the ussr which one could say that they engineered right so they won they won the cold war and everybody thought yeah now all the world will be peaceful everything will be fine all the problems will go away no problem ever went away now the chinese are rising they seek to displace and replace the us for so for the americans it is a mortal threat the u.s has a very simple


a mortal threat the u.s has a very simple doctrine it's called the blitzer doctrine it's a very very uh obscure and less known doctrine and the doctrine says that any nation if it rises above a certain threshold it has to be destroyed don't allow any nation to even think of becoming a threat or a competitor to the u.s so you see this the entire history of the 20th and 21st century all the numerous interventions the americans have done in various places it's you can see this in action and in motion so the entire middle east crisis which has been going on for decades they have kept it going they've kept it churning and so on now so they seek they see the chinese as a big mortal threat and in the last 20 years after the rise of mr putin even the even the russians have risen again and they are also a challenge to the u.s because the u.s it wants the whole of europe to come under their orbit include so everything should


europe to come under their orbit include so everything should be a part of nato including ukraine including all these former soviet republics and the russians see that as a huge challenge they will not allow it it is a red line that they will not allow the americans and nato to cross so it's a it's a tussle the americans seek global hegemony there should be no competitor no rival at all we want a unipolar world that's what the americans have always sought but in the last 20 30 years they messed it up because if you look at the u.s today it is a deeply divided nation uh there is no leadership today in the us i i hate to say this i hate to see a say it openly but if you look at the last 10 20 years where's the leadership people make fun of george w bush but at least he did something some action he fed the military industrial complex monster he did a war in uh iraq and all so he


did a war in uh iraq and all so he took some kind of affirmative positive action from the u.s side but after he mr obama has bombed civilians bombed helpless people he has given big speeches but where's the leadership speeches and slogans don't make leaders it's actions that make leaders so the u.s is suffering from a lack of leadership trump wasn't was in office he was never in power he was a lame duck president for four years the political class was shocked at his rise and they never allowed him to do anything at all to do anything substantial so obama did nothing trump was not allowed to do anything i'm not saying he's good or bad i'm just saying it how it is and now you have you know we who we have we have mr biden so and and uh we also have kamala mr biden and kamala harris you call that leadership there's no leadership so the us is a deeply deeply divided nation there is there


is a deeply deeply divided nation there is there are all these internal conflicts that are raging in the u.s the race conflict is raging the class conflict is raging the rich versus poor divide is widening it is horrific you have homelessness rampant in the u.s people are pooping on the streets the us is declining it's going backwards backwards backwards it's like the decline of the roman empire that we were watching but they still have this vast military machine and economic machine so they are declining culture civilization it's never been a civilization sorry it's they are declining declining empire but they still have the remnants of power so they are fighting back against the dying of the light that's what we are seeing and they also have the entire uh um big data and all that so they are using that to fight back against china so what we are seeing is this clash right now we could call it a clash of civilizations or a clash of two hegemons who


civilizations or a clash of two hegemons who both seek primacy in the globe so that's what we are seeing the americans want global hegemony but now they are too weak to do that without allies and that's why they are seeking an indo-pacific alliance they are trying to create the quad they have the nato which is still there and they are very deeply upset that india even though it's part of the quad is not supporting them where nato is concerned and so on and so forth so this is the the wrenching apart of the global order that we have we are witnessing we are witnessing i it looks like we are witnessing the end the beginnings of the end of pax americana the american hegemony and the world and god knows where we are going to go if if it continues this way the chinese will rise and we will have pax sinai the chinese will take over the world which in my opinion is not going to be a great thing


my opinion is not going to be a great thing so it's still too early to say but it looks like the u.s is declining the chinese with the help of the russians are rising india is somewhere in the middle india is still a small country small economy 3 billion is not big enough it is still just a medium-sized economic power once india reaches the 10 billion 10 trillion dollar threshold trillion not billion once india reaches 10 trillion threshold of gdp that's when india will be a sizable power and it will be able to make its uh make its opinions heard and it's it will be able to shape its neighborhood at least so this is going to be a very very interesting decade anything could happen essentially [Music] will world war three happen in this decade that's a very interesting question you know nobody wants world war iii see if you look at the us they have so many interests all across the globe they have so many uh systems there they're put


they have so many uh systems there they're put in place they've got they've put supply chains in place they've got so many alliances in place so many investments in so many countries if a war happens they will lose all that so they don't want that to happen it's it's going to be a terrible financial and economic blow for them any kind of war similarly for the chinese they have built up so much since the 1980s they have like their economy has grown like multiples multiple times right i mean uh in the 1990s their economy was the same place as india's is today three billion today it is 17 18 billion dollars six times right so they have grown so much they have built so much of their country if there is a war they stand to lose everything so they don't want a war the americans don't want the war the russians don't want a war we also don't want the war we are a growing economy we don't want that to be disrupted we


economy we don't want that to be disrupted we already had three lost years the the pandemic so nobody wants a war so today in the 21st century wars will be fought by other means you will have cyber warfare you will have information warfare you will have disinformation warfare misinformation warfare social media warfare propaganda and very diplomatic warfare sanctions can be imposed on economies and destroy the economies like the americas have done to iran and so on uh yemen etc so these are the means by which countries would prefer to wage the wars they don't want kinetic warfare which causes destruction because everybody has a lot to lose right nobody wants a war so i don't see a large-scale wall war erupting unless somebody messes up badly and miscalculates badly so what we're seeing right now in the donbass region is a very calculated move by mr putin he has been putting the pieces of the chessboard in motion in place since at least


the chessboard in motion in place since at least 2014. at least most likely few years before that so what he has done yesterday he has been planning for a decade this was the end goal and this is still not the end goal there is more to come so but it is done in a way that it doesn't cross anybody's red lines anybody's thresholds and there is no actual warfare actual country versus country warfare you have sub sub national warfare you have these insurgencies and civil wars and all that is okay that will buy that will be they'll find nothing more than that so there are certain thresholds that nobody wants to cross so i personally hope there is no large scale war i don't see it happening unless somebody miscalculates badly people do miscalculate it if we look at the record of history it's littered with it's littered with examples of miscalculations which we have seen in the 20th century and we may even see now one hopes it doesn't


