Former SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya shares her incredible journey to the top in ‘Indomitable’

Seema Sachdeva

Credited with changing the face of banking in India, Arundhati Bhattacharya is a name that has inspired confidence among career women who dream to achieve big. In her memoir, ‘Indomitable’, this first woman to chair the State Bank of India (SBI) shares her 36-year-old journey while sharing her experiences on life and work.

A career that she happened to choose by sheer chance took her to heights she’d never dreamt of. Between qualifying the examination for SBI’s probationary officer to heading the 210-year-old banking conglomerate, she remained unstoppable and indomitable, living up to her name and steering the bank through its most transformative phases.

Encapsulating the journey which started from the small towns of Bokaro and Bhilai through the bylanes of Kolkata and later moving to New York and back to many other Indian cities and villages, her autobiography gives a broad view of the different roles she played. The employee-friendly initiatives she started at SBI came from her own personal experiences of juggling between office responsibilities and managing her home and family, which included taking care of her daughter Sukrita, a special child with learning disabilities.

The memoir brings together all that went into making hers a success story: how she kept challenging herself and breaking gender stereotypes, and how she rose through the ranks with her hard work, grit and determination. One of the most difficult jobs while leading a banking behemoth, she reflects, was to create a change in people’s perception while bringing together a fragmented banking sector.

Recalling the humourous episodes like the difficulty she faced in holding on to huge ledgers that weighed up to 7 kg, to finally getting it right while counting the cash, the memoir reveals the challenges at work that she faced with a smile. The mistakes she made never deterred her and with a never-ending zeal and will to learn, she overcame her shortcomings.

Her various experiences, including those while she worked in the US, helped her in bringing the much-needed employee-friendly initiatives and banking reforms like the game-changing bankruptcy law. The book details how under her chair, she overcame enormous challenges like opening 11 crore accounts under the PM Jan Dhan Yojana, dealing with an entire logistics change at the 24,000 branches of SBI as well as other allied banks and post offices during demonetisation and manual calibration of ATMs due to the changed size and thickness of new notes. The merger of seven associated banks with SBI also finds prominent mention.

The memoir looks at how the self-learning modules and welfare initiatives for employees she started helped create a positive workforce. Her efforts at convincing the government to give two full Saturdays off each month was a relief for employees. She looks back with satisfaction that her recommendation for a two-year sabbatical for women employees with child and elderly helped save the career of more than 600 women.

The recipe of her ‘secret sauce’ to become one of the most respected bankers in India, she reveals, lay in “getting the right people in the right place, obtaining their buy-in, empowering them and then backing them up when they took courageous calls with the right intent”.

Sitting in the chairman’s suite on the 18th floor at SBI Corporate Centre building at Nariman Point, Mumbai, she often asked herself, “Did I make a difference as a leader?”

The writing style is racy and alive with a lot of action. Her gentle and persuasive demeanour comes across in the writing.

The narrative focusses more on her as a working woman, and there is not much that one gets to know about her at the personal front, though she mentions her struggles with finding special school for her daughter with each new posting. Her husband Pritimoy was her anchor. He leads a retired life now.

The book can be a little intimidating for a reader not familiar with the banking sector. Nevertheless, it does give an account of what goes into the making of a leader.