When will we have FFFFM ..!!

Christina Lagarde

Geeta Gopinath

Look at the cabinet of the creator of the world .i.e, lord Vishnu . All the important portfolio except broadcasting and information , were given to goddesses . Education to Sraswati , home to Maa Kali and defense to Maa Durga . And most concerned here , Laxmi was the finance minister . One can overlook this by crediting it as mere myths . Roam to some other  noted institution of the world . International Monetary Fund(IMF) , Christina Lagarde is the chairwoman and managing director and heading this post from 2011 . While Kristalina Ivanova is the chief executive officer of the World Bank and Demijuk Kunt is the director of research in the same institution  .  And recently , it became the matter of proud when India born Geeta Gopinath became the first women chief economist of IMF .  Despite this when will India have its first full-time female finance minister (FFFFM) ? Although , Indira Gandhi had this portfolio for a while , but she was the PM then and remained minister , hardly for one year . So , she was not full time finance minister , it was because of some political picking up .

Kristalina Ivanova

  On one hand , India ranks 120 out of 131 countries in female labor force participation rates , while on other hand when some names revolve around , it becomes quite unimaginative that only 17 %  of the women directly contributes to the Indian economy . Indira Nuyi , the Chair Person of  PepsiCo , Chanda Kochar , the former MD and CEO of ICICI Bank , Arundahti Bhattacharya , the former chairwoman of  SBI . Despite these profound names in corporate and banking , India never has any woman on significant post related to finance .



  India never has either woman chief economic advisor , women RBI governor or women finance minster . If that is because , woman is politically unsound in India . Than , do face some prominent names of Indian politics . The longest serving president of the oldest political entity of India , Mrs. Soniya Gandhi , and even before her Annie Besant , Sarojini Naiydu and Indira Gandhi had served this post . 

 And apart from being the president of Indian National Congress , Indian women have served almost each and every significant post in legislative . Either that is about being the Prime Minister , the President or the chief minister of various states . Somewhere in the past , these posts have been crowned by women . Currently , Mamta Baneerjee , the CM of West Bengal and Mayawati are leading politician of country .  But other fact is that India has minimal percentage of women in national parliament . Despite that , it will wrong to make a proposition that Indian women are politically unsound because one cannot imagine Indian politics without above explained names .


So it is not about being politically unsound . And it is also ,
not ,because women have comparatively lesser knowledge of economics .


If we see the legislatives of the world , one can easily trace out that , the women are promptly given the ministry of foreign affairs . But there are several women who have served as finance minister of their country and have done well . Peeny Wong of Australia , Eveline Widmer of Switzerland , Mundrani Indirawati of Indonesia , Christin Holworsen of Norway and Chandrika Kumartunga of Sri Lanka have served as full time finance minister . Currently , there are almost twenty countries , have woman finance minster . Meglden Anderson of Sweden and Siv Jensen  of  Norway are there for more than 4 years . Apart from these two incumbent Lina Pedraja is the finance minister of Cuba since 2009 , nearly a decade . 


World needs women in economic affairs not because , it has became the matter of participation and equality but because women have been proved better in handling inflation , poverty , malnutrition etc.  Recall the financial crisis of 2008 , when giant investment bank Lehman Brothers got bankrupt ,whose affects were felt in every corner of the world . A report was published just after that in World Economic Forum Dawos , on the subject 'women power in world economy' , conveyed that since there should be long term plan to erase economic crisis , so women should be given favorable condition to listen them out . After that woman has got significant enchants in IMF , World Bank and WTO . Today , except WTO , other two organizations  are being controlled by women .



Women take less risky decisions and they are more aware of loss . They are not that much overconfident as men and their interest is tilted on long term initiative . So , they should be on significant post of economic institution . In India , the RBI Governor  , the Chairman of Finance Commission , the Chief Economic Advisor of Central Government and the Finance Minister are the key post in terms of economic affairs . And women have never be seen at these posts except Indira Gandhi for a while as Finance Minister .


In recent years , specially when Modi came to power , the central cabinet has seen as optimistic fragrant in terms of women ministers . Currently , there are six women minister in central government . And Nirmala Sitharaman is the first women Defense Minister  after Indira Gandhi . And Sushma Swaraj is first women to hold Ministry of External Affairs as full time minister . Her work regarding NRIs , removing Indian from terrorist affected areas and Visa- issues are remarkable .


So , can we be optimistic for having a women Finance Minister in the near coming future ? To avail this optimism , the political entity at the center should have an approach across ideological and political line . Because it is not definite that a fine economist would be politically sound and ideologically correct as well . We have living Nobel Economist like Amartya  Sen and what about Geeta Gopinath . Before being the Chief Economist of IMF , she was Economic Advisor of  CM of  Kerala . But her stands for everything are rather opposed by communists . She advocates so-called  neo-liberal economics while the CPI(Marxist) ,  that leads the Kerala government vociferously opposes such policies nationally . Despite that she was there for almost two years . What if such examples would be seen in Central Government .