we may even see now one hopes it doesn't happen but if mr xi jinping does some stupid misadventure or if he is kicked out of power by the soviet uh by the chinese communist parties politburo if there is a coup or if something goes wrong somewhere else if the americans miscalculate there could be a war which is something we don't want because there are nuclear weapons on each side everybody has them now so it's it would not be a good thing for the world so i hope it doesn't happen i think it's very unlikely to happen but there's a small chance somebody could mess up why did you say that all the geopolitical observers are very kind of restless right now is it because every small move is being uh observed and are you trying to predict what will happen going forward and i mean the supplemental question here is did any of the geopolitical observers predict this move yes so they have been um so we know that this buildup this military


um so we know that this buildup this military built up by the build-up by the russians has been uh has been increasing since late 2021. so it's been a number of months that this is happening and you could see something is going to happen because this kind of buildup it will either lead to a war or some kind of big event so everybody was wondering when it will happen and some geopolitical observers had predicted it will happen at the end of the winter olympics which was 20th of february so until that time they will keep on building the pressure and russia and the chinese don't want anything to go wrong before that once the olympics are over in beijing then something may happen and that's precisely what happened so that's why and what happened yesterday is big moves it's not small incremental moves it's like uh the the release of the big pressure like in a tectonic zone you have these small earthquakes that keep happening and then there's a


earthquakes that keep happening and then there's a big earthquake that really releases all the pressure so that's the kind of thing that happened yesterday of course there could be more aftershocks coming in so that's why everybody is awake nobody's sleeping everybody is awake for the past 24 48 hours because uh people are busy making predictions people are busy saying you know i was right i said this i said that and people are trying to predict what's going to happen in the next week next month next year that sort of thing so it's uh it's a time of feverish activity among this community the geopolitical think tank people and observers and forecasters so some people did predict there is a lady called velena chakarova she actually tweeted this last year december or something that until 20th of february there will be nothing but after that anything could happen and most likely some action will happen in the in the donbass region so she has been proven to be right so that's the


has been proven to be right so that's the kind of thing that's going on right now there's unlimited questions in my head sir but i wanted to make this a crisp piece that's why i'll ask you one last question for today's conversation uh what is your prediction for the next year uh from a geopolitical perspective what's going to happen according to you uh apart from this what we have just witnessed i don't see any major geopolitical action happening in the next one year i think this decade is going to be very interesting lots of things may change even borders may change in this decade this year i think the big action has happened maybe there will be some more uh some more military action happening in ukraine maybe the two republics have already been kind of integrated in some way in under russia but the russians may expand further westwards into the other parts of donbass that are still held by the ukrainians so that could happen so you could see the


so that could happen so you could see the the territory that's held by the ukrainians may be reduced by half that is a possibility so that could happen and you could see the further strengthening of the russia china relationship the dragon bear relationship you will see a lot of pushback coming against india from the west because india has remained neutral in this thing so they'll be very unhappy about this you could also see a strengthening of the quad alignment in case china makes some moves now because the chinese the chinese are desperate to take back taiwan i am not saying it will happen this year maybe it could if they feel their time is right but uh if the chinese take over taiwan it's going to be game on in the indian ocean because their pressure point will be relieved over there then they'll be able to send their ships into the indian ocean and start squeezing india and india has already thought of this because india is developing some very very


of this because india is developing some very very frightful weapon systems to deal with exactly such an eventuality so we are we're not just developing it we are already already testing these weapons these are me these are missile developed torpedoes that can take out ships from more than a thousand kilometers away ships and submarines also so that's the kind of weapon that india is developing because our navy navy is not that extensive right now but if a foreign navy comes into our strategic backyard we can take them out with pinpoint accuracy with these new weapon systems so that's what india is doing so this year i don't see a lot of very substantial geopolitical developments happening but it's going to be substantial this decade for sure so i can't make any any concrete predictions because i can't think of anything that could certainly for sure happen but we are going into bipolarity we are already in the middle of we are already in the start of cold war 2.0 we are


in the start of cold war 2.0 we are in cold war 2.0 and the world is going to be become further bipolarized so we're going to have one pole and another pole the chinese and the russians with all everybody who wants to be with them against the old order so india is kind of in the old order right now because right now it serves our interests the best to side with the us and the old order so that's where we are right now what will be the outcome of the west basically being pissed off with india because of this whole situation in india's neutral stance they will try and impose some costs on india maybe they will use pakistan as a stick to beat india with some things could happen uh right now there's not much they can do also because they need india in the indo-pacific india controls the entire indian ocean region india dominates the indonesian region india if a conflict happens in the future india will have


conflict happens in the future india will have to be used as a staging base for any conflict with china because of the geographical region india is a very massive it's the only possible counterweight to china in asia so there's not much they can do against india also but they're right now going going after dr s jayshankar on on social media and all that so that sort of thing is happening and all that but in the long run india will be a massive player in the quad and in any indo-pacific alliance against china so i don't think a lot can be done against india by the west but they are quite pissed off for sure because we have stayed neutral and they deserve it they did not deserve our support um thank you for this very urgent last minute request of a podcast always learning from you sir and next time we hope to host you in person and talk a little bit more about everything that's happening at this moment in time absolutely thank you very much


at this moment in time absolutely thank you very much for having me it's always great to talk to you thank you thank you thank you amazing sir hey guys so that was the episode for today i intend on doing a lot more current affairs based episodes so if you guys want us to address any more topics if y'all want us to break down this topic even further please tell us on our social media tell us in the comments section and i hope you all enjoyed this particular episode make sure you follow trs on spotify with spotify exclusive which means that every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world abhijit chavra of course is going to return to the ranvier show we're planning on doing a lot with him this year we're planning on doing a lot of current affairs related topics this year i hope you enjoyed this one and i sincerely hope you share it with all your friends let's build a more aware world together thank you [Music] you


