MMA WOMEN MANAGERS’ CONVENTION 2024
In the session on the theme, ‘The Rules of Leadership,’ award-winning architect Dr. Ponni M. Concessao and Sqn Ldr Mohana Singh Jitarwal, the IAF’s First Woman Combat Fighter Pilot spoke. Ms Meera Nair, Independent Director at DBS Bank moderated a panel discussion with the speakers.
Things have changed drastically today
Dr. Ponni M. Concessao
I would like to wish each and every woman a very Happy International Women’s Week. Women like you sent Chandrayaan to the moon successfully. You are capable of just about anything and the sky is your limit. Things have changed drastically today, as society has now recognized the greatness of women’s contribution and how it helps in developing our society and making our country great. Yet, much needs to be done. A country’s GDP is dependent on the increasing participation of women in the workforce. Women are roughly 50% of India’s population but only 28% women work in the offices. The real brain power of India still languishes at home. Let me tell my story. I was the first woman undergraduate student of the prestigious National Institute of Technology in Trichy. I was the lone girl among 1000 boys. Just imagine the challenges I would have faced.
In NIT Trichy, I made lifelong friends. My husband was my senior from NIT Trichy. I studied from the best of professors who encouraged me to study abroad. I studied at Cornell University and Harvard University and worked in the best of architectural practices in the United States, where I learned two important lessons. One is the importance of gender equity to increase the GDP of a country and two, the nuances of global business. It is very important to think global, but act local.
After nearly a decade, I returned home to India with my husband Oscar to build an award-winning architectural practice, and more importantly, to be a nation builder. My alma mater, Cornell University USA has given me the title of the woman who shattered glass ceilings in India, especially in the building construction industry. I have had the distinction of being the first woman architect in Asia to build the tallest and largest Secretariat in Hyderabad.
Generate Revenue and Earn Respect
I have continuously taken the challenges head on. Fighting these challenges has made me a stronger and successful person. I believe in demolishing social conditioning, and I encourage every other woman to do so. A few decades from now, the younger generation sitting here, will be successful professionals, business women, industrialists, social workers and homemakers. It will be this powerhouse of women that will make India the next superpower on the world stage. If you are a successful revenue generator, any society will respect you and support you, and so will any man, starting from the men in your family.
As Indian women, we are lucky to have the central and state governments support all our ventures. This is a rare moment in Indian history. If India is where she is right now in the galaxy of successful nations, it’s not because of just intelligent governance, but also the tireless efforts of women workforce that have changed the economic landscape of India. The scale of what you do, doesn’t matter. But sustaining what you do in a continuous timeframe is what makes you a success. My mantra of success is: God and Country. I believe in 3Ds: Discipline, Dedication and Devotion to goals.
We completed last year the Telangana secretariat, which has 12,000 lakh square feet. We finished it in two years. It was built along sustainable lines and rated gold by the IGBC. It is the only Secretariat in India to do so. We also completed the building for the Gaganyaan Space Center which is in ISRO, Sriharikota. I was very lucky to work with the Prime Minister’s Office on this. We have done the Kalaignar Museum in Tiruvarur which has a Convention Center, Library and Museum. Our work on the International Convention Center on ECR is in progress. We are also doing one of the largest office spaces ever in South India with 30 lakh square feet. Our IT parks are all LEED or IGBC rated. I am an eclectic designer and I swing from total neoclassical to modern and I think that it is important for an architect to be so. We also have an international practice. We do all kinds of typologies and I enjoy doing it, shifting gears along the way. We’ve been lucky to win more than 190 awards.
Cracking the IAF selection and beyond
Squadron Leader Mohana Singh:
I’m a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force. I have put in eight years of service in the IAF. I have 850 hours of incident and accident-free flying, which is a big achievement. In my tenure, I have flown different sorts of platforms including Pilatas PC7 which is the training aircraft; Hawk Mark 132 and MiG 21 Bison. Probably, soon I’ll be in the Tejas cockpit as well.
I hail from Rajasthan and I am married to a wonderful man, Mr. Mohit Rajput, who is a businessman. Being the third-generation member of my family to have served in the military, I’m very thrilled to carry on the family legacy. When you hear the word fighter pilot, the image that comes to your mind maybe the Thunderbirds racing on the runway or a Rockstar, like in Top Gun Maverick, flying high performance jets, drinking beer on the weekend and driving for more and more speed. But the truth is, while the life of a fighter pilot might seem very adventurous and full of fun, a lot of planning and preparation gets into being one. Hollywood has certainly not helped us because there is a lot more to being a fighter pilot than just sporting cool sunglasses or wearing jackets full of patches. Being a fighter pilot is an attitude.
