A simple home of a South Indian family in Matunga.  Deeply traditional but surrounded by a multicultural neighbourhood.  Family members adhering to rituals, Christian neighbours coming to take Aashirwad before leaving to take their exams.  Strict vegetarian home with the aroma of frying fish coming in through the window.  Anita was raised in Bombay of the ‘70s and ‘80s when homes were orthodox, but neighborhoods were inclusive. 

Bombay was a maximum city and ‘the great equalizer.’  While home was conservative and protected, Bombay as a city was constantly challenging Anita to think, feel and push beyond the limits she was constrained within. Commuting in local trains with friends from all income groups, she was accustomed early in life to the dichotomy and economical divide the city is still known for.  Bombay ensures that we are forced to go beyond our comfort zones, just in order to survive. And that’s what it did to Anita.

Today as Anita leads an extremely powerful but low-profile work of her organisation ‘IT for Change’, I see so much of her personal journey inform their model that looks out for those who cannot speak for themselves.

People view opportunity only from their perspective.  But with a tool as powerful as the internet, every opportunity, every policy, every platform is built for and by those who can benefit from it, with little or no thought to the majority who will be left behind without a voice.  IT for Change works to address this growing inequality that is multiplied because of our inability to think or feel beyond ourselves.

Anita was an only daughter of God fearing Brahmins who had to live up to expectations and honour traditions. But Anita is cursed with a thinking mind, and grew up with an internal conflict that this is not how things were meant to be.