it was an absolute honor hosting dr kieran bailey on the runway show this particular episode is meant for the entire female workforce of india if you're an indian woman i urge you to listen to this episode till the end but also share it with all the working professionals that you know i feel conversations need to be had like this in order to boost the indian workforce's mentality and morale dr kiran vedi is a legend in the story of post-independence india we didn't really cover her story because i feel like most people know about it this particular episode was more about her mindset more about where india is at right now and where we need to take india going forward as kuraja said on trs only about five to ten percent of indian urban women are a part of the workforce and that's got to change may that change begin with conversations like this this is dr kiran beri featured on the runway show remember to follow trs on spotify we're a spotify exclusive which means that


trs on spotify we're a spotify exclusive which means that every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world remember dr bailey's book fearless governance is now out i'm gonna link it down below but for now i hope you enjoy this conversation that taught me so much i hope it creates a similar impact in your lives enjoy the episode [Music] dr kiran vedi welcome to the ranvi show it's beyond an honor having you thank you for being on the show today ma'am thank you very much young man so ma'am my first question to you is um not to you it's to the little girl inside you because i feel like our inner child never dies so for that inner child in you what why did you choose to get into public service like there must have been some kind of seed of inspiration somewhere so i want to hear about that firstly well i knew that the position in government is a position of influence where you can get things done because i


of influence where you can get things done because i saw my father getting things done my father belonged to a a very influential family of amritsar when i was growing up and he was a go-to person my grandfather was a go-to person because they were influential and what did he do to help others in need because people would approach him for help and i was as a teenager watching it listening to it and he would call up the superintendent to police he would call up the collector and get things done which were right of course my father was only supporting what was legitimately the dew and i used to get see him getting things done but also justice happening so it settled in my mind that the go-to people are the people in government and and those in public service in these positions and if i when i grow up i too can get things done why can't i also be one day be in public service where i can also be of help to others i can also be what


be of help to others i can also be what do what my father is getting done through somebody else but he's getting it done he's getting justice done so i started to see him getting justice delivered just as done but expedited so why can't i be that person to whom he's calling who would be delivering justice right so i love this it settled in my mind that why i would one day grow up also to be that person who can get things done and does justice see two things get things done and do justice yeah i hear you ma'am that's the emotional core behind i feel your entire life's journey so now the question is not to the inner child it's to the woman that you've become now i believe that when you look at the life of any person i used to believe that we become more of ourselves until a friend corrected me and told me that no you don't become more of yourself you become more of what the world paints on to you and as life


what the world paints on to you and as life progresses you keep learning you keep evolving and you become something that you weren't at the beginning so i want to ask you the same question now when you look back at your life one were those two emotions fueled and i'm sure they were but how do you look back at those two emotions now justice and can i call the other one power like you tell me what would you call the other one how do you look back at all this that's the question it's been an amazing growth exactly of these two constant justice getting done and on slow constant getting things done ex the areas expanded geography expanded departments divided beneficiaries spend expanded everything expanded exponentially as i grew in my positions as i grew up in and as i grew in experience i could get things done because of my learned experience so the more i learned the more i could use my power of influence my power position it was i realized how brilliantly power was such


was i realized how brilliantly power was such a beautiful responsibility how you can get things done in fact in my acceptance speech which you may would come to the maxis award when i went to accept when i made an acceptance speech when i got the max's award i said policing is the power to correct power to do and power to get things done i never this is my speech i wrote at the and spoke at the acceptance speech in 1994 31st of august when i got the maxis award in manila where i delivered it in manila it has become one of the uh well-known speeches in in memorable speeches and it it flew out of my heart and it is exactly getting things done and the power to correct and positioning of power to correct power to do and power to get things done i think it grew exponentially if we dial back once again there was no part of you growing up in the 50s 60s and even early 70s that thought to yourself hold


and even early 70s that thought to yourself hold on in this world that's full of men and powerful men at that i want to be the first woman ips officer was there not a part of you that you know had some amount of self-doubt because all of us go through that i'd love to hear about your early forms of self-doubt especially related to you being a woman was there any factor like that early on absolutely when i was growing up i was growing up to be a self-reliant woman a self-dependent woman and a powerful woman who is empowering who's to grow up empowering others i did not grow up to become a dependent woman a seeking woman and seeking help but but financially psychologically environmentally be free i was looking for freedom self-reliance self-dependence self-empowerment see i knew that if i do not do this i knew because i saw around dependence i saw trans migration of women see woman is the biggest migrant in the world because indian woman when she


migrant in the world because indian woman when she leaves her parents home she goes into another woman she's a migrant she migrates leaving a home which she grew up got an identity of her own and certainly migrates to another home accepts that as her home right and if she's not economically self-dependent then she's dependent i did not want i either i did not want to be a migrant and i did not want to be a dependent woman i wanted to have a home of my own certainly but the point not as a migrant and not to lose my own identity and when i was growing up as a teenager i was consciously building my uh my building i was building this architecture that as i grew up i will take the civil services examination after my master's in political science and then i would sit for the examination and policing cap i did not know i was going to be the first woman in the office of ranks of the indian police i did not know that


of the indian police i did not know that it's only when i got to the academy of the administration and i was called by the ministry of home affairs asking me can i consider changing my option i said why they said because there's no woman prior to you in the indian police service i said i i haven't entered to become the first woman it's destiny which has made me become the first woman but that's where i belong because i want to be in a position of justice i want to reform i want to transform i want to be of value to the others because i was already a woman of value within i was already highly valued within i was a self-dependent confident very well physically very energetic and fit because i was a tennis player as well so i was see physically psychologically spiritually i was getting i was already ready for the service i was there to serve i wasn't i didn't even know what my salary would be i did not look for that i just said


