TURNING DEFICIT TO DIVIDEND

 Sharmila Mona Sinha was the third daughter.

In a society where the arrival of a son was treated as family dividend and another daughter as deficit, she absorbed the message early. She wanted to do something about it.                        She recalls,"I wanted to be a boy and do what boys did."

Last week, she entered the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York - the cradle of the American Women's Right Movement.

She is the second woman of Indian origin to receive the honour after Indra Nui, former  CEO,Pepsico. 

She absorbed from her grandmother who showed her that challenging status quo was not alien to her family - the grandmother had helped to organise women during India's freedom movement.

She was in the corporate world after graduating in Economics from Smith College in Massachusetts and after an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Over time, Sinha began wondering whether the tools she had acquired in business could be deployed for a different kind of return. Rather than abandoning the language of capital, management and organisational efficiency, she brought it into philanthropy and social change.

She now works for women. She toils to eliminate discriminating laws affecting women and girls.

Her story offers an Indian lesson about the evolution of feminism. Her Hall of Fame induction is more than another accolade for a prominent philanthropist. It is a long distance answer to the question that confronted the girl in Calcutta. 

What might that "wrong" daughter become, if nobody put a ceiling on her? 

Four decades later, the answer is inscribed in the National Women's Hall of Fame.

The Times of India 05.10.2026