Shambhobi Bhattacharya — Interview #5
Shambhobi Bhattacharya graduated from IIT Kharagpur with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. She currently works at Hindustan Unilever Limited after receiving a pre-placement offer from the company. In the course of her 4 years of college, she was involved in a lot of societies like WTMS and TDS along with being a part of Spring Fest. She is also a fine tennis player and was part of Inter IIT Tennis team. She is extremely talented and has proved that it is possible to be a master of various things, which are seemingly unrelated to each other!
What motivated you to pursue a career in Mechanical Engineering?
Initially, I chose Physics since I did not like the engineering departments my JEE rank was able to get me into. After my first year, on getting an opportunity of a department change, Mechanical was pretty much my first option among what I would get — because firstly having liked Physics and Maths, it seemed like a good culmination of the two sciences and also growing up with my dad, who is a mechanical engineer, the subject was a little more familiar to me. In addition, I did ponder on the fact that it is a very touch-and-feel application oriented subject where you design and make objects.
Mechanical Engineering is considered to be the road less taken by girls. Why do you think this is the case? What advice would you like to give to girls who want to pursue Mechanical Engineering?
Mechanical Engg somehow has a brute force image attached to it, as if it is a man’s job, it does not come naturally to women. It is a perception that has been there for a while and hence has triggered choices of women being inclined to other engineering fields. Added to that are perceptions of jobs being scarce for women, or too physically challenging, too skewed sex ratios in the workplaces etc. Advice to girls to pursue mechanical engg is basically if you really want to, there is nothing to stop you from doing it. There is no question of it being a physically challenging work; I mean if there is physical challenge that has no correlation with a woman doing it or a man. At least today, many would agree with me on that. In addition, with the current state of affairs with technology and how it has transformed the workplace with every other branch of engineering, mechanical engineering also has emerged in terms of sort of white-collar cerebral jobs, which require deep analytical and computing skills and inclination. Women are eminently suited to function in such environs I would think.
You were involved in a lot of societies and Spring Fest. How did they help in shaping your personality?
Being part of organisations and societies in KGP taught me working with diverse teams, separating personal relationships and judgement of people from professional work. We did understand how our own personal success is not as important as for the team to succeed. It helped me stretch my imagination, to work without a problem statement, to create my own tasks and deadlines and to stick to it. It taught me to take failures in a positive flair, how you really need to step up, dust your knees and move on after a fall. Going out of your comfort zone matters and also it does not always mean that you’re going to like your job, but for the bigger picture you better buckle up and do it. I am glad I did take up these activities and experienced what would a world of good to my development as an individual with depth and breadth.
Being a part of Spring Fest, you must have had a lot of managerial responsibilities. Did you feel any difference in behavior of your peers towards you (in terms of sharing responsibilities)?
The organisations that I’ve worked in, in terms of gender I have not seen any discrimination whatsoever and I fear that could also really be because of my upbringing where I’ve never perceived anything around me where I’m being treated different being a female. However, not from a Spring Fest point of view, an inherent casual sexism does exist in the campus and does cripple down to work as well. Examples of the usual, it is easy for a girl to get into societies or a female athlete/player in the Inter IIT team might not really be that good or women must be bad engineers, the generalization of such statements is something to ponder upon. A lot of this is a result of the impact of sex ratio present combined with societal ignorance. It is so imbibed in our day-to-day lives that even we women think its fine to digest a remark towards us and we let it be in our close friend circles.
If given administrative powers, one rule you would want to change at IIT KGP?
Throughout my time in KGP, I’ve heard a lot of discussions, open house events, seminars and meetings, and mails from our top administrators surrounding this; but I’ve hardly seen proper corrective action taken clinically against an erroneous teacher who indulges in wrong practices — be it academic or non-academic. Similar to the guidelines regarding actions of students, the dos and the don’ts, we should be informed of the same (like a code of conduct) regarding a teacher so that one cannot be pressurized by the seniority of post to come forward and report a wrong action. I believe today such code of conduct documents should be on the Institute website and students should be sensitized about it when they enter the institute. There are multiple instances where a student has been harassed deeply by a teacher and she has not been able to do anything about it because of the absence of a proper open platform to voice concerns and really refer to the code of conduct (available publicly) and state pointedly what is wrong to be wrong. It’s quite a helpless situation prevailing currently considering the rules and the general atmosphere present right now. Until we create an atmosphere of fearlessness among the students with respect to reporting an incident in confidence where there is no impact of that reporting on the academic assessment of the student which would be done among others by the individual against whom the allegations are being made. Make no mistake here — IIT Kgp has a very large number of excellent teachers in all respects, but the governance must take care of the situation clinically when a misdeed occurs where the teacher is truly guilty. Most go unreported today. That’s not conducive to a respectable situation.
How different does life get once you graduate from KGP? What difference in attitude towards women did you observe after graduating from Kgp?
For what I’ve gone through, graduating from KGP really pushes you to start thinking about the kind of life you want to lead. Not just the job you want to do, but what kind of a lifestyle you would like, what are your set of aesthetics, beliefs that define you. You somehow start contemplating of the bigger picture in some cases, understand the meaning of having people close to you as you kind of are on your own, so I inherently started being more grateful of the people around me. Being independent is a given once you’re out of the comfortable boundaries of the campus. In terms of attitude towards women, the company I am in, an individual is celebrated based on merit completely and hence an attitude of any sort towards woman does not have any meaning for the same, diversity in gender is truly celebrated on ground. The only place I could really understand a difference would be while working in a factory and that boils down to our society. Being a woman manager on a shop floor would be a challenge of sorts because of just the fact that there is no other female in that unit say other than you; so inherently a difference in attitude prevails regarding a worker sharing information with you or someone really paying equal heed to what you’re saying. But the whole point of it is that the attitude will change based on your work and is a change that will come with time, based on the increase in the number of women in manufacturing workspaces so that you do not become an unnatural alien due to the skewed sex ratio.
What do you love the most about your current work?
My current work as a Management Trainee in HUL, takes me around the country, makes me meet tons of people and understand different parts of the working chain of this huge and esteemed organisation. It also takes me through every economic strata of the society and understand their ways of life. The training I am going through has a powerful concept of sustainable living attached to it where we also have a rural stint of staying in a village for a few weeks and work for the benefit of the villagers. Throughout my work right now, every day there is something new to learn and possibly that aspect is the one dearest to me.
Did you have a role model in your college years? What influence did he/she have on your life?
Throughout college and before, I’ve been influenced by Mr. Goutam Biswas, who taught at Computer Science Department of IIT Kgp. Through these weekly math classes in his home during my school days sowed the very first seeds of logical and analytical thinking, the quest to learn something new every day. Lessons of how it’s never too late to build skills, the kind of passion he has for knowledge and sharing knowledge really taught me a world of good sharp thinking and new knowledge and skill — all around modern maths.
Other than that, I was greatly influenced by a book called ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’ by Simon Singh where the story is about how mathematicians tried and failed to find a proof of a three centuries old problem, and eventually Andrew Wiles’ success was such a major breakthrough. The tribulations and the general storyline, so lucid in style, of a never-ending quest to solve a problem statement had stricken a chord and has been a great influence in my life.
Other than that, Siddharth Agarwal (Asid as he is called) and his way of questioning everything around us and really doing what he wants to do, following his passion in the most unabashed and creative way is someone I’ve looked up to.
Interviewed by Shubhi Jain.