be i did not look for that i just said that's a position where you remember when i said when i was a child that's the position i wanted to be of value until now even when i'm at this age every day has gone into empowering others hmm ma'am i'm gonna be very candid with you here uh because of this podcast i get to speak to a lot of people who have been in positions of power who are currently in positions of power and when i talk to men from your generation versus women from your generation which is yourself i see that there's a lot of personality differences and my reading of it and i might be completely wrong here i was born in 1993 and i've lived in a very different time but my reading of it is that i feel women have a natural sense of what in hindi we call mamta you know slight motherly nature caring like better levels of empathy and i somewhere feel that there are men often who lack that and even men of


are men often who lack that and even men of my generation are trying to build that consciously so keeping that in mind like scanning your entire career and all the experiences that you had do you think that being a woman brings its own strengths to the table in professional environments because from what you say i hear that you gave much more importance to your mission and your motive rather than the fact that oh i am a woman you know but i'm sure you must have discovered things about yourself as you went ahead in your career that maybe if i was a man i wouldn't have taken this decision but i'm taking this decision out of my sense of empathy so my question to you basically is that do women have some unique strengths in professional environments according to you i think women in power women confident women self-dependent women skilled women spiritually and economically and psychologically strong are doubly advantaged i made it a double advantage what could have been a disadvantage by if i were weak and i


a disadvantage by if i were weak and i was dependent and not self-reliant and not so sure of myself i could have been a liability i made my gender an asset and this effect emotional intelligence coupled with intelligence quotient and spiritual quotient all the three iqs iq eq and sq believe me in a woman becomes three times over better advantages i used it to my total i didn't use it it became my advantage why why i got more trusted i got more respected i got more access i got to hear people more people reached out to me more i got to do more problem solving why because i had the heart to listen at the time to listen i had the time to see at the time and my heart did beat for them that was a woman heart beating for them but intellectually analyzing what needs to be done so i actually got advantage of being growing up endrogenously andro and guinea and draw i because of my sports and my ncc and my upbringing i got the


and my ncc and my upbringing i got the best of the traits of men and i got the best of the traits of women women traits i was born with which i polished nurtured became very conscious i i'm a woman and i am born with these dreams but my academics and my sports and my extracurricular activities and my own conscious training and my home upbringing got me the best of the male traits i had the stamina as equal as the men when i joined the indian police service for training as equal and somewhere even more so i think that's where my androgynous uh nature and development helped me make it doubly advantageous and that's what happens with any woman ceo look what happened with indira louie what happened with indira louie she turned her gender to her advantage and she became one of the world's best known ceos today why because she was too introgenous she had the same qualities she nurtured she turned her gender into reaching out connecting with


she turned her gender into reaching out connecting with people emo and taking care and yet being very analytical being very strategic having all the stamin and the courage for and risk taking she was she's an androgynous ceo that's why she the world looks up to her today today the world of women and the ceos today i did not know that i was growing exactly like that androgynously and with the best of the traits without knowing this is a male trait and there's a female trait but that's the right trait having being physically i have enough stamina very risk-taking and totally fearless totally insecure is it fear when when you become fearless you become fearless when you have internal security because i was financially psychologically intellectually environmentally family-wise becoming very secure i i was fearless in tough decisions i was more scrutin that's what these are traditionally called the male traits so strategic so i think that's where it be as i told you i convert not that i


be as i told you i convert not that i converted my being a woman in a male profession at that time and delivering it as a successful woman knowing what to do and what not to do saying yes to what and saying no to what i think that's where it turned out when it helped me grow it helped me grow or in all directions and even when i got dumped postings considered dumped postings it turned out to be a bonanza it turned out to be a self in fulfillment because by woman's nature is to empower others that's a typical nature of a woman empowers others she empowers others it's a natural trait of a woman to empower others what did i do what have i done all my life and a woman is a people's person because she's naturally people so two things empowering others and being people oriented and she's also accessible and she also listens these are very natural traits of a woman she's born with why should i not nurture those qualities further and being


should i not nurture those qualities further and being very stamina oriented physically very fit having great endurance risk taking professionally skilled see how it turned out to be to my great advantage i was not consciously nurturing them but my environment at home and my upbringing my schooling my education my university my sports my tennis competitions my ranking i was india's number one and a nation tennis champion when has ever a nation tennis champion and i was good at both i was not i was not compromising on my educational uh excellence nor was i compromising on my sports i went into the service with two streams i was growing up parallelly i was playing competitive tennis but not to be a tennis professional as playing tennis to learn the rules of the game because life is a game to play you learn to lose and win and i was learning to lose and win and i knew how to prepare to win and i knew what when you lose why you lose so i think therefore sports


you lose why you lose so i think therefore sports played a very critical role in the uh making me as an androgynous manager or a doctor's person so you see i emerged from being a woman to a person so it was not a question of i becoming a woman or a man it was a person so there's a person in me which evolved who happened to have the qualities of the woman which i don't then i kept polishing and nurturing and acquired qualities of the man which were coming through my education and my sports and and my home upbringing yes ma'am um ma'am what i loved about your answer that you just gave right now is that you highlighted one of the biggest career hacks that they don't treat you in college so the way i look at it i feel uh everyone has a mix of feminine qualities and masculine qualities and depending on what you have less you need to build uh that so say if you're a very masculine man often you lack an eq


a very masculine man often you lack an eq often you lack a sense of empathy often you'll lack kind of a wide-eyed perspective on what can go wrong with things and you have to consciously build those like a challenge for me has been building that whole emotional side out throughout my career parallelly because i have so many intelligent capable women that work with me i have spotted some of their weaknesses also and then we have to guide them through those as well and it's different for everyone you know you'll often even see some men who are overly feminine in their traits and their personalities so they have to develop some of the masculine things but my question to you is uh about women in general ma'am and it's kind of going to be a hard hitting question so i'll give you that kind of disclaimer up front but why is it that in india we don't see more dr kiran vedis you know like why has the why has there been one of you when i compare


