PROJECT INCLUSIVITY

The race for inclusivity is fierce. Prateek Pardeshi looks at the recent push at leading OEMs.

- Prateek Pardeshi

Anagha Balpandey, of Tata Motors A Ltd., is responsible for assembling the air filters of Tata Harrier and Tata Safari SUVs. When under mentorship of her professor while pursuing a diploma course, she got an opportunity for on boarding at the leading OEM. Hesitant to apply for a journey that would lead her to shift from her Vidarbha base to Pune, she was pursued by peers who also planned to apply. "We got selected and at the last minute everyone backed out apart from Anagha," she recollected. Attributing her bold move to her mother's support, the journey was far from rosy. It came with its own set of challenges that had to be overcome. Initially, the new recruits were deployed on assembly lines manned by a male dominant workforce. A male counterpart challenged her to assemble all air filters for each car in that shift, which accounted for almost 300 units. Anagha not only won that challenge but demonstrated her capabilities by repeating the same cycle the next day too. She quipped, "That's where we bench marked ourselves," setting up ourselves for better things ahead.

Anagha's peer Nikita Shinde is from Karnataka. Unlike her Nikita wasn't that lucky initially. Faced with a rejection when Tata Motors was recruiting only out of Maharashtra, she found her way out eventually. Finding the difficulty scale high on her first day of work itself, she did not give up. She overcame teething issues such as unfriendly ergonomics courtesy by her height with the support of her senior peers. This paved the way for structural changes at large to make it easier for women like Nikita. The new wave of change meant striking a balance between work and engagement activities to keep the motivational level high. "I will never forget when we first rolled out and assembled the first car which will always be close to our hearts," she reminisced.