Alumna Update: Sukriti Chauhan
Dr Sukriti Chauhan is a 2007 INLAKS scholar. She attended Warwick University to pursue an LLM in Law.
For close to fourteen years, she has worked for advocacy and better communications in public health and human rights. She started her career with PATH and went on to lead national level policy changes and campaigns. She has guided strategies for TATA Trusts and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) where she headed a consortium of partners to address the challenge of teenage pregnancy, nutrition access and child protection across states, with a focus on community-led approaches. An avid animal lover she received her PhD from JNU, New Delhi.
I have always taken decisions from my heart. My brain, of course was crucial for getting me through my educational journey, but it is my heart that has helped me chart my life path. Academics has taken me on a journey from my schooling at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya to LLB from Symbiosis Law College, Pune. For my post-graduation, I applied for several scholarships and failed. Therefore, while applying for INLAKS, I reached a point where I needed push harder than before, to not give up. A feeling that I am sure many of you have experienced.
I remember the shift I felt upon receiving the INLAKS scholarship. From that moment, I was equipped with the best academic opportunity. While pursuing my LLM from University of Warwick, I focused on International Development Law and Human Rights, which changed me in many ways. The professors unlocked doors to thinking that I believed could not be opened. Not only did I break my perceptions, but I also bettered my methods of research, analysis, and expression. The year shaped me into becoming the woman I am today, and I will always be grateful for the support from INLAKS.
Even though I had the opportunity to study in the UK, I always wanted to come back to India to work and practice what I learnt. I wanted to create an enabling environment for change. What set the ball rolling for me was the Delhi Mahila Samiti, a small organisation I created at the age of 18 years in New Delhi. While the world focused on the target populations impacted by HIV/AIDS, everyone forgot about the wife at home. Millions of these women have been impacted with no fault of theirs and no access to any recourse. Often blamed wrongly as vectors, they have battled stigma, lost custody of children, and most importantly they have been completely abandoned.
Women and young girls have been the core of my work over the last fourteen years. My first job was with an international NGO called PATH. This is where I learnt the power of ‘communicating right’ and ‘crisis communications’, as I navigated the areas of sexual reproductive health and cervical cancer. It is here that I also met the best mentors I have ever had. They taught me the great power of leadership, and its impact on young people. A teaching that I continue to carry today with my own organisation, ETI Services. Launched in 2020, ETI Services focuses on mental health, women empowerment, and adolescent wellbeing.
From PATH, I went on to strategizing overcoming public health challenges, including the most ignored diseases. One of my most successful campaigns was one that spread awareness about the 150 million years old disease, tuberculosis. Entitled, TB Harega Desh Jeetega with superstar Amitabh Bachchan, it was created as a pilot project in Dharavi. However the campaign went onto become one of India’s most successful health interventions, with the highest political leadership standing behind it. It reached more than 200 million people across the country.
My journey over the years has given me humbling and important opportunities to work with not only popular voices, but at the grassroots, with the community, and learn from them each step of the way. I do not believe that one size fits all. We must be creative, we must be bold in our ideas, and most importantly never undermine journeys that people with suffering have been on. Empathy lies at the core of my work.
We often come from spaces where we do not feel the need to question the fact of “choice’’. I have always been fortunate and honoured to have a life that allowed me options and choices, and have always found support in the decisions I have taken. At the root of my work lies the need to ensure everyone has a choice. To choose rights over abuse. To choose access over denial, and to choose to be who they want to be.
I have also been lucky to be in the shoes of a donor, with Tata Trusts and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) working on issues like teenage pregnancy, keeping girls in school and nutritional access and security. This work took me to the farthest tribal areas and I saw first-hand what empowerment in the correct hands can do. When the women of Angul, a tribal district in Odisha demanded social audits across the state leading to a 25 time increase in budget, and setting up of mini anganwadis so they did not have to walk 10 kms to access basic nutrition. A choice. A right.
In my life while academics will always remain central, I hope to have an opportunity to be a part of India’s politics. Women are missing from multiple narratives and while we work with communities to build them- it has become essential that the gender equity reaches both houses of Parliament.
I sign off with the hope of gender equity and inclusion not only for women, but everyone who is marginalised to build a better world. Pause to look out of the window and get ready to break barriers to bring the change we need to see.