why has there been one of you when i compare it say to abroad there are so many more stories like yours then why in india do we have this one-off story of dr kiran beri i we wish no ranvi there are many today they're many today they only need more and more greater visibility there are many more that's a fact that when i was growing up i was ahead of my time and for that the credit goes to my home and my family are bringing i was ahead of my time there's no doubt about it i was the only property girl who was playing tennis shots and not in a skirt okay let me let me rephrase my question why at that time did we see doc a few fewer dr kiran vedis what was stopping everyone else during my time we had conservative parents we did not have as progressive environment as it is today we didn't have the opportunities then as we have today we did not have visionary parents in such large numbers as we have today my parents


in such large numbers as we have today my parents were ahead of their time that is why i became ahead of my time and stay ahead of my time but now as i see myself around there are many many today they're men now women have broken all barriers they've gone into uniforms in armed forces haven't they they've flown the best of the fighters fighter pilots they're into navy army air force ips director generals of police armed forces where are they not today the ceos of companies where are they not today but when i was up there we did not have parents of my kind those people they were far ahead of the time i knew it i knew my parents were ahead of the time i recognized it why because all my class fellows parents were only only dressing them up saving money to marry them off with dowries whereas my parents were investing every bit of their penny into my education into our education we were not one we were four girls in the house all four were invested so


four girls in the house all four were invested so my parents had said sky is the limit for your education keep educating yourself look girls in india particularly still still girls in india still the product an extension of the vision of their parents let me tell you till now how they educate them what kind of sense of freedom they give what kind of nurturance positivity optimism etc so i think mind was i'm a beneficiary and that's a blessing to me what i did what happened was while they gave me the 100 i gave them my hundred percent and i think we became 200 rather than being 50 why does my other friends were probably becoming 30 so many of my friends would meet me even now they said we knew you would be this we knew you'd be doing this because you were doing exactly this you see so there's a continuity and my friends still lament that they lost out why they didn't lose out because of them they lost out because their families did not give them


they lost out because their families did not give them the wings to fly my family gave me the wings to fly or as high as i wanted and i did yeah ma'am so i'm gonna rephrase that previous question once again and i'm sorry about the way it came across but i have to kind of get to the bottom of this because it's something i have been thinking about we had an entrepreneur called canalsha on the show and he brought up a stat which said that something like only five to ten percent of urban women are a part of the workforce in urban india and that's where these thought tangents start and that's why i ask you that why are there not more dr kiran vedis i mean your story was spread across the 70s 80s 90s 2000s and you'd assume that women who grew up seeing you in that position of power would think that no even i can do something also what i get from how you describe your own career is you had a strong self-improvement


your own career is you had a strong self-improvement mentality that was a sports person inside you uh kind of plummeting ahead you know going ahead in your own career but what do we need to do to kind of have more women think that much more large about their ambitions i feel there's a lot of indian men who do and again there's a flip side to that a lot of indian men put pressure on themselves about you know oh i need to be the provider etc etc but uh in saying that a lot of indian men put lots of pressure on themselves to aim really far and for some reason you just don't see that culture in indian women and i'm sure society has something to do with it so what is that why why is this happening why is there such a small number of women in the indian workforce must understand there's a great still bias against a woman and where's the bias the bias is in the homes and the bias is a lot in the mother and the


the bias is a lot in the mother and the father it starts with parenting you see in my case it was totally the opposite it was totally the opposite it was saying you got to be sky's the limit my father is to say your sky is the limit and you and you used to say you are life is not an incline you either go up or you come down kiran i continue to climb the stairs because i know if the moment i stop i will i will you cannot on a staircase be static you see either you come down or you go up right that was his message but here i'm telling you the bias begins with homes what messaging is being given by the parents as they groom their children and the way they grow up boys and girls that's where the bias is what kind of language they're using for their daughters to why doesn't she say that mother parents don't say that why don't they also say you will carry forward our our family name see so why the bias is


our our family name see so why the bias is in the home then the kind of quality education the kind of openness environment the kind of grooming of shared home why is the boy not trained to share homes home responsibilities along with the girl along with the system the biases in the home right then the best of investment in education why is more investment given into the boy because they feel the boy is the son is the security whereas the man woman is a migrant i'm using the word migrant again and again because this is where this so why have you still not woman been given equal property rights even when there's landed property why why is she being deprived so therefore i think then the way they marry then when they talk they exist the uh the urgency or the hurry to marry the girl so that she vacates the home and leaves the home for the son to and the daughter-in-law to come in these are biases in the family before you go into the career the girl in growing up


you go into the career the girl in growing up is suffering of serious bias in the houses till now i had none they have all these biases that's why this five or ten percent it's others who and those who broken through the five 10 12 15 percent by now and those the credit goes to the family to a large percentage and then also to the to the girls who broke free or and they were inspired by their education by the nbas they did or the engineering they did or the medical colleges they did right they broke through all the media the inspiration we all people became inspiration for them so they took inspiration from around around and they broke free the third is parenting their parenting is never shared and it holds back that woman back again why is parenting not taught equally why because they don't see it happening in the house so the woman is losing out all that she's earned is going to go kaput the moment she becomes motherhood she's mother moment she's a mother


becomes motherhood she's mother moment she's a mother the marriage changes her motherhood changes her so the 1m second and third money changes her because she's if she's not economically self-reliant she's dependent on the husband or after all the graduation you know some women even make a blunder they're going for joint accounts they start making joint accounts our whatever i'm earning now we have a joint account and now she starts asking can i do it wrong can i withdraw my god this is not the grooming that's the grooming which has not happened when she was growing up to be trained in financial independence to be trained to be equally capable with offer and be to be an asset to us to be self-reliant i think the word is self-reliant self-dependent and then learn interdependence not dependence you can learn interdependence but do not learn dependence you see so i think this is the grooming you i'm answering your question the seeds of bias are sown by the parents so if you want to