Cracking the IAF Selection
In the IAF, we have different selection boards pan India. If you pass a written exam, you will go for a service selection board wherein you have different tests and interviews. Once you clear that, there is medical and then there is a merit list. If you are lucky enough, you will end up where I am today. When I first went to the Dehradun selection board, I got screened out in the very first round. I did not understand the nuances of it. However, my grandfather who had taken me all the way from Delhi to Dehradun was quite disheartened. At that time, I never understood his disappointment. However, that attempt helped me to get a knack of working for this goal.
The day I got screened out, I made a promise to myself that if I ever get selected in the Airforce, it will be from the Dehradun selection board. As luck would have it, after four written attempts, three interviews and two different selection boards, years later, I was standing at the doors of the Air Force Academy to be a pilot.
The training was obviously tough. They train us to be a good soldier first, and then an aviator. For the first initial six months, we have combined training, which includes physical conditioning and general knowledge about the services related subjects Then we start the very first stage of what’s going to be our bread and butter of our life, namely the ‘flying.’
I remember the first time I had gone on leave after the first six months of training at the academy, during which I had lost 16 kgs. As I was standing in front of my house, my mother failed to recognize me because all she could see was my teeth. The first day I was in the aircraft hangar, I came across a quote by Leonardo da Vinci: ‘When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward. For there you have been, and there you will always long to return.’ That is the addiction you get to flying.
I understood the meaning of this quote obviously a few weeks later, when I flew my first sortie, which was exhilarating. After those first six months of flying, we undergo trifurcation wherein the board decides on allocating us to the fighter fleet or the transports or the helicopters. To be a fighter pilot, you’re supposed to be in the first 75% of the merit list and you should have the trait wherein you don’t need anybody else to judge your decisions, so you can be put inside a cockpit of a machine worth hundreds of crores. Along came the decision to open the fighter stream to women in 2016. I believe I was at the right time, at the right place and ended up being here.
It seemed difficult initially to consider a non-gender biased environment in this fraternity, wherein no pilot had ever shared a cockpit with a woman counterpart. We had our fair share of skepticism about what we would likely face. But we were totally proved wrong and it was heartening to see how the fleet embraced equality in its true sense. Our colleagues and our seniors, just like our mean machines, did not care about the gender. All that mattered was the flying skill and the competence. We used to have a fair share of being hauled up when we used to make mistakes in flying.
It has been an unstoppable journey. I am living one day at a time, because that is what we can think of. Perseverance and discipline are my two pillars. I owe a lot to these pillars and they have kept me up, even in the toughest of the situations, where I thought, I would not be able to make it.
The job of armed forces personnel is indeed demanding, mostly because there’s a lot of duty and you don’t get time for your family. There are a lot of transfers from one place to another. It requires you to be in the best of physical and mental state to perform the duty. Being a fighter pilot, you have to take decisions in split seconds. You’re all alone in the cockpit and you have to be skilled enough to execute it.
If I have to give credit to someone for what I have achieved till date, it will be to my family, for their faith in me and never-ending support. When I chose to take the road that was less travelled, IAF-the organization to which I belong, made it possible for me to follow my passion.
Panel Discussions:
Meera Nair: Dr. Ponni, how did you manage your social conditioning and break the glass ceiling? What advice do you have for the younger generation?
Dr Ponni: When I was in Church Park, doing eighth standard at 13 or 14 years old, I had a roadmap in my mind. I simply wanted to be a nation builder. I wanted to pick a profession that I would excel in. My dad was a civil engineer in the Indian railways and I had an affinity towards architecture. So I chose architecture.
You may have aspirations; plans and grand ideas of what life has for you. But as you get into them, you may hit roadblocks. For example, in NIT Trichy, I went to pay my fees. But they told me that they don’t take girls. It was such a terrible thing for me, because I rejected all other admissions and went to NIT Trichy. My mom was planning to marry me off when I was just 16 or 17 years old. So this was a do or die situation.
