Iron-willed woman: Sudha Murthy

Sudha Murthy, an extremely intelligent woman and well known for her soberness, realistic and practical outlook, epitomizes all these aspects. As the chairperson of Infosys, one of the most prominent IT companies in India, she is also an entrepreneur, philanthropist and writer. The largely gender-biased environment in the country made her refuse to stay on the sidelines.

Sudha Murthy was born in Shiggaon, a village in Karnataka, on 19th August 1950 to Vimala Kulkarni and Dr. R.H Kulkarni. In addition to being a surgeon, her father is also a professor at a local university, while her mother teaches at a local school. Education — oriented thinking was common in her family. Sudha was the first woman to pursue engineering at that time, a male-dominated field from B. V. B. College of Engineering and Technology. Later, she completed a Master’s course in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Science in 1974. Due to her dedication, sincerity, and commitment, she excelled as a top student in both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

She is a pioneer in the field of education and advocates for the rights of women. Her writing a postcard to the Chairman of TELCO (known today as Tata Motors), speaking of the gender bias in recruitment, demonstrates this. As a result of her standing out, she was called for a special interview and appointed as the first female engineer of India. Her job responsibilities included redefining the organization’s job policies when she joined the firm as a Development Engineer.

In 1981, she and her husband, Narayan Murthy, co-founded Infosys, an IT company. The Infosys Foundation was then established by Murthy in 1996. She concentrated primarily on spreading awareness about poverty alleviation, public hygiene, and the importance of education in uplifting society. In addition to building houses in flood-affected areas, she also helped establish libraries and toilets. Changing the very basics would lead to major improvements in the future, she believed.

She is also a proficient author who wrote over 60 different English and Kannada books. Through her writings she conveyed many issues about real life values, explaining about personality development, having a healthy parent child-relationship and much more. She also received various awards including Padma Shri.

Sudha Murthy, once being called “Cattle Class” because of her simple dressing sense, gave a very thoughtful reply, “ People judge you by the kind of dress you wear, whether you are economically well off or not. Bright minds can be anywhere and in any kind of dress. Do not judge a person only by external things.” She being a very genuine and simple person can easily be called one of the richest women in the country but she is far from all the flaunting. She strongly believes that women should not be afraid to express themselves.

Sudha Murthy can be considered as one of the brightest minds our country can have. A benevolent, humble and extremely intelligent and generous human being, she continues and will always be an inspiration to the youth. Major learnings from her life can be that one can achieve anything they think of. It’s all about your willingness to do a particular thing and your will power. She also being the only woman to go to a male dominated college definitely faced thousands of issues but she was unstoppable. Nothing can stop you once you become iron-willed. If she can do this, definitely any one of us can do this too. It’s just a spark that should click within us.