are sown by the parents so if you want to change you need to change mothering you need to change fathering you need change parenting and you also need better teachers who keep grooming but teachers come later the kind of impact homes make grandparents make elders make on the child every day it's a drop by drop by drop and if she's continued to get a feeling that she's not equal or she doesn't have the same capability or she's not been able to going to be to be as equal or as and as secure as independent and confident as my brother or if there's a similar business see you have very uh rare experiences of a rare or oppo situations where the companies are also now being headed by the daughters you have ready brothers you see ready apollo is a very rare institution where all sisters are leading the apollo hospital all sisters the ready sisters because of the father or is it because they didn't have a brother i don't know that but all sisters are leading the


don't know that but all sisters are leading the apollo chain credit goes to the parents so you see if you go back we and nobody is taught parenting in the in uh anywhere in the world you just become a mother you just become a father and then you start treating you don't you're not trained there's no pre-marital there's no grooming what is this to be parents that's the key yeah uh you you know you actually covered a lot of my further questions that i was gonna ask you attached to this honestly but i have some stuff to ask and still kind of discuss this topic with you uh so i spoke about the tangent i got from the entrepreneur who was questioning you know that why are there fewer women in the workforce and i think his blame was towards indian society and all that that's fair and that got me thinking that no what's the actual source of the blame then i had a conversation with my mom on this podcast and my mother told


my mom on this podcast and my mother told me that when i was born she had to take a step back from her career consciously and that time i thought okay cool thank you mom i appreciate your sacrifice but over time the obvious question was why didn't my dad take a step back somewhere then i'm grateful that he didn't because then he gave me the life that i lived out you know and this said that yes there's definitely some role of parenting that actually uh kind of finds its way into indian society and pulls back a lot a lot of women so the actual key here is to train men in fatherhood and for me the second key and this has come from a conversation i've had with a korean citizen someone from south korea who was talking about his own parents so this man was about 40 years old and his parents are probably 80 years old now and he said that when his parents were growing up south korea was a very poor country and they got


korea was a very poor country and they got independence around the time we got independence but the way that country has economically grown it's crazy and women are a big part of the workforce there and the part of their hard power the soft power all that so he said that the key is we have a culture of getting married very late in life like we we grow emotionally we grow our iq eq sq up till the age of 35 then we know what we want in a partner and then we go for marriage therefore that 40 year old man can be a better father to a 5 year old son than say a 30 year old man who's got to kind of establish his career has the pressure of earning money and then that kind of affects the marriage as well i feel the key for me is delaying marriage and kind of telling more indians to delay marriage don't get married at 23 don't get mad at 26 if you can at least delay it till like your early 30s i think


delay it till like your early 30s i think that's the key um but what do you think absolutely do you know one m changes the woman it's money how she deals with money second m which changes a woman is marriage all right that's manageable all right as well the third which dramatically changes her life is motherhood what their she now biologically yes she slips back because biologically it takes a toll on her body it takes toll on her time it takes a toll on her energy it takes a toll on her health and if she's young if she's young below 20 it takes a heavy toll right i'm glad that the marriage is age is being considered to be but now becoming 21 minimal it's absolutely because 18 used to become even 16 right so if even if we make it 21 it will still be 20 around 19 you'll see this but the point is is good why because now the woman will now have seen the world around maybe learned the skill learned the economy of


around maybe learned the skill learned the economy of scales etc and maybe learned about what is sexuality what is what is motherhood about she'll have become more trained and educated and little skilled little more self-reliant right but still the point is even if she's killed she knows how to manage the money she's now employed but she's mother now who manages the child is there a planned child did the did the father and the mother together think through think through what's going to happen to her career why because the workplaces do not provide any support our social systems do not provide any child care support there is no child care support in our in our major companies in our workplaces and in our neighborhoods and an environment there is no child care support and what happens if she has family support yet and family also becomes a dependent if there is elder care so she is a nurse in the house she's a wife in the house she's a mother in the house and she's a work person outside


mother in the house and she's a work person outside she becomes four in one earlier she was a wife and maybe nurse in the house now she's a wife she's a nurse she's a mother and she's also employed and she needs the money now but who is helping her in the house nobody because that bias hadn't been uh broken the boy hasn't been made to grow up to say look if you are a father you have an equal role to play manage the home equally manage your parents equally just as your wife doesn't get to lose her job nobody does this prior contracting and discussion before motherhood before parenthood nobody does that see there's nobody and then the where are the companies which provide uh family support or after school care because now the child needs to be dropped and picked up who gives aftercare to nannies we don't have a nanny support we don't have trained nani support do you know there's a huge need just as every office needs security today every working woman or every


every office needs security today every working woman or every working parents need nani support but where are the nannies are we doing any trained nannies trained nannies who can be paid and compensated or be well qualified and well provided for there's no nanny support credible nanny support if it's a boy you need a boy and if it's a girl child you need a girl is there a nanny support a working woman naturally would drop out of work so the employer knows they're going to lose in fact it's because of covet you have had women continuing to work from home right otherwise they would have dropped out that's why women do you know what happened with my life moment i became a mother i suddenly realized my god where my my daughter who looks after my daughter i can't leave her to a male male orderly i had to get a nanny transported from amritsar but that again wasn't enough i requested my parents mommy why are you living all alone in amritsar why because we were all


all alone in amritsar why because we were all such a close-knit family can you please come over to delhi we can all live together because you know i never wanted to be a migrant let's all stay together right and guess what thank god my in-laws no question of the opposing the fact that how can parents come and live with you it's my home it's our home so it became our home the home became open for my mother-in-law and my own mother sometimes i had both the mothers taking care of my child so it became intergenerational support how many women are fortunate to have mothers at home how many working women highly qualified reaching the top have this kind of nanny credible nanny support see unless a working woman of let's say parents parents realize that mother parenting means somebody's career time lost how do you regain because the woman to jump back i think she loses out so much career-wise compared to the men so i think that's not trot that's not talked that's not