I insisted on meeting the principal and marched into his huge chambers. He was a fabulous guy but an intimidating one. He refused to admit me. I said that a government college is duty bound to give me education and the Constitution talks of equal opportunities for both men and women. That includes education. He didn’t like it at all and shouted me down. I didn’t care. I threatened to take legal action. I was just 16 years old but had a great resolve. At last, he was very kind and took me in. He became my friend and mentor.
There will be roadblocks, but there’s always a way around it. You have to build a resolve to get to where you want to go. I wanted to study abroad because I was going to be a nation builder and I benchmarked the best of democracies and I found that US was the go-to country. Luckily, from NIT Trichy, 90% of the students go abroad. Cornell was also not easy. I was the first Indian woman in my department for a long time.
We have casteism in India. We have similar flaws in international arena also. There is a bit of racism and gender bias. Don’t think that the US is a fabulous place and that you can just about do everything. You have issues there. We are all human beings. We are supposed to fight them out. When somebody in your family tells you that because you’re a girl, you’re only supposed to get married and have a family, just say no. If you have a roadmap in your head, if you have a plan, just go ahead. The world has changed today. People are more pro-women and the men are out there to support us. Do not believe in social conditioning. Never listen to someone who says no. Think positive. I think that’s what helped me.
Meera Nair: Mohana, tell us how your routine day looks like. How do you manage your work life balance? Who supports you?
The starting of my day depends upon the sunrise. We get into the canopy when it’s dark and get out to go back home when it’s dark. We never get to see the sun. Once we cribbed about our routine and the commanding officer said, “Buddy, I can’t change the time the sun rises and sets.” It is tedious. It all depends on the mission, the planning and the schedule. A fighter pilot is not just supposed to do flying. We have to prepare for the missions and do secondary jobs as well. There’ll be a lot of other responsibilities on us and we have to do them. There is no spare time for us. There are no weekends, something that my husband complains a lot about. There are planned leaves; however, they don’t go as planned.
Being a part of IAF, the organization makes sure that we are trained to handle that amount of stress and groomed in a manner where we are nice and able to handle the personal and work life balance ratio. But not withstanding that, an understanding partner and an understanding family is of utmost importance. My husband understands my demands. He is not demanding though. I give a fair share of credit to him and to my family for making my career work out well.
Meera Nair: As a woman architect, how did you handle the Secretariat Project?
Dr Ponni: It was really fantastic experience for me. But I can tell you that the Telangana State Secretariat was only a midsized project for us. The largest project we have done is 40 lakh square feet and this was just 12 lakh square feet. The complexity of the project was in executing it in the middle of COVID and in dealing with a government setup. The government is a very good institution, but not very kind to women, especially in building construction. They’re so used to dealing with men. It helps to have a male partner around.
I was very lucky to have a very understanding chief minister and one who empowered women. He supported me throughout. The department was hostile though. We worked with Shapoorji Pallonji, one of the greatest construction firms, but they were not used to dealing with women. Of course, these things do happen. ISRO is great government institution to deal with. I made it a point to drive that it was my design. If you have a great client, like the former AP Chief Minister, things can fall in place.
During COVID, our labourers ran away. The material was not available as we sourced many materials from China or Europe or elsewhere. That taught me a very important lesson about making in India. You have to think global, but act local. Always depend on local materials and local labour. I found that in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, there is a lot of gender equity that happens in government and local communities. I’m sure things will get a lot better over a period of time.
Meera Nair: Your cockpit is air conditioned but I read that it can get extremely warm. How do you manage your fitness?
Mohana Singh: We do fly in an air-conditioned cockpit. The AC works only once if you’re above two kilometers of height. Till the time you reach two kilometers, you would have already sweated out a bucket.
The health is very important for a fighter pilot. You’re supposed to have a medical category called A1G1- that is the highest category of fitness in air as well as on ground. Even if you have the slightest of cold or broken a nail, or you’re depressed, then you must not enter the cockpit. That is a rule that we abide by. It is important that you need to be in the right state to sit inside the cockpit. Once you are inside that cockpit and close the canopy, the world outside is shut out.
To maintain the fitness level, everyone has their personal preferences. Some do yoga and some go to gym. We generally maintain our weight. Every year, we have our medical examinations, based on which they decide our category and if we are fit to fly or not. While joining IAF, I convinced my parents by saying that in case anything goes wrong, at least, I have an ejection seat. So they agreed to let me join the IAF.
