Archana Panda, social auditor for industries and MBA student at 50, has a lot of stories to share as an Indian woman brought up in the 1970s and 80s. Her journey, as a daughter of a government employee and a teacher, as a woman from a family in Haryana, and as a Bengaluru University alumnus, is an inspiration to girls and women across all ages.
As a child, Archana moved with her parents and two siblings to Ranchi. She describes herself as a carefree child, whose mother, despite being a teacher in the school she went to, couldn’t inculcate the studious attitude in her. Her father was an employee in the Central Silk Board and had been transferred to Mysore when Archana was about 9. For a year, while her father explored schooling and other amenities in Mysore, Archana attended the primary school after moving to the village of Hassanpur.
At Hassanpur, she received time and guidance from her mother, and for the first time in ever, she started showing an aptitude for studying, and received a scholarship. She recollects that the school principal who had earlier been hesitant to admit her into the school, was very disappointed to lose a “bright child” like her when Archana and her family moved to Mysore.
Moving to Mysore provided its own set of challenges, from being admitted to an English medium school while Archana and her siblings always had been to Hindi medium schools; to learning to speak, read, and write Kannada as a second language. It took more than a year for Archana to grasp the essence of English as a language, though she recollects she taught herself Kannada by transliterating sentences into Hindi.
Archana had to yet again, move places (this time she went to Bengaluru) and switch schools, and due to a lack of awareness in the family, she was accidentally admitted to an I.C.S.E. curriculum. She however, rose up to the challenge of an unfamiliar curriculum and gave all she got and made it past the 10th grade. During her time in the I.C.S.E. curriculum, she remembered how much she loved English literature (she studied Julius Caesar as a part of her coursework), and chemistry.
After her 10th grade, she was inspired by her peers to take up the science stream and study physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology. Because of her performance in I.C.S.E., she did not have much trouble making it to the Jyotiniwas College in Bengaluru. Two years later, she appeared for the KCET, and after an year, she started studying Engineering at the Dayanand Sagar College, Bengaluru.
In 1992, during her first year of engineering, Archana lost her father. This had a profound impact on her since she credited her father for her growth as a person, especially her academic growth. She is grateful to him for not discriminating between his son and three daughters on the grounds of their gender, to not marry her off at a young age (as it was customary for north Indian parents to do in those days) and let her continue with her academic ventures, and to timely move them to an English-speaking society, to an environment where she could actually perform academically well.
On the advice of her mother and sisters, who were worried she wouldn’t be safe continuing in core engineering branches, Archana decided to take up Industrial and Managerial Engineering. She recalls that her class began with 66 boys and 6 girls, herself included. However, from welding in workshops to taking tours of industry, Archana never shied away from tasks that were considered too manly for a woman in those days. In fact, she was pretty sure she wanted to work in an industrial environment after graduating, and the homely duties expected of a woman in the 1990s’ India never occurred to her.
In 1996, for her mother to be close to the rest of the family, Archana, her mother and siblings, moved to Faridabad in Haryana, where she looked for a job as a female industrial engineering graduate. She faced a cultural shock in the Northern Indian mindset, wherein she was criticized for choosing a degree “for men”, and was questioned on not opting for a more feminine career. She remembers interviewers asking her why she didn’t choose to become a teacher or a receptionist. Thanks to her proficiency in English and her graduate, she finally found a job at Maharani Paints ltd., Faridabad, where she met her future husband (whom she married in 1999).
Unlike how it may appear to most, marriage did not mean “settling down” for Archana. Owing to her husband’s frequent location changes in his career, she relocated with him at every step, even if it meant changing jobs. After her daughter was born in 2002, she took a break from her career for two years.
Archana credits her family for helping her resume and advance in her career. Her husband helped her and informed her about an opportunity to be an auditor at Bureau Veritas. It demanded her to frequently travel to industries across the country, for which she thanked her daughter for putting up with babysitters for long hours for several years.
Archana is currently a senior accreditation auditor for Social Accountability and Accreditation Services (SAAS) and is pursuing her MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur.
She believes in gender being independent of career choices and encourages women to pursue their dreams without worrying about their choice being “gender-appropriate”. She is grateful to her parents for never making her and her sisters feel different just on the basis of being girls, and encourages women struggling with stereotypes rooted in their families, to try and convince them otherwise, but never, ever stop chasing their dreams.
Archana also advises girls and women to choose a relationship or a spouse with the better half being encouraging and supportive of their choices, and find people who do not judge the woman for being career-oriented, or seeking financial independence. She also advises women to plan wisely before deciding to have children, so that the responsibility of upbringing does not interfere with her career.