that's not trot that's not talked that's not discussed when we are talking about marriages we're looking for i'm about to be a mother i'm pregnant and i'm gonna have we gonna have a baby we have shower butts but what happens after who's gonna lose the job who's gonna well some women would would happily like to skip this skit these are all personal choices i'm saying everybody have their own likes preferences and feelings about i'm against or for i'm just talking to your limitations where she's looking for support does it exist we need nani care support we need corporate family care support we need after school corporate support we need all these support and we need intergenerational living together at the moment we're going more towards single family parents living under but dude we don't realize what a strength they are if the elders are at home for the grandchild it's a big support so i think these are unaddressed issues and they are at the moment the real ish challenges


and they are at the moment the real ish challenges before a working woman or working parents and the men are still to realize the what it is to nurture a baby and play an equal role in father some are some are i'm not saying all i'm not generalizing anything but this is the need of the art so i'm answering your question why five percent white and why don't they make it to the top of the ladder because they drop out for their children because there's nobody else to take care of no business corporate support no social support no networking support no international generational support where do they go where do the children go children need mommy children need mommy they need daddy but they need mommy first always mommy when it's in pain mommy when they want something daddy they need both but they need money but mommy can't be all the time in the workplace so she's last starts making part time so that starts skipping i think these are the social challenges which working women who want


these are the social challenges which working women who want to make it to the top of the world talking this society needs to address these issues and we must go in for a very good carder of child care trend which and if they're paid for by the company or if they are able to be provided for i think we need it very badly if possibly they also encourage intergenerational support and even geriatric care even elder care when they have medical issues who takes care it's only the wife normally who goes and takes care of the hot she again loses out on work so we need even elder care so these are the challenges for a working woman providing a having support system in elder care having home care even housekeeping even housekeeping so i think these are the challenges which actually hold pull her back to back to her traditional role of housekeeping or homemaking ma'am for me the solution is probably three pronged the first is because there's genuinely a demand for these kind of businesses there has to be


demand for these kind of businesses there has to be some kind of entrepreneurial angle around child care and generally childhood i feel there's a lot of businesses out there that can be built around people having children that don't exist in india yet so it's in the indian entrepreneurs turn you know people watch shark tank india and all this but look at a child's life and figure where you can help and make the life easier for the parents the second obviously is education of all sorts like the more people get educated you know even if it's as simple as teaching someone a second language teaching everybody english suddenly they'll be exposed to education and perspectives from across the globe you know so maybe the second one is education but the primary game changer for me and i'm i'm speaking from my own career experience i've had a six-year career in the field of content i've seen our mindsets of people have changed so it makes me think that from a macro view i want to see how far


from a macro view i want to see how far the internet gets into the country and things like this conversations like this podcast now this will reach some woman somewhere who'll have like a tiny shift in her perspective in terms of no i'd rather maybe it's a young girl who's getting ready to get married she's on the arranged marriage circuit she'll ask the right questions to the possible guys that she's meeting and look for a guy who is into the concept of fatherhood who is emotionally stable you know ma'am and the the rebuttal too i won't call it a rebuttal but i do want to chip in and say that from the perspective of men men are not even emotionally aware of themselves most men like we had an army major today we had a film director today and we spoke about men's emotions and these guys accomplished people like on the show we recorded with them today but somewhere there's so many questions about our own emotional sensibilities because there is a certain


own emotional sensibilities because there is a certain amount of very heavy pressure put on indian men to provide for the family since we're like four years old we're told that if you don't study you're gonna become nothing in life no one's gonna marry you and you're gonna turn into you know something horrible so every indian man deals with a crazy amount of career pressure which is there even in men from other countries but not as much as it's on indian men so i think some fundamental shift needs to happen which is only going to happen through content through maybe even like culture you know movies coming out about these topics tares i mean but had a direct impact on my childhood it changed my relationship with my parents i used to have adhd as a kid so you know my teachers used to complain about me that this kid is like too hypo but my parents started understanding that situation better and just let me be so sometimes movies can really kind of shift culture which brings me


movies can really kind of shift culture which brings me to the next question and this is not me asking you about you is asking you about me i need advice in life at this stage because i feel like um you know we've been done with money uh like money is all right and i think i'm going in the right direction when it comes to money but often now that damaged indian boy inside me questions himself about legacy so i want to ask you about this concept of legacy ma'am like how do you look at your own legacy do you look at it as something you wished for early on in your career how do you look at it now like what how do you look back at your life would you change anything uh do you still have uh you know even deeper say career ambitions i'm trying to wrap my head around this concept of legacy because it's honestly been troubling me because of the narratives that i've been fed from the world of sports you know build your legacy go kill it there should


you know build your legacy go kill it there should be movies made about you but even that puts pressure on you as a man or a woman or whatever you are so uh what's your take on legacy ma'am i think i had more potential to administer and serve and give better uh original ideas in governance i could have been used better i could have been used more i had that in me maybe i was born with it or i was blessed with it or i nurtured it my department the indian police service has not fully fully realized my potential they kept dumping me into positions it is my own dent and determination which made me kept emerging out of it let me give you an example even the position of deputy commissioner police traffic was a dump nobody was going there it went during during ninth asian games i was just told one day you got to do it and that's it it was just an year and a half i didn't know anything about the roads i knew it's going to


anything about the roads i knew it's going to be a waterloo because i how would i handle entire delhi for traffic right it was a dump for me but you know because people were not willing to take that risk but after i left it became a very prestigious position to be in but the point is but after i'd accomplished a lot in the asian games traffic management i was moved away immediately sent away instead of realizing and allowing me to now take the whole system forward and systemize it i was shunted never realized to put systems in place then again my draft uh crime prevention asia i moment i was blooming i was putting systems in place i was shunted out then there was no place for me nine months there was no work for me i was sent to the ig prison because nobody was going as inspector general president nobody it was lying vacant when i was being um sent there was no work for me they said there's no work finished so i was nine months being


