Vinod Rastogi is our fellow from South Bangalore, Karnataka.

Although she's spent her entire childhood in North India, after moving to Bangalore 16 years ago, she has found another home here. She has been a really active student throughout her school and college. She loved to participate in extracurricular activities, especially debating on various cultural and social issues. Later on, she went on to do Masters in Business Administration and English Literature, together with a doctorate in MBA (Advertisement and Strategic Management). She has been an ardent follower of Indian National Congress. She says, “I don't know what connection this is, but I felt utterly pained at the demise of leaders like Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi because they were someone I used to look up to while I was studying in Delhi.”

She also mentions that she likes the party because the leaders are educated and learned politicians. “I heard there's a fellowship going on for women. I checked the name and knew right away that this is something I want to do.” She liked the very idea of women owning the political space. She mentioned, “I didn't join in just for a social cause. I take this as a job because we no longer need just empowerment but action.”

She’s currently Managing Director at International School of Management Sciences. Even after holding that position for the past 13 years, she has come across a lot of instances of discrimination against women. The first being the discrimination during the selection process, women are rejected based on unreasonable grounds such as, child and family responsibilities. Next, she says, is the pay parity at every level. She has faced this even after working equally good as her male counterparts. She believes that things won’t change unless and until there’s a cerebral equality. Not just through a few initiatives, but people really need to understand why there is a need for equality. She says that she often sees working women getting up early even on weekends and taking their kids out to play, grocery shopping and cleaning their homes whereas men just relax on those days. She questions this kind of equality. “The family is where it all starts”, she added.

She not only asserts such things but has also worked upon them. She used to work as a dean at a delhi-based educational group- IILM. She changed the faculty requirement to 50% being women because she feels that the compassion and resilience which women bring is necessary in an educational space. She also worked to solve the problems faced by educational institutions in south bangalore like toilets and sanitation.

She says, “After joining the fellowship, I have become more open-minded and have realised that cursing politicians for everything that’s going wrong won’t help. Someone has to get to the ground. The Indira fellowship has given me a vision and channelized my energy in the right direction.”