Earning her stripes
There are three essential components to a pioneering woman’s success, says the first woman to head the Zoological Survey of India: confidence in yourself, confidence from others, and a well-planned, wellexecuted effort not just to be the best candidate, b
What does it look like, the effort to become the first woman at something, especially if that something is to head a 105-year-old government body that’s never had a woman at its helm? Dhriti Banerjee, 51, says there are three essential components: confidence that tells you that you can do it, mentors who send you the same message, and a concerted effort to make sure not just that you’re the best person for the job, but that it is clear that you are.
Banerjee began building her CV for the post of director of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) years before she applied for the post. It helped that the entomologist was a career ZSI woman, having joined as a junior scientist in the Diptera (or true flies) section at the institute in 1998.
It also helped that two serving directors, Asish Kumar Ghosh and Krishnamoorthy Venkataraman, told her she could, and should, reach for the top post. At home, her teenaged daughter Roinee encouraged her too. “Ma, you should fight for it, since you are the best,” Banerjee remembers her saying.
“When others believe in you, it’s a confidence booster,” Banerjee adds, speaking from Kolkata.
Once she had made up her mind to apply, Banerjee attacked the matter of her candidacy with all the attention to detail she had previously paid to the true flies that are her specialty (more on that later).
She enrolled with leadership coaches to help her build her resume, publishing more research papers in peer-reviewed national and international journals, serving as a guide to more PHD students, taking on more challenging projects.
She made sure she had three back-to-back but varied administrative positions so there would be no room for doubt about whether she could handle the directorship: she was in charge of finances at ZSI; in charge of administration; and in charge of the ZSI digital archive project. (The ZSI, incidentally, operates under the union ministry of environment, forest and climate change.)
That last post also gave Banerjee an intimate knowledge of ZSI’S own body of work, since it involved overseeing the digitisation of the institute’s various research and other publications (more than 200,000 pages of printed material) on the fauna of India, a repository that was begun in the colonial era.
“I knew I was a top contender. But I had to work on filling gaps in my resume,” she says. B orn in Kolkata, Banerjee is the only child of a homemaker and an engineer. She has a PHD, on the impact of drug addiction on the human physiology. In love with science but not wanting to study medicine after Class 12, Banerjee picked zoology in part because it would allow her to combine her two passions: biology and genetics. Her decision to work on true flies stemmed from a fascination with the role that they can play in criminal investigations “They are therefore also called forensic flies!” she says.
Her work has a currency that looks set to define her time as head of the ZSI; she’s determined to make its work more relatable to the average Indian, “because it is”. She’s been researching, for instance, how pollinator bees in the Western Himalayas can be indicators of climate change, reflecting in their behaviour early changes in vegetation and land use patterns. As they move to colder regions at higher altitudes, you can tell that the plains are warming up, Banerjee says, exclamations entering her voice again.
Why, in her eyes, should the layperson sit up and take notice of the ZSI, in 2021? “We have a body of information on Indian fauna and biodiversity going back over 100 years,” Banerjee says. “We are and have always been providers of information to the government of India that helps shape conservation policies and meet sustainable development goals. At the same time, our body of knowledge, our archives and museums, continue to serve all stakeholders, including students, teachers, universities, research scholars, naturalists, and the public at large.”
Now, tech is being added to the mix, enabling more layers in information. Banerjee’s first big project as head of the ZSI will be a repository of the DNA sequencing of all species of Indian fauna, including those with economic, commercial or medicinal significance. ZSI is also working on mapping the spatial and temporal distribution of Indian fauna, over the country’s land area, and over time. Research and scientific establishments can use this information to build predictability models that help policy makers devise better conservation strategies and practices.
None of this would have been possible without her biggest pillars, Banerjee says, her parents and aunt, who have helped care for Roinee; her late father-in-law; and her husband Sughran Banerjee, 51, an orthopaedic surgeon, “who has only ever prodded me upwards”.
“That has been one of the biggest pluses in my life, that he has been so supportive,” she adds. “He has been one of the biggest motivators. If none of his other prodding works, he will say ‘Your daughter looks up to you. Don’t let her down’.”
Born in Kolkata, Dhriti Banerjee, 51, is the only child of a homemaker and an engineer. She has a PHD, on the impact of drug addiction on the human physiology. In love with science but not wanting to study medicine after Class 12, Banerjee picked zoology in part because it would allow her to combine her two passions: biology and genetics.
Her career would not have been possible, Banerjee says, without her pillars: her parents and aunt, who have helped care for her daughter Roinee; her late father-in-law; and her husband Sughran Banerjee, 51, an orthopaedic surgeon, “who has only ever prodded me upwards”.
During Durga Puja at her home once, she recalls, she overheard her father-in-law proudly explaining to a German student how her scientific advice had helped him organise the rituals with greater ease. “He would have been one of the proudest,” she says.
That has been one of the biggest pluses in my life, that he has been so supportive. He has been one of the biggest motivators.
DHRITI BANERJEE, on her husband, Sughran Banerjee