there's no work finished so i was nine months being paid one day the accountant said i can't pay her more unless you give her work so promptly in order came posted as inspector general prisons because what did you happen it was a dump but today it's a it's a it's a marking place for the next police commissioner of delhi it's now such a va such a uh a position of huge value i was dumped but what happened from that we emerged again it was an emergence it was sure determined then i was overlooked to be a police commissioner of delhi i was the you delhi india world over would have had a first woman police commissioner in the world i would have gone in by merit i was on merit five open so here again i was excluded they never realized my potential we were put systems in place of crime prevention and my strength was crime prevention that's why i succeeded in uh prisons because i trusted lee believed in crime prevention it's


because i trusted lee believed in crime prevention it's a maxis award which highlighted the whole work otherwise it for me it was a dump but being overlooked to be a police commissioner of delhi when i had the seniority and my somebody who was next junior four years junior he even if i'd done my two years he could have got a ten year of two years but it wasn't it was a now get her out why because i was not the part of the club i was not part of the boys club that boys club see so i was isolated i didn't have the political support i was out i was told go and meet so and so then you will consider you i said i don't meet you are the union home minister sir you are the you are the end of the service you are the one who has to decide i shall not go anywhere else i did not what happened i was overlooked the news came at 10 pm at television at night to avoid why


at 10 pm at television at night to avoid why police commissioner of delhi a point order came at 10 o'clock at night to make news on television at night so it doesn't make news during the day next year this news was stale i was overlooked what did i do self-respecting self-respecting totally secure i put in my papers and i took early retirement why did i why did the indian police service lose my very valuable another two years of my service had i been the police commissioner of delhi i would have put lots of systems in place which i had experimented with and succeeded in my earlier assignments so i think this is what do you know the only time to be honest with you when i've realized my potential is as left in governor puducherry and i was given full five years to work first time in my career ranveer in my 40 30 less than 30 years or so i have had a posting where i fitted like a tea and i was given on merit


like a tea and i was given on merit and i was trusted to go and serve and then nobody interfered and look the kind of work we could create we could turn puducherry around we could document we could totally uh made it make a new model that once one side passed that the political hostility and the western units came in the way that's different but the fact is i was picked up by the prime minister himself given me an opportunity i'm not i'm not praising him it's not a politically it's a i'm telling you a sequence first time in my life i was called when i left the service when i left the service i was called would you like to go and work there i said yes sir first time in my life i asked myself i'm even being asked would you like to go there otherwise i've only been dumped here dumped here you won't believe it i even had a police delhi police assignment which had no work so when i asked my joint commission


had no work so when i asked my joint commission then commissioner sir you hosted me a joint commissioner of policy and planning can you tell me what is the policy in planning he said you got a car you got an office you got a secretary i said yes he says that's all go i said then all right sir here's my study leave i want to go back to my um i want to now go by my nehru scholarship i'd achieved a nehru scholarship and i went and wrote a book the point here is my if you're asking me my legacy i think the indian police service my delhi police department has under utilized me in my this life it is i who kept emerging out of postings which were considered as low end low end when i should have been posted as joint commissioner of ranges they were sending me to some other back backyard postings so they but the point here is the only way as i said the uh last assignment which is the left and


said the uh last assignment which is the left and governor puducherry has been exceedingly fulfilling and to me that's my legacy because i've documented this work in my book called fearless governance i've done it as a sense of duty conscientiousness because the work was so collectively successful despite all odds that i felt it my duty to do justice to the historical documentation and that's why this book has been written fearless governance and you know it's not it's not for selling i'm sharing my soft copy everywhere saying please read because i'm looking for grooming of leadership the young upsc the young civil servants the young should read what's what leadership is all about where they can do it all so this is my legacy you know i i hear you and one i'm very honored that you're using our platform to express yourself this way because i don't see it with people in positions of power like yourself you know people don't talk so openly and this is one of


don't talk so openly and this is one of those trends of women that you have showcased that you're okay putting your vulnerabilities out there uh i also wish to ask you and this is slightly you could call it from a spiritual perspective how should one look at legacy because that's the big question in my head legacy as a concept what is that for you because uh we had we had a sick spiritual leader uh sat he said that uh you know spiritual growth is all about egoless service so that was that was the outcome of that podcast for me and uh that really got me questioning about my own legacy that why am i putting so much pressure on myself about legacy because therefore i'm putting pressure on myself about my own ego so what's your take on legacy generally as a concept also my take on is very simple i have not done anything for legacy i have only worked one day at a time to be honest to what i was before consciously conscientiously doing my duty and


was before consciously conscientiously doing my duty and doing give it my all not my best give it my all now if that leaves a legacy so be it but i have not ever performed any duty i've documented this book my puducherry work i've documented not for legacy but to do justice to the collaborative teamwork which we could achieve it is to do justice otherwise who will tell you the story so it's not a legacy it's who will tell you the story if i don't tell you then who will tell you the story i didn't want to die with that story in myself i wanted to live it so it's beyond me the story will live so that puducherry can always have this is the way we can turn things around if public servants do their duty honestly if politicians deliver for what they've been voted for india will never suffer good governance it will always have good governance it will never suffer them suffer wrong people if they all that's what i've written


wrong people if they all that's what i've written in the book is what are the key things whatever i said in the legacy if you say legacy what is it that i'm trying to promote through the book be visible officers politicians be visible be true to what you've been voted for or you've been appointed for so i've been looking for appointed and the voter appointed and nominated or elected appointed and elected what are your responsibilities you may have your needs but don't forget the reason for which you've been appointed and elected once you do not forget the purpose of it whatever your other needs are the government the indian indian people will never suffer bad governance they'll never ever suffer they will always have good governance the money which will be which is budgeted for them will always remain for the common man for which it is meant and not get diverted today the money has been protected a lot from getting diverted thanks to direct bank transfers and i had a lot of opposition